Am I wrong to feel hurt about this?

My FIL sent a Christmas card to someone last year and wrote in it 'I'm not sure if you're dead yet but if not, Happy Christmas'. Fortunately we managed to intercept it but it did make us realise that his mental decline was worse than we thought, he'd always been 'direct' but not that bad.

LtEve, that made me laugh, that's the sort of thing my Dad would have done, and not because his mental health was in question, but because he and his friends had the same warped sense of humour!

I had a giggle today when I got a thank you text from my SIL for the gift card I sent them. I usually see them on Christmas Day but Covid changed our plans. I gave all my siblings a voucher for £100 plus a token gift each, usually something edible. My brother had asked for a voucher from Amazon as they wanted to buy some luggage.

The text said she had bought a mop for my brother to use! I hope it was gold plated if that was all she bought! Seriously though I am a tad concerned as she is visually impaired and I hope she spotted the voucher was for £100 not £10 and then thrown the card away thinking it had all been used up!

She might have thought I was having money problems this year and cut back on my gifts, I think next year I will make sure I hand the gift card directly to my brother so he has control over it - he will at least read the attached receipt and know the value!

One of our neighbours received a lovely card from her husband which said to my wife from your loving wife!
In his defence he had bought it on his way home from night shift as a paramedic

A few years ago, my Secret Santa from work was a book, "How To Poo At Work "

Anyone who knew me even a tiny bit, would know that it wouldn't be at all "up my street". And it made me paranoid for ages afterwards

Fortunately my daughter's boyfriend thought it was hilarious, so I happily handed it over

A month before she was married, DDs’ MiL gave her a hideous yellow satin evening bag which she had recently used at a family wedding. It had a stain on it. They gave DDs’ husband to be, their son, a return air ticket to Brisbane where they were living at the time. Needless to say their relationship over the last 18 years has not improved!

I once gave an employee a nice box of chocolates for doing something over and above her normal tasks. The next day she left them on my desk with a note saying the chocolates were “cloudy” and maybe I should return them to the shop!
I took them home & we ate them. Never mentioned them again to colleague. Thought she was really rude.
Maybe the moral of the story is to accept gifts with good grace!

This thread has cheered me up after a gloomy day. When our next door neighbour was 60 we were invited to the party which was next door, and took him some whisky as we had just bought a couple of bottles. However, later I realised that we had taken him the bottle we had already opened and had a couple of drinks from. I had to go next door with the unopened bottle and apologise!

teacheranne why not check with your brother?

singingnutty I took a big tub of Twiglets as a contribution to a hamper for a Christmas raffle at a group I go to.
When I got home I realised I'd taken the open tub rather than one of the new ones in the same cupboard ?
I then had the embarrassment of arranging to replace it ☹️

When he was young my husband sent a sympathy card to his mum and dad on their wedding anniversary - and not by accident! ?

I got the oddest set of gifts from a good friend of mine the other Christmas. She always gave me a bag of such lovely and thoughtful presents that I asked her outright did she still want to exchange pressies at Christmas. Turned out she was having a few difficulties and felt Christmas was now too much of a financial and time consuming pressure. We agreed to just gift each other a candle for Christmas instead, which has removed the burdens but kept the pleasure. Another friend and I have put a price cap of £25 max on whatever we buy for each other and whatever it is has to be eatable, drinkable, readable, burnable or useful and usable! Christmas should bring pleasure, not stress. ?

Simple - return the teabags as requested....end of.

Let's be honest here. I'm sure we all save unwanted pressies and pass them on to people for Christmas /birthdays. As we age we sometimes don't check them enough.

I was making a cheesecake and didn’t have any digestives so I hot footed it to my parents who always have plenty of biscuits. My Dad grabbed a pack and I started weighing out 250g, he then stopped me because they went out of date in 2018! He gave me a brand new pack and they had also expired in 2019. They now have a biscuit drawer that the old ones come to the front and the new ones at the back.

I wouldn' t be hurt, after all, somebody did give you a gift ...I' d save the tea for when she pops in for a cuppa ...?. As for giving back a gift, I' m afraid my patience stops thete, I' d say I have already opened/ used it.
Why not agree to just swap books or go out for a meal together/invite each other over for coffee next time ?

I have a brother that buys in bulk! Whatever one person is given, the rest of the family will get the dame or very similar.
One year it was plastic bird tables that you stick in the ground - as I was living with my parents we had 2!
The year after we had one of the bird feeding poles that have attachments to hang feeders off.
The current fave is calendars - not one with local subjects or photos that you can get, but the glossy paper ones where the lettering is so small that you need a magnifying glass to read once up on the wall. My son was given one about London (has no interest in the place!).
As for the tea - I think she just made a genuine mistake and didn't check the date.

An elderly friend from church gave me a beautiful pair of red leather gloves from Mark's and Spencer s few years ago. Unfortunately they were too small, fortunately she left receipt in gloves - return by January 2003. Her heart was in the right place

Friend used to have aged aunt for Christmas every year. One year Auntie’s contribution to the festivities was a pork pie minus the pastry which she’d already eaten and a bag of coal: one lump for each day she’d be there. There was also a present of an LP of Hawaiian music. ?

I have a friend who has a habit of sending parcels of mixed new and charity shop finds, this year i had a duplicate of something I already have so I asked her if she can make use of it, there is a box of tea - I haven't checked the sell by date! Maybe you should tell her its a brand you don't like, could she make use of it?

Return the tea as well!

Worst present? A friend called to visit me after I had a major operation. She came with a box, when I opened it it was a (very nice, from specialist local art shop) necklace I gave her for her birthday the previous month. She said she was returning it as not her style. She didn’t bring anything else. A few years on, I have finally given up the friendship. But maybe the peach plastic bath cushion (remember those?!) from my god mother for my 12th birthday came a close second. Come to think of it, the floating torch for Christmas from sailing enthusiast husband was a close runner up…

Laugh it off.... If she visits offer her some aged tea. It sounds like she really didn't have Christmas nailed this year, so I certainly wouldn't put any importance on the old tea. I have seen on Facebook that people are playing a game where they hide an awful charity shop find in someones house and see how long it is before they see it. Perhaps it's a form of that?

Worst gifts ever.
A small bottle of cheap hand cream for my 18th birthday from my ex. I don't use hand cream.
A really small jar of Kenco coffee for Xmas from my daughter's ex boyfriend. We always drink a different brand. Had known him 3 years and first thing he had ever bought me.

Return the tea............