Gifts for People You Hate, 2023

Posted on December 8, 2023 by naomikritzer

It’s December, and you know what that means: it’s time to buy things. Hopefully, for the most part we’re buying things for people we want to give presents to: loved ones, children, friends. Some of these people are easy to buy for (I valiantly resisted the temptation to give my nephews a stuffed pug dog that makes fart noises. They would love this. My brother might stop speaking to me) and some are very hard, but if your goal is to make the other person happy, there are a gazillion other guides full of gift ideas — that is not what we’re here for today. And you know that! That’s why you’re here! Because sometimes, etiquette or family dynamics or office politics demands that you buy a gift for someone you absolutely cannot stand, and I am ready to help you express your dislike with all the tact of Joe Biden writing an epitaph for Henry Kissinger.

Important disclaimers: I don’t buy presents for anyone I don’t like, so if I give you a terrible gift, that’s because it was a swing and a miss, not because I was trying to be passive-aggressive. I don’t scrutinize gifts I receive critically, so if you’re shopping for me, don’t worry about that. And finally, in the interests of official full disclosure, I have an Amazon Associates ID set up, so if you actually buy any of the Amazon items for someone using my links, I get a kickback.

ON TO THE HORRORS.

Horrifying Housewares

Back in the summer, I wandered into a Goodwill store and walked around through the housewares aisles looking at the various gently-used items that people found so useless they wound up donating them to Goodwill, thinking about what this said about what kinds of things people really don’t want. There were a whole lot of decorative shelf clocks:

A bunch of decorative small clocks like you'd put on a shelf.

The fact is, most people these days, if they want to know what time it is, look at their phone. I’m an oddball because I still wear a wrist watch. Shelf clocks don’t exist for people to look at; shelf clocks exist to be a chore every year when we spring forward or fall back. Alas, if you go buy a clock from Goodwill, it won’t come with the box that makes it look new. I went looking for an inexpensive clock suitable for gifting and discovered that you can buy a melting clock that looks like the clocks in that Dali painting, The Persistence of Memory. As a bonus, this clock is extremely difficult to read. Even better: there’s also a melting clock that looks like the clocks in the Dali painting except it has Roman numerals on it so it’s both harder to read, and inaccurate in a way that will definitely irritate any serious Dali fan you buy this gift for.

Possibly my other favorite decorative item this year is this heart-shaped vase, where by favorite I mean “the stuff of nightmares” and by “heart-shaped” I mean “shaped like an actual human heart, you know, with the veins and arteries forming little tubes into which you stick the flowers.”

A bunch of flowers artfully arranged in a vase shaped like an actual human heart, mostly threaded through the veins and arteries.

Let’s just go through some highlights about this object. First of all, it’s got the problem a lot of vases have, which is that it rests on a narrow point and if you use it for flowers and have a cat, it’s going to get tipped over in about five minutes. Second, what most of us do with vases — well, what I do with vases — is that we take a bouquet, and we stick it in the vase with water to keep the bouquet alive longer. We do not wish to carefully thread a bunch of individual carnations or roses into a bunch of separate little tubes. Third, it looks like a human organ. (Don’t get me wrong: I do recognize that this is definitely a GOOD gift for someone out there. Provided that they don’t have cats who like to knock stuff over.)

Let’s Unnecessarily Gussy Up Your Car

I don’t know how I stumbled into this corner of Amazon but they sell some hilariously over-the-top car accessories. Lots of cars have a button now to start them and you can gussy up the Start button by making it look like a red-eyed glitter leopard. (This is an especially terrible gift to anyone who still starts their car with an actual key.) You can also buy decorative vent clips (you can add air freshener to them, apparently) that look like little skeletons doing the “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” poses. There’s a coin sorter that would probably have been super helpful back in the era when you paid your tolls in coins and now just suggests that you should be sorting all your coins instead of leaving them to rattle around your car’s ashtray. And finally: a hoodie for your gear shift, so it doesn’t get cold.

Candles!

So I’ll just note: I don’t burn scented candles. Most scented things give me a headache. I have also smelled the results of a Blueberry Pie Yankee Candle being burned to inadequately cover up some really unpleasant smells and this did not leave me with a positive association with Yankee Candles. Anyway, a few times I have been gifted a scented candle, and I said thank you and then re-gifted it to someone who I thought might actually enjoy it. I’m mentioning this just as a heads up — I suspect that a lot of people see scented candles as an appropriately generic gift that you can just re-gift without a lot of thought, and that could wind up being unfortunate if you buy one of these amazing artisan-made prank candles available from EarthsEssenceNC on Etsy. The top 1/4 smells like something nice (you can pick from a variety of scents); the bottom 3/4 smells like, let me look up the options: baby diaper, bad breath, canned tuna, farts, garlic, gunpowder, gym socks, or motor oil.

There’s also a candle that is truly a perfect gift if you are not Minnesotan but have an annoying coworker who’s, say, very loud about their Minnesota Vikings fannishness. There’s a Minnesotan candle seller that makes a Lutefisk scent. (Reviewer: “I was not prepared for this candle, it’s absolutely noxious. I’m very impressed!”) If you aren’t Minnesotan, you can plausibly claim that all you know about lutefisk is that it’s a Minnesotan thing that Minnesotan people are into and so this gift made you think of him because it seemed very Minnesotan, just like his football team. Lutefisk, well, it’s sort of a fish Jello eaten by an ever-decreasing number of Minnesotans in November and December at church dinners. (Here’s an outstanding story from MPR News that explains the tradition. I’ll note that this piece is much, much funnier as an audio piece than a written one.)

Prank candles are probably ideal gifts for officemates you can’t stand because most offices are not going to let you light the candle at the office, so there’s very little risk you’ll have to smell it.

You Need a Hobby and also should spend more time in the kitchen

There’s this genuinely excellent book called Make the Bread, Buy the Butter in which the author goes through a long list of things that she tried making (with recipes) and then assesses whether they were worth it. On the butter, she notes that she tried making butter and it was delicious. But then she bought some unsalted butter from the store, let it soften up, and paid attention while she was eating it, and the fundamental thing is, butter is delicious. And cream is more expensive than butter. I’ll also note that if someone wants to make butter, you can do it with a hand mixer (or a stand mixer, if you’ve got one), you basically just make whipped cream and keep going.

