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Paralegals & Legal Secretaries

: Practical Paralegalism

Holiday Gift Giving: Round Robin and Newts

By Lynne DeVenny

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Holiday gift-giving at the law office is a sensitive subject. Not only does the question of holiday gifts from supervising attorneys to staff seem to bring out the worst in people at blawgs, but some people are even complaining about receiving useless knickknacks from co-workers.

I always thought that my co-workers giving me knickknacks meant they liked me. I'm guilty of giving my co-workers what some would consider possibly useless knickknacks because I liked them, but had a limited budget.

I've gotten some pretty cool knickknacks over the years, but I can understand why that's not everyone's cup of tea.

What is everyone's cup of tea?

I'm still pretty clueless, but all this hoopla brings to mind a holiday when someone at work decided the way to handle the thorny issue of gift-giving between co-workers was to organize a round-robin gift exchange at the firm Christmas party, with a $20 spending limit.

Everyone was included, even the attorneys.

The gift-exchanging group was large, loud and enthusiastic. Great gifts were opened and almost immediately stolen, the most popular being a bookstore gift card and a set of ice cream sundae dishes.

But no one could have anticipated one of the legal secretaries reaching into a tantalizingly large gift bag, the final gift in the exchange, and pulling out a plastic bag full of water - and two newts.

Yup, live ones.

The legal secretary shrieked. (Lucky for the newts, she didn't drop the bag.)

I could tell from the look on her face that newts weren't on her wish list, and never would be - and that she probably would have stepped on them if she'd seen them outside on the sidewalk.

A Christmas miracle then occurred, because the co-worker with the ice cream sundae dishes desperately wanted the newts. The gifts rapidly changed hands, and everyone was thrilled.

I sort of lost track of the moral of this story, except maybe that gift-giving is nicest when you do it because you want to and not for any other reason.

And you know it was an attorney who brought newts to a round-robin gift exchange.

Full post as published by Practical Paralegalism on December 21, 2009 (boomark / email).