Re-gift

So, I walk in my office yesterday and I see an envelope. I open it and it's a card that says, "Happy Boss's Day!" I didn't even know it was boss's day (check out Michael C for more comments on this). Who made up this "holiday" anyway? Probably the same people that made up Sweetest Day. I have an entire rant on fabricated "holidays," but I'll leave that for another time.

Anyway, inside the greeting card I see a gift card to one of our local restaurants. "Gee, that's nice," I think to myself. Then on the back of the gift card I see a little mark in the corner. It looks vaguely familiar to me. I think for a few minutes, and I figure it out. I'm the one who made that mark a few months ago when I bought this gift card on behalf of the docs here. These gift cards were given to the staff for another fabricated holiday.

Actually, I thought it was kind of funny. I walked into the nurse station and one of the staff members say, "Do you like your card?" I snickered and said, "This is a re-gift isn't it?" I never saw staff members scatter out of the room so fast.

I first heard the term re-gift on an episode of Seinfeld. All of you have done this before, I'm sure. It's when you receive a gift that you particularly don't want. And, instead of returning it or throwing it away, you give it to someone else.

Re-gifting is more common than you think. Cnn.Com reports a study which polled about 1500 Americans. More than half of the people polled said that they re-gifted in the past. In addition, a whopping 78% of respondents said it was acceptable to re-gift.

Nancy Wong, a spokeswoman for Harris Interactive, said she was surprised by the number of people who admitted to re-gifting.

"It's not something I've thought about and when I saw that nearly half had done it -- 52 percent have re-gifted and or would re-gift -- it's quite a significant number," Wong told Reuters.

I'm going to come clean and say, yes, I've done this before. The problem is accidentally re-gifting back to the same person, and getting caught. This has happened to me before when I give a gift, and that person says, "Didn't I give this to you last year?" So, that's why I wasn't upset when I got the card yesterday. Any funny re-gifting stories out there?