But maybe your cousin who shares tradwife memes would like to get her Laura Ingalls on? You could give her an actual literal hand-cranked butter churn and she could find out for herself just how utterly tedious it is to make butter by hand (and then have an extremely specialized kitchen item to stick on a shelf and feel guilty about.) For a less expensive “you fantasize about living like Laura Ingalls Wilder: let me help you out!” gift, you could give her this hand-cranked coffee grinder so that she can hand-grind the wheat while the blizzard rages outside, or else spend ten to fifteen minutes hand-grinding coffee beans for one 12-cup pot.

There are, in fact, a lot of things you can make from scratch, and some of them are great, if you want to spend a lot of time rolling out pasta dough, for instance. I received a pasta maker as a gift because I requested one. I have used it … hmm. Twice in twenty-five years? I think? Anyway, this pasta-maker is cheap and if I’ve used mine about once per decade after requesting it, you can pretty much guarantee it’ll just be a shelf space hog for someone who didn’t request it.

Here is a yogurt maker that produces a large vat of yogurt. Let me tell you the story of my mother’s yogurt maker. It was the 1980s, and like many 1980s-era children I liked my yogurt pre-sweetened and either fully flavored or with fruit on the bottom that I could stir in. My mother assured me that plain yogurt with jam stirred in was just like Dannon’s. I assure you that this was not remotely the case. I remember my mother’s yogurt maker taking up cabinet space for many years after she gave up and just bought me Dannon. Most people who eat yogurt want to eat something with a veneer of healthfulness but all the sugar of ice cream: wholesome unsweetened plain yogurt produced by the gallon is not actually what they’re looking for. They’d probably rather not admit that, though. Even to themselves.

Other things that most people are happy to buy from the store but you could give them equipment for making: cheese (this kit is just for mozzarella and ricotta), tofu (soybeans not included), plant milk (soybeans not included), peanut butter (as a side note, this machine apparently does not work at all), and sliced bread (that is a very fancy precise slicer, to be clear — they’ll still have to bake the bread). If all those seem like something your recipient might actually want, there’s also this sourdough starter kit so they can feel all nostalgic about the early pandemic.

A Miscellaneous Collection of Pointless Stuff

I usually have a section for terrible (bulky, overspecialized, dysfunctional) kitchen gadgetry but that section kind of got taken over by the Kitchen Hobby Stuff this year. But I really want to share some of these notably pointless items I found:

Do you know someone who would like to make tiny, seriously so tiny sandwiches over an open fire or maybe by holding the sandwich maker directly over a gas flame? No? Have I got a gadget for you! From the reviews: “Could only fit half a hot dog inside it.”
Possibly someone you know could use a specialized pickle fork with a fork holder you stick (with adhesive) to the side of the jar of pickles. It comes with three snaps you stick the fork holder to, after which I think you’re supposed to throw it away and buy a new set, I’m not sure.
Or how about a wind-up blender shaped like an outdoor motor that’s only big enough to stir stuff like coffee. Also, based on the reviews, it may not actually even work on coffee.
Also! This isn’t a kitchen item but was passed along by a friend specifically for this guide. A “keepsake charm” in a cute little box with a poorly written poem on it. Julia commented: “I feel like this is a gift for someone you are obligated to get something for, who is maybe in the habit of asking for money. Look at the message on the front of the box! Kitty doesn’t care if you are rich or poor. Stay poor! Kitty won’t mind! I can’t tell if it’s better for someone who loves or hates cats. I can see arguments in either direction.”

Cursed Clothing

Do you recall the memeified Three Wolf Moon t-shirt of years past? (OK, wow, probably plenty of you do not recall this. You could be a full-on grownup person and have been in preschool when that meme hit. That might actually make this gift funnier.) Anyway, here is a Three Possum Moon t-shirt.

A black t-shirt with a big full moon and three possums who all appear to be energetically singing opera at the moon. Their mouths are wide and their arms are spread wide.

What I particularly love about this shirt is the dramatic flailing the possums are doing; they look like they’re singing O Fortuna.

Or! Perhaps you know someone who’s got a dress code that requires a collared shirt; good news, cursed shirts are now available with buttons and collars. That one’s also available in “sloth riding a t-rex with laser eyes.”

I went looking for dresses in similarly cursed prints but you know, most of the dresses I found made me think, “I would wear that, if I wore dresses and would look good in this cut, it’s kinda cool,” which may actually just say bad things about my personal taste. I did, however, find this tube top, which looks like a giant bow tie directly over the boob area.

Books Are Always a Good Gift

Books make amazing gifts, all the more so when they’re hand-picked to match the recipient’s interests (or, you know, to do the opposite).

I had a book come out this year! Liberty’s Daughter, in which a girl growing up on a seastead is hired by someone with no money to investigate the disappearance of that woman’s sister. The book includes mystery, danger, the IWW (International Workers of the World) union, reality TV, an epidemic, and an atheist humanitarian aid group with a ship called the Mary Ellen Carter. If anyone you have to give gifts to flies one of those “don’t tread on me” flags, this book would be the perfect gift for pretending that you 100% sincerely assumed they would like it (they will likely be thoroughly annoyed by the time they’re done reading). If you’d like a signed copy, you can order one from either Uncle Hugo’s or Dreamhaven.

Some other books I really enjoyed this year that might either hit the spot or annoy the hell out of people on your gift list:

The Pomegranate Gate by Ariel Kaplan, a fantasy novel set in Inquisition-era Spain. Excellent gift for Jewish people, fantasy readers, and anyone who’s down with assuming that the Spanish Inquisition is the bad guys. Potentially upsetting gift for tradcaths.

Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs, a fantasy novel set in the present day. Another excellent book for Jewish fantasy readers. A good passive-aggressive gift to a parent, or a person who played a parental role, who used their position in your life to make profoundly unreasonable demands of you.

