Gifts for Coworkers

It's getting to be holiday time, and for some reason, we seem to have more birthdays in our office as well.  What do you do about birthday gifts for your co-workers?

Do you give any?

Birthday Ideas on Parents.com

I would love to hear your take on this.

As I have worked in an office, I find that it can be quite expensive to recognize birthdays. Some people have found a solution by giving a card along with a $1 scratch off lottery ticket. Cards used to be expensive, and happily they aren't any more.  There's no excuse for not having a few in your desk (see this).  At my local Dollar Store you can buy nice cards (funny, too!) for two for $1 (yes, one DAHLLLER). So at the very least a card is nice.

But how do you decide who is going to get a present?  There is one woman in my office who gets lots of gifts, from lots of people in the whole building, and she doesn't do anything special.  Honestly, I always feel like buying her gifts, too, lol. She's someone whom I always want to take under my wing and encourage, and I have a feeling that's what happens to other people as well.  Weird. Not sure how she makes that magic happen, but I love her!  She's like my crazy sister.

On the other hand, some people keep to themselves and no one even knows when their birthdays are.

We took care of this in our office by making an office phone number contact list (just for our division) that also has our birthday month and day on it. So each month we can wish each other happy birthday. I take the dates off the list on the first of each month and send out an email to our whole team, reminding them of the birthdays. I love this because I end up talking to some people with whom I might never exchange words.

So what do you do about birthdays in your office? Any tips or advice?

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