So Jeff has some “gift exchange” at his work today (one of the ones where everyone brings a gift and they’re exchanged randomly)… and of course he didn’t think about it until last night (not his fault, really, we’ve been busy). At the point he mentioned it to me, Jeff had decided he was going to contribute a router (!) to the exchange, but they’re all geeks, so that might actually have worked, but I was a little… .um… confsed, as that doesn’t (in my mind) fall into the realm of “gift” so much as “appliance”.

So we started running through other possiblilities….

Gina: Do you have spare gifts?”
Jeff: “No”
(I do, of course,but they’re at my house)
Gina: “How about a bottle of wine and a box of chocolates?”
Jeff: “OOOH! I have a nice box of chocolates that my housekeeper, Dave, left me for Christmas. And I have wine!”
Gina: “Hey, that’ll work!”
Jeff: “You think that’s ok?”
Gina: “Sure… the likelihood that Dave will intersect with any of these guys is so low that you’re out of the Re-Gifting Danger Zone*.”
Jeff: “oh.”
pause
Jeff:“He cleans two of their houses”
Gina: “JEFFFFFFFFFF!!!!!!”
Gina: “Um, yeah, that would be *bad*. ‘Cause I’m pretty sure that if he left *you* chocolates — as special as you are — he also left *them* chocolates….”

It *slays* me that he thought about the chocolates, but didn’t quite get to the point where he realized that at least two of the other guys would’ve gotten the same chocolates from the same source, thereby giving the gig away…

* ED NOTE: I actually almost never re-gift, unless it’s something like a White Elephant gift exchange… I’m just too nervous about the whole thing (and given the story above… understandably, I think! ;-)