You could pair it with Just Do This One Thing For Me by Laura Zimmermann, which is also about parents making unreasonable demands on their kids, although the mother here is feckless rather than scheming. This is a YA novel and a good gift for fans of Dicey’s Song and other “teenagers left on their own” books, although I found the ending of this one particularly satisfying. The biggest villain in the book is a guidance counselor so if anyone you can’t stand works as a high school guidance counselor, you could just note that you heard that this book has a guidance counselor as an important character.

Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice, a science fiction novel about people surviving an apocalypse, set on a remote tribal reservation in Northern Ontario. If you know any white dude gun-collecting survivalists, they’ll absolutely love this book right up until they realize they’re the bad guy.

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich is a ghost story set in a Minneapolis bookstore in 2020. (It actually starts in late 2019.) This would be a really good gift to anyone from Minneapolis, and a really bad gift to any of the suburbanites who send indignant letters to the Star Tribune about how very unsafe they feel when they drive through Minneapolis in their speeding SUV. Also an ideal (truly ideal) passive-aggressive gift to any white person who has ever claimed that their great-grandmother was a Cherokee princess.

Passive-Aggressive Charitable Gifts

I am delighted to share with you that the Cincinnati Zoo offers an “adopt your favorite animal” option where you just fill in whatever it is in their collection you wish to symbolically adopt, and they have an extensive collection of insects, all of which you can find listed and described in their “World of the Insect” exhibit section! Options include but are not limited to the Giant African Millipede (“its body is lined with many repugnatory defense glands. When the millipede is disturbed, these glands secrete a foul smelling and tasting liquid”); the Eastern Lubber Grasshopper (“sometimes cause serious damage to citrus and vegetable crops”); the Zebra Bug (“this handsomely marked insect is actually a species of cockroach”); the Bat Cave Cockroach (“This roach dominates a populous bat cave on a large tropical island. Countless roaches cover the cave’s walls and floor, and feed mostly on fresh bat guano”); and the Thorny Devil (“When disturbed, the males painfully clamp down with the especially large spines on their powerful hind legs and release a skunk-like odor”). You can also symbolically adopt a kangaroo (will fight anything that moves), a cockatoo (extremely loud), or a komodo dragon (false advertising: neither breaths fire nor flies).

I feel like the true ideal gift for a Republican relative this year would be a symbolic adoption of a wild orca, given the whole “sink the yachts” campaign some orcas have been engaging in. The Icelandic nonprofit Orca Guardians does non-invasive research on orcas and will allow you to symbolically adopt a specific individual orca for €30. Everything in the package arrives by e-mail. You could pair it with an inexpensive orca tree ornament if you also want something tangible.

I will also note that while MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders) does not offer a cutesy gift catalog they do allow for “tribute gifts” with an e-card. Usually my favorite international charity is IMC Worldwide (in part because they’re very good about not spending all the money I donated bugging me for more money) but this year I’m going to point people to MSF.

Happy holidays!

Passive-Aggressive Gift Giving Guides from Previous Years:

Whimsical Gifts (for people you hate), 2015

Posted on December 3, 2015 by naomikritzer

It’s December, and do you know what that means? That means it’s time for my annual very special article on gift shopping for people you hate.

In a better world, we’d only ever have to be presents for people we want to buy presents for. But the sad fact is that sometimes, presents are obligatory. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that sometimes, giving a present is a whole lot less trouble than the inevitable drama that would result from not giving a present.

Let me just reel out the usual disclaimers before we get started. I love everyone I give gifts to: if I have given you a present and you hated it, I swear I tried to get you something you would like (or at least find briefly amusing) and for heaven’s sake please feel free to donate it to a thrift shop or something if you’ve still got it. And if you’ve ever given me something that could possibly fit one of these categories, I am not talking about you, your gift was lovely and I do not suspect you of passive-aggressive malice, I promise. IMG_20131225_201536

I ran across this totally fascinating document from World War II earlier today. (Props to the Central Intelligence Agency, for sharing this riveting bit of history!) This is a guide to “Simple Sabotage,” which I guess was covertly distributed in occupied Europe as a guide to sabotage for the motivated layperson. Probably the funniest part is the section where they talk about how to use office politics as an engine of sabotage against the Nazi war effort. “Insist on doing everything through ‘channels.’ Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.” “Make ‘speeches.’ Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate ‘patriotic’ comments.” “When possible, refer all matters to committees, for ‘further study and consideration.’ Attempt to make the committees as large as possible – never less than five.” “Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions.”

Anyway, the relevence here is that Resistance members and Allied sympathizers in Nazi-occupied Europe could get away with dropping wrenches into machinery, breaking drill bits and dulling saws, tying up phone lines with wrong numbers, and making lots of time-wasting patriotic speeches to avoid decision making because that sort of thing legitimately happened on a regular basis just by accident. That same basic principle is at work here. People get terrible, inappropriate gifts all the time; usually, it’s not because anyone was trying to give them a bad gift, it’s just because buying good presents for people we don’t know well is really difficult. All those inadvertant bad gifts are your camouflage. Adhere to a certain degree of subtlety, and no one needs to know that your goal here was to make your target unhappy with your ~~Simple Sabotage~~ Christmas largesse.

ON TO THE GIFT IDEAS.

Sports Memorabilia

Many people have a favorite team, and if you buy a thing with their team’s logo on it, this shows that you have paid attention to something they like, and are trying to please them. The thing is, even very devoted fans don’t usually want everything in their house to be dedicated to their sports team. (There are exceptions. You probably already know if you’re dealing with one of those, though.) You can find a Tiffany-style table lamp with a sports team logo. A curtain valance. A wallpaper border. A light switch plate. A spandex throw pillow that looks like a giant baseball. A wall clock! A SHOWER CURTAIN. A pot holder and kitchen towel set. The list goes on, and on, and on.

My favorite item on this list, for sheer WTF value, is definitely the Tiffany-style table lamp with the team logo, but it’s $129, and gifts for people you dislike should always be inexpensive. There are far more reasonably priced items.

Like duct tape. Duct tape is not normally something you would give as a Christmas present, probably, but you can present this with the air of someone who’d never seen sports team duct tape before and got overexcited. Use the statement, “when I saw this I knew I HAD to get it for you!” Which is probably a statement you’ve heard a few times over the years, usually just before being handed a terrible gift. See what I mean about camouflage?

Whimsical Housewares

There are well-designed whimsical kitchen items that are both cute and functional. And then there are whimsical kitchen items that will take up space in a drawer or cabinet without being good for anything at all.

1. Mugs are pretty dang basic, you know? How do you even screw up a mug? Well, you can make it take up the space of two mugs or you can give it a handle that you can’t easily slip your fingers through.

2. Oh look, a hedgehog cheese grater! So adorable, but try to picture using it. How do you even hold onto it while grating cheese with it? If you read the reviews, the answer is, “argh!”

3. The Nessie ladle looked so adorable in the magazine articles about it six months ago — I totally wanted one. Too bad they’re apparently both runty and flimsy. (Small ladles can be functional — we have one that we use for gravy — but it sounds like this one comes in an awkward size, too big for gravy but too small for soup.)

4. A sculptural dragon that will embrace your salt and pepper shaker like they are part of its hoard. Okay, to be fair: I totally know people who would honestly love this item. Use your own judgment here.

5. Even most of the people who would love a dragon salt and papper shaker holder are not actually going to install a dragon TP holder. Especially since, according to the reviews, it’s really pretty annoying to install.

6. In the “easy to install but WHY WOULD YOU” category there is a Santa toilet decal. If you give this for Christmas, it’ll already be too late to stick it on when they unwrap it; they’ll have to save it for an entire year in order to get any use out of it.

7. A decorative tabby cat wine bottle holder. This is a bulky storage gadget for a single bottle of wine that also makes it look like the cat is drinking wine directly from the bottle. Note that the five-star reviews are entirely from people who gave it as a gift and say that the recipient just loved it (except for one person who cheerfully notes that his girlfriend thought it was hideous and “mysteriously lost it.”) If you need a present for someone who’s more of a dog person, you can get a dog version and somehow the wine-sucking golden retriever puppy is even more disturbing to look at than the cat.

8. In the “whimsical wine” category there are also whimsical wine bottle covers. What are these even for? Is there a reason that wine needs a cozy? Are these to dress up gifts of wine because you don’t like wine gift bags? My suggested strategy for bad wine gifts is to go to a wine store or Trader Joe’s and tell them that you need a bottle of wine for a stage set, it needs to not be a recognizable brand (so no three-buck-Chuck) but it doesn’t have to be drinkable and you don’t want to spend more than $5. Then stick a sweater on it, I guess. (WHY. WHY DOES WINE NEED A SWEATER?)

9. Whimsical nested measuring cups. Because you totally want to play “Take Apart the Matryoshka Dolls” before you can measure 1/4 cup of flour, and put them all away again every time you wash them rather than just throwing them in a drawer.

10. Whimsical dinosaur fossil ice cube trays. There is a huge selection of whimsical silicon ice cube trays out there. I spent some time last summer in a rented apartment that came with silicon ice cube trays, and I went out and tracked down a real ice cube tray because life is too short to pry whimsically-shaped cubes out of those stupid silicon trays. They are a complete pain in the ass and no one cares about whimsical ice.

Cookbooks

Rather than linking to specific cookbooks, I’m going to suggest that you visit your nearest chain bookstore and check out the discount section, although before buying, make sure that the discount sticker can be easily peeled off.

There are people who love to cook and disdain any recipe that calls for Cream of Campbell’s or Lipton Onion Soup Mix as ingredients. For those people, you want to find a cookbook where the recipes mostly involve assembling the contents of cans. The whole “Dump Dinners” series is arranged around this premise but there are plenty of others out there.

There are also people who really hate cooking and for them, you want to find a cookbook that claims everything in it is “quick and easy” and “ready in ten minutes” but also assumes that you just happened to stumble across 2 finely diced onions, 10 peeled and minced garlic cloves, 2 chopped green bell peppers, and four deboned ducks before you started the process of cooking. If you’re not sure how to identify those, look for cookbooks produced by Cook’s Illustrated or America’s Test Kitchen. (I have a copy of the America’s Test Kitchen Family cookbook, and I even use it, but they have crock pot recipes in there that call for, I swear to God, two hours of prep before you turn on the crock pot. That is not why I have a crock pot. That is not why anyone has a crock pot.)

Alternately, I’m pretty sure that It’s All Good: Delicious, Easy Recipes That Will Make You Look Good and Feel Great, Gwyneth Paltrow’s cookbook, could successfully irritate anyone who is not already a member of Gwyneth’s personal cult. Especially as it’s apparently about 2/3 pictures of Gwyneth.

Charitable Gifts: Wildlife Adoptions

Yesterday, someone on my Facebook shared an article about how the Bronx Zoo lets you name their Madagascar Hissing cockroaches after people for $10 per named cockroach. That is an awesome, if thoroughly unsubtle, gift. However, when I visited the Bronx Zoo website I couldn’t find any links to do this, so I think it may have been a limited-time deal last February. (Too bad, because with some effort you can sell it as not an insult, I think. You’d want to focus on the whole “only thing that will survive a nuclear war” aspect of the cockroach personality.)

It’s especially too bad because when you browse Wildlife Adoption options they tend to overwhelmingly focus on cute, appealing animals like tigers and panda bears. No one lets you adopt a blobfish. The World Wildlife Fund (logo animal: the panda bear) has 125 species available for wildlife adoption, but the blobfish is not among them. Dear WWF: I think you are missing an opportunity here. I know (I am sure) that as an organization you are strongly committed to saving ugly animals just as much as cute ones. You could even do one of your themed wildlife adoption buckets with the theme “save the uncharismatic fauna, too!” but for sure you’d need a blobfish in there.

Wildlife adoptions from the WWF are available at various price points — they push the $55 option, which comes with a stuffed toy, but you can also do a $25 option, which is just a photo and a certificate. And while they do not have blobfish, they do have some animals available that might suit your gift-giving needs.

Bonobos. “Bonobos are highly social animals,” the WWF tells you on their bonobo page, leaving out the part where they socialize primarily by having sex all day long. “They communicate in a variety of ways–visually, by touch and vocally,” they say, delicately leaving out the fact that bonobos in captivity have been observed using a self-developed sign language to proposition one another sexually. “Male bonobos stay with the group that they were born into; a male’s dominance is based upon his mother’s rank,” they say, leaving out the detail that bonobos live in a lesbian matriarchy. Get your homophobic bigot relative a bonobo wildlife adoption, and get yourself a copy of Biological Exuberance, which was where I first heard about bonobos. Fun additional fact: they’re our closest primate relative. (Well, they’re probably tied with chimps. But they are definitely at least as closely related to us as chimps are.)

Anacondas. If you think about it the right way, giving an anaconda adoption is a very subtle way of calling your recipient a dick.

The Great White Shark. If you have to give a gift to someone who’s ever cut you down emotionally, give them a Great White Shark adoption and think of this lovely image of a Great White Shark every time you look at their shark stuffie. (SUPER GREAT.)

Vampire Bats. This one is maybe a little less subtle, but hey, you are RESCUING ENDANGERED WILDLIFE IN THEIR NAME.

Honey Badgers. Not surprisingly, the WWF page does not quote this excellent educational video about the personal strengths of honey badgers.

The Sierra Club also does wildlife adoptions and lets you adopt tarantulas, which is awesome. However, Ed and I used to donate to the Sierra Club and they would not stop calling us, so I hesitate to suggest donating to them. Although they will send you a tarantula puppet, and how cool is that? Also, if you can figure out a way to sic their phone solicitors onto your recipient, that would definitely be a gift that would keep on giving, but I’m not sure how you’d get them to do that while not also calling you.

If you want a stuffed blobfish for a do-it-yourself wildlife adoption, by the way, you can order one. It’s kind of astonishing how cute it is, while also being recognizably a blobfish. You could pair it with The Ugly Animals: We Can’t All Be Pandas, a book by the Ugly Animal Preservation Society, which sadly is an educational comedy group and not an actual non-profit. That’s less a gift for someone you hate and more a perfectly fine gift for anyone cool enough to appreciate it, though.

Uncategorizable

I made a note of this one months ago because it was inexpensive and kind of awesome. These are super cute, but they are also spikey cacti in tiny cases. Available as either key chains or jewelry, and there are teeny tiny holes in the case so you can water them occasionally by immersing them briefly in water. Nifty, cute, suitable for stocking stuffers, but there is something subtly hostile about giving someone a tiny cactus.

Happy holidays to everyone!

Passive-Aggressive Gift Giving Guides from Previous Years:

Also, if you’re amused by my writing, check out my science blogging at Bitter Empire: http://bitterempire.com/author/naomi-kritzer/

My (kind of low-volume) Twitter feed: @naomikritzer

And my fiction that was published online this year:

Cat Pictures Please (Clarkesworld, January 2015.)
Wind (Apex, April 2015.)
So Much Cooking (Clarkesworld, November 2015.)
The Good Son (Lightspeed, March 2015 — reprint. Originally appeared in Jim Baen’s Universe, 2009.)

And if you just can’t get enough of my writing, you could consider buying:
Comrade Grandmother and Other Stories (short story collection)
Gift of the Winter King and Other Stories (short story collection)
My novels (there are five of them)

Gifts for People You Hate 2014: The Almost-Generic Edition

Posted on December 7, 2014 by naomikritzer

Hey, someone on MetaFilter found my gift-giving advice posts and linked them! This is both exciting…and made me realize I needed to get a move on for this year’s helpful gift shopping post. Thanksgiving was really late and I was sort of surprised today to realize how little time left there is.

So, to recap: sometimes, you have to give gifts to people you dislike, because your family dynamics or unwritten workplace rules require it and not handing over something wrapped up in a box or gift bag would be a THING, and it’s worth spending some money (as little as possible, of course) to keep the peace.

The basic principles are the same every year. (1) Cheap, but untraceably cheap; if you buy them some bad wine, it can’t be Charles Shaw, because everyone knows that was only $3. (2) Minimal effort; should be something you can buy on your other errands or order online with everyone else’s gifts. (3) Something you might have plausibly thought they might like, since if you wanted to be confrontational you could have just refused to buy them anything.

As always, I want to note that I don’t shop for anyone I don’t like — this annual series came out of hearing a lot of friends talk about the annual trauma of buying something for their obnoxious BIL or their least-favorite coworker they somehow drew for the office Secret Santa. If I do give you a gift, and you hate it, I swear it was accidental. The vast majority of bad gift-giving is accidental, which of course is the cover you need for your deliberate bad gift.

This year’s theme is “Almost Generic.” Even more common than the “I really don’t like this person” problem is the “I really don’t know this person all that well” problem, which is why every store from Walgreens to Macys is loaded up with the sort of generic gifts that satisfy a general recurring need in some way, or accomplish some common yet specialized task in a more-efficient way. (Key chain fobs that will talk to your smartphone and tell you where your keys are! Freezable wine chilling tubes!)

Gloves, Scarves, Hats

If you live in a cold climate, you probably go through a fair number of gloves, hats, and scarves, because this stuff gets lost a lot. It also gets dingy over time. Some people like to have multiple sets in various colors to coordinate with outfits. (I care about color only in that I’ve started buying all my gloves in pink whenever possible, because Molly won’t borrow pink stuff.)

Here is a very inexpensive “cashmere feel” acrylic scarf that can be dropped into a gift bag and presented to just about anyone who doesn’t live in Miami as a perfectly acceptable winter gift. Available colors include traffic-cone orange and a shade of purple that will only appeal to people who truly love the color purple. This scarf is cheaper and available in some really unappealing moss greens.

You could also give these budget-priced leather driving gloves” which, according to the reviews, will fall apart within days. They’re also available in a women’s style; these are better reviewed overall aside from not fitting people with adult-sized hands. (Note: you can’t actually order these for this Christmas; they’re shipped from China and won’t come from January. However, low-quality leather driving gloves are available all over. If you’re trying them on in person, you can pick some with a scratchy tag and a stiff feel.)

For a hat, look to Land’s End. Usually, they’re a source of high-quality merchandise, but the reviews for their fleece hats complain vehemently that they are too small for adult heads.

Slippers

Slippers are a classic Christmas gift. Who doesn’t like a nice pair of slippers? The thing is, most people have some fairly strong preferences, first among them clog-style vs. NOT. Think about the shoes and slippers you’ve seen your recipient wear in the past. If they’re full-coverage, go for clog style slippers: men’s women’s.

Wallets

Wallets are one of those “you had one job!” items. You carry it in a pocket or a purse and it’s supposed to hold your credit cards and cash so they don’t fall out. This one is apparently oversized and made of unattractive materials (but one of the reviewers will also assure you that it’s “manly,” so no worries about the “purse” bit in the description.) This one is apparently put together in such a way that if you don’t fill it up, your stuff will fall out, and if you do fill it up, the clasp won’t snap. (Alas! You won’t be able to get that one for Christmas this year — it’s shipped from China and they don’t appear to have a “priority shipping” option that would get it here in time.)

Watches

I have a friend who fixes watches for a living. He will tell you that a Timex is better, in the sense of accurately telling time, than any expensive watch; expensive watches are mechanical, cheap ones use a battery, and battery-powered watches keep better time. (The purpose of a Rolex isn’t really to tell time, obviously.) Anyway, you’re obviously not going to buy an expensive watch for someone you don’t like. But you could totally buy a fancy-looking watch for less than $10 (or this manlier-looking model for under $15.)

You could also give someone a watch that requires you to tap the screen before it actually tells you what time it is, or this weirdly badass-looking model which claims to be water resistant, totally looks like it ought to be water resistant, and according to reviews, is not even remotely water resistant. Finally, this one is outside the usual price range I shoot for, but if you’re willing to budget $40, you could give someone a world of frustrationwith an alleged smartwatch that arrives with poorly written instructions badly translated from Chinese, that relies on an app that may or may not actually exist, and has been known to break after two charges. (Note: go to the “other sellers” and find someone that’s offering it with Prime Shipping — if it ships from China, you won’t get it until after Christmas.)

Finally, for a watch that’s super fancy looking yet frankly useless to the vast majority of people in 2014 there’s the pocket watch. These are terrific for people who do Steampunk cosplay or who enjoy being extremely retro. For most people, though, if they want to pull something out of their pocket to find out what time it is, they pull out their cell phone. And they definitely don’t want a pocket watch in their pocket because it might scratch the screen. In fact, apparently most people my age don’t wear watches at ALL (I find looking at my wrist more convenient than pulling something out of my pocket, but I also get a newspaper delivered to my house every day, even though I’m only 41.) Anyway, the other thing about a pocket watch is that if you actually do use it regularly, it will die quickly because pocket lint gets in there.

Heated Travel Mugs

Who doesn’t need a travel mug? (A few years ago, during the after-Christmas sales, I discovered a pile of gift-boxed travel mugs at OfficeMax that had been marked down to $3/mug or something like that. I bought six. I’m down to one. I am pretty sure I lose more travel mugs than gloves.) For the passive-aggressive bonus, gift a heated travel mug that will plug into the car outlet and keep the drink warm except that this one, according to reviews, will break almost immediately.

External Phone Charger

If you have a smartphone, you could totally use a compact external rechargeable battery. Unlike most of the products I suggest, I have actually owned this one (not a gift — I bought it for myself) and can personally vouch for it being a complete piece of crap. (It looks like you can spend $7 more and get a very similar item that usually works instead of one that usually doesn’t work — so if you’re giving to multiple people, you could give nearly identical items to the people you DO like, which seems like a passive-aggressive grand slam.)

Gift Cards

People who dislike gift cards describe them as being like given an errand. So make sure, if you give someone a gift card, to pick something that really is an errand. For example, you could give someone a gift card for an oil change. Or a gift card for a set of car washes (you’ll need to buy that one locally to you). A gift card for a dental cleaning is probably more than you want to spend, but it definitely says, “I care!” while at the same time offering up a genuinely unpleasant experience. Office supplies are one of those things everyone needs (printer supplies, if nothing else) but are always annoying to go get. (At least around here. They’re perpetually understaffed and so the wait for service is always too long.) Speaking of long lines, if the person’s crafty you could give them a gift card for Jo-Ann Fabric. (I’ll go there for other craft supplies if I’m near one and I need something, but I refuse to shop there for fabric; life is too short to stand in that cutting line. Ever.)

Passive-Aggressive Gift Giving Guides from Previous Years:

Also, if you’re amused by my writing, check out my science blogging at Bitter Empire: http://bitterempire.com/author/naomi-kritzer/

My (kind of low-volume) Twitter feed: @naomikritzer

Or my fiction that’s free online:
Bits (possibly NSFW)
The Good Son
Honest Man (downloadable audio)
Comrade Grandmother
St. Ailbe’s Hall

And if you like that you could consider buying:
Comrade Grandmother and Other Stories (short story collection)
Gift of the Winter King and Other Stories (short story collection)
My novels (there are five of them)

Gift Shopping for People You Hate: the Passive-Aggressive Shopping Guide

Posted on December 8, 2013 by naomikritzer

Those who used to follow my blog over on LiveJournal may remember that for several years now I’ve done a list of suggested gifts you could give to someone you didn’t like very much, but had to buy a gift for anyway. I’ve actually never run into this problem myself, but I know an awful lot of people who seem to have it, and as an unfailingly supportive and sympathetic friend, I wanted to be helpful.

There are a couple of principles that hold true every year.

1. Subtlety! If you want an open declaration of war, or if you want to insult them and have them KNOW they were insulted, that’s easy and you don’t need my help to come up with that one. You want them to feel totally disappointed, but like they still have to say “thank you, it’s lovely.”

2. Cheapness but not OBVIOUS cheapness. For instance, if you want to give someone a bottle of terrible wine, people know that Charles Shaw wine is only $3 (or $2 in California? I’m not sure). The big cheap brands (Koala Ranch, Yellow Tail, Barefoot) are also both too recognizable and too likely to be drinkable. But if you look, you’ll be able to find a $5 bottle that’s from a totally obscure vineyard. To maximize the odds of it being terrible, go to a wine store with a good selection and tell the wineseller that you want a bottle of wine for no more than $5 and that it has to have a cork, not a screw-top, and it has to NOT be from a recognizable cheap brand, and that you REALLY don’t care if it’s drinkable because it’s actually a prop for a play or a video you’re making. (Don’t tell them it’s a gift. There are loads of perfectly drinkable $5 wines out there and they will show you straight to those if they know it’s a gift.) If they think that no one will ACTUALLY be drinking the wine, you’ll probably get a surprised look and then, “Oh, well. If you REALLY don’t care how it tastes, how about…” and they’ll hand you some hideous crime against grapes, hopefully with a unique, attractive label and then just add a wine gift bag and you are SET.

3. Minimal effort. Let’s face it, you probably would like to be able to take care of this while doing your other shopping, right? Which is why gift cards can be ideal, because they have a whole big rack of them at your grocery store, probably. Look for any or all of the following: (a) businesses the recipient doesn’t patronize; (b) that are primarily brick-and-mortar and are in an extremely inconvenient location; (c) that are in denominations too small to be useful (like, a $25 gift card to a store where everything costs $50 or more). For the passive-aggressive gift card grand slam you could also look for (d) the subtle criticism, like a gift card for a yoga class (these totally exist, but you’ll have to look up yoga studios and call; you won’t just find that one in a rack between Best Buy and Kohls.)

So there were three specific options I wanted to highlight for you this year.

1. The Worst of Etsy.

Craft fairs can be a great place to buy terrible, terrible things, but they all happen on Saturdays and Sundays and you know, you may have better uses for your December weekends. Etsy is open 24/7 and with the right search terms you can find some genuinely hideous stuff. Some search terms to get you started:

upcycled. (My friend Etelka has a whole blog of upcycling horror: Wretched Refuse.)
hipster.
one-of-a-kind (ooak).
goth or steampunk.
rustic, primitive, salvaged.

Of course, there’s plenty of upcycled stuff that’s cool. Not everything with “hipster” in its description will be an aesthetic nightmare. And in point of fact I’m a fan of steampunk. But if you search for “upcycled salvaged hipster steampunk” you’ll probably find at least a few items that will make wonder WHY, WHY WOULD ANYONE DO THIS, WHY WOULD ANYONE BUY THIS except as a gift to their least-favorite relative?

Just don’t overpay. The great thing about gifting a hand-made item — well, the first great thing about gifting a hand-made item is that no one will expect a gift receipt. But the OTHER great thing is that you can give something that’s really cheap but not OBVIOUSLY cheap and they don’t have any good way to figure out what you paid for it.

And yes, I’m wimping out of providing links to hilariously awful stuff on Etsy and I’m using the excuse that it could be gone by the time you go look, but really it’s that I don’t want to hurt the feelings of the craftspeople selling this stuff (and I live in fear of them following the link back and then telling me about how they’re selling these hand-crafted recycled license plate bracelets because they’re trying to keep from losing their house or whatever.) Etelka’s got loads of links and pictures, if you go look at her blog.

I’m much more comfortable linking to stuff on Amazon.

2. The Cheapest of Amazon.

I stumbled across this the other evening and was sort of freaked by it. This stuff is not necessarily BAD for gifting (I linked to it on Facebook and several people immediately followed the links and bought some stocking-stuffers) but it is so disconcertingly cheap it caused me to start plotting a story about the jewelry which, when worn in your ears, makes you extra-vulnerable to the mind-control rays from the planet Vortol or something.

Cute little owl earrings for 62 cents, free shipping.
Cute little seahorse necklaces for 98 cents, free shipping.
Slightly defective Eiffel Tower necklace that says “ARIS” instead of “PARIS,” 93 cents, free shipping.

You’ll need a presentation box if you want it to look like you bought it from a store, which alas will run you more than 62 cents. Well, okay, they’re less than 62 cents EACH but you have to buy 20. Maybe you have one around the house that you could re-purpose.

These honestly are not terrible gifts; according to the reviews, the chains that come with the necklaces are flimsy but mostly they’re cute and look basically as pictured. You could, in fact, order these for someone you liked, if you were on a budget or wanted an inexpensive stocking-stuffer. (Maybe not the “ARIS” Eiffel Tower.) But you could wrap up the box and gloat over the fact that you had spent less than a dollar on their gift.

3. Menards.

I had to go to Menards the other day. Menards is a perfectly fine place to shop for gifts for someone you like, if that person likes tools. It’s also an excellent place to shop for stocking stuffers; there are many aisles filled with things like keychain carabiner flashlights and fold-up miniature pocket multi-tools and so on. (Maybe I’m the only person who craves keychain carabiner flashlights? I bet I’m not.)

But it is also the best one-stop shop for truly godawful Christmas gifts you will ever find. I took photos.

Basically the canned stuff, in a cute jar.

Pie in a Jar. It’s…pie filling. In a jar. Just add a crust, and bake, for bad pie.

There was a whole trend a few years ago in which people made their own mixes (for brownies or whatever), put them in a mason jar, and tied a ribbon around it. I don’t want to criticize this gift too harshly when it’s homemade, because for one thing is it is an extremely CHEAP gift, the sort of thing it takes minimal effort to do, and there are people who are stuck exchanging gifts with a lot of people. They might even be people they like, and they want to give them SOMEthing, and in that case — yeah, mix in a jar? fine.

(Personally, I have never found that mixing together the dry ingredients for cookies was exactly the labor-intensive part. It’s spending 45 minutes moving baking sheets in and out of the oven that’s a pain, but on the upside, fresh delicious cookies. So, you know.)

Anyway. The excellent thing about this gift is that it’s probably going to be genuinely terrible pie but it comes in a cute little jar (I don’t know the term for the sort of jar with the springs in the lid, but they’re definitely in the “cute jar” category) and looks gift-like. Go for it.

Flag neck pillows, because patriotism, I guess.

Neck pillows!

Neck pillows are actually a useful item that lots of people could probably find a use for. In fact, I’m pretty sure my sister once asked specifically for a neck pillow as a gift (I remember hearing about this from my father, who thought it was funny, and told the story to his brother, who said, “WHY ARE YOU LAUGHING, NECK PILLOWS ARE AWESOME.”)

But here’s the thing:

These aren’t just neck pillows, they are FLAG NECK PILLOWS, because apparently everything is better with flag designs. (They did have plain neck pillows in another part of the story but I think they may have actually cost $1 more.)

Molly was looking over my shoulder while I was working on this, and she noticed that in addition to the U.S. flag neck pillows and the Canadia flag neck pillows, there were UK neck pillows down on the bottom. A UK neck pillow seems like a markedly better gift than either a US flag or a Canadian flag neck pillow, probably because I know far more Anglophiles than Yukonphiles (and while I do know people who will sing the Star Spangled Banner at sporting events and fly a flag on flag day, I don’t actually know anyone who thinks the U.S. flag should be on EVERYTHING ALWAYS.)

Penguin, reindeer, and snow man decorative jars.

Generic Christmassia.

Penguin, reindeer, and snowman cocoa jars. I think they actually come with hot chocolate mix in them.

I recognize this design, sort of. There are eight gazillion penguins out there that look kind of like these penguins, all with slightly sketchy features, black beady eyes, and a scarf. You find this guy as a mug for $1 at Walgreens and as a sugar bowl for $10 at Target and as earrings at Dollar General. And now he holds cocoa.

The great thing about this item is that it’s too cute to just throw away, but not actually attractive enough to display. The Cocoa Penguin will lurk on the counter or in the back of the cabinet for years, taking up space, gathering dust, and making the recipient feel vaguely like he or she is being watched by a penguin. Also, they’ll wonder if they’re supposed to refill it…but unless you make your own from cocoa and milk powder and sugar, cocoa comes in a perfectly fine container already, or in envelopes in a little box.

A hot dog steamer.

If you want to give someone you dislike a kitchen gadget for Christmas, the best options are always are either inconveniently large, or irritatingly overspecialized. This item is both.

Admittedly, I don’t eat hot dogs all that often, but when I do, I find it entirely feasible to cook them in a pan on the stove. I can’t recall ever wanting to cook 12 at the same time, but if I did, I still think I could handle it with my larger frying pans or possibly a baking dish in the oven.

It is possible that you could use it to steam other stuff (I haven’t checked) and that someone could find a use for it beyond hot dogs, but it’s also enormous and difficult to store; I would bet money it’s a pain to clean; and it says HOT DOG STEAMER on it, suggesting that the owner is someone who eats so many hot dogs they actually need an appliance to cook a dozen at once.

There probably are people who would find this useful, but even those people will likely find it annoying to store.

Department stores are always filled with weird novelty kitchen appliances this time of year; if a hot dog steamer doesn’t strike your fancy, consider a cupcake lollipop maker or a Hello Kitty waffle iron or a mini donut baker. (Although I think cupcake pops have more enthusiastic fans than hot dogs, and they’re genuinely going to be complicated to make without the specialized device. Unlike hot dogs. Which can be prepared in just about any other existing kitchen appliance you’ve got, including the dishwasher.)

Finally, this one’s kind of cheating, as it’s kind of expensive ($70) and it’s a gift for a child. That’s cheating because it’s too easy. The topic of “how to give a gift to a child that will drive the parents insane” has been covered admirably in the past and it’s understood by nearly everyone that tormenting the parents is the actual purpose of motion-triggered electronic toys with no off-switch, electronic toys that play a recognizable tune slightly out of key, and Moon Sand. (There are also people who make this claim about Legos and Play Doh. But Play Doh is a great toy that kept my children happy for hours — long enough to make the cleanup worthwhile — and it develops motor skills in toddlers, it still smells exactly like it smelled when I was three, and it’s incredibly cheap. And Legos are AWESOME. Awesome awesome awesome.)

This, on the other hand, is horrifying:

A stuffed dog so large it's spilling out of a full-sized chair.

An enormous stuffed dog.

That dog is sitting in a full-sized chair, and spilling out of it. It is too heavy for a child to move easily (I pulled it off a couch, which it was sitting on with a friend, and stuffed it in that chair for the photo). This thing is ghastly. A child will think it’s the coolest thing ever. The parents will hate it. And because it is ENORMOUS, it will never be lost or misplaced; if they get rid of it while their child is at preschool one day, they will either have to fake a burglary or admit they threw the damn thing out.

Menards also had cutesy jars of cookie mix (you could do a gift bag of both cookie mix and pie in a jar!), scented bath products (even people who like scented bath products will probably not like the ones from Menards), and enormous sculptural things you’d put on your lawn (which alas are mostly kind of expensive).

They also have carbon monoxide detectors, which are an excellent gift to anyone who doesn’t already have one but a totally useless gift if someone does. Which is a different sort of win — it’s a gift that says, “I don’t want you to die! I want you to be safe!” but also “…and I think you might be the sort of idiot that doesn’t have one of these already!” (And if you don’t have one, for god’s sake GO OUT TODAY AND GET ONE and install it when you get home. Sheesh. I don’t want you to die! I want you to be safe!)

Past versions, if you’re dissatisfied with your options on this post and want to look back through previous ideas.

2010: Beyond Fruitcake: Gifts for People You Hate
2011: Gifts that say, “I had to get you a gift. So look, a gift!”
2012: Holiday shopping for people you hate

Will Tell Stories For Food

Naomi Kritzer's blog

Tag Archives: gifts

Gifts for People You Hate, 2023

Whimsical Gifts (for people you hate), 2015

Gifts for People You Hate 2014: The Almost-Generic Edition

Gift Shopping for People You Hate: the Passive-Aggressive Shopping Guide