Originally posted on my old blog on November 22nd 2016.

The Christmas songs are already on the radio, Debbie in accounts has some fairy lights around her phone and the cleaner has tinsel on her mop bucket. Oh no, you know what that means!

Deep breaths. It’s okay. It is far too early to be worrying about the annual horror that is Office Secret Santa.

Who will I get this year? Debbie? I got her last year. she complains about everything that anyone gets her. She spent all of January last year taking her presents back and getting money or vouchers. Which she then spent on buying herself a Jim Davidson box set. You can’t buy class it seems, especially with other peoples money.

Remember the present that Adam got Lynn last year? That lovely gift box of perfume and a shower gel?

“Why did you get me this? Are you saying that I smell?”

That was uncomfortable. She does. She hums like an old TV that has been left out in the rain.

We all know it, and every year we buy her smellies, and every year she gets the hump but does nothing about it. She must have enough perfume boxes to start her own high street shop by now.

A really smelly one though.

Then there’s Angie, oh Angie what is your dietary demand du jour?

Last year you were claiming to be gluten intolerant until the boss caught you chowing down on a burger and fries in your car. Just because you were in the underground car park you thought that no one would see you, forgetting that there is CCTV in reception.

You were “borderline diabetic” the year before and I recall you demanding that no one had any chocolate in the office as you thought you having to watch people eating it was “bullying”. That’s not bullying you bloody idiot.

If I get you Angie as my secret Santa I am buying you a pack of chocolate covered nuts, and I will flick everyone of the fuckers at your head. Singly. After first sucking all of the chocolate off.

Who else is there? Dave, the man who thinks that he is every woman’s fantasy. The only fantasy that most of the women in this office have about him involves him being transferred to another office. Preferably in another country, with no means of communication. Or extradition policy.

What did he get last year? Oh yeah that book about feminism, I don’t imagine that he has looked at it. He will have put it on a shelf in his living room I reckon, to try and make himself look good. He couldn’t look good if he was stood next to Adrian Chiles and Nigel Farrage.

It was Dave that thought it was appropriate for him to buy a pack of flavoured condoms for the work experience girl. She did not think it was that appropriate, and neither did her half man, half ape boyfriend.

Dave has been a lot quieter and less gropey since then I have to say.

The previous year he was the one that brought quiet Linda in accounts a butt plug. It ended up in his sandwich. Somehow, who knows how?

After he swallowed it, the frantic bout of Heimlich manoeuvring Dave had to endure made it look like he was being dry humped by Derek the first aider from downstairs. When it did pop out it shot across the room, through an open window, startled a passing pigeon and ended up as a story on the front page of the local newspaper, when it landed in an old ladies handbag.

We kept quiet on that one.

Then there is the Boss. One year someone got him a book about Napoleon. Short man, with an overbearing and aggressive personality, that no-one liked.

Apparently the same is true of Napoleon. Yeah, the boss was not that keen on that present. We all had to stay late that Christmas Eve. Swine.

One year we had a limit of £5 and I bought 5 multi packs of Seabrook’s crisps from Asda on the way into work. People said that I only did that as I had forgotten to get anything. I sprayed the packs with glitter glue, how much more fucking festive could it be?

I even got the Christmas flavour one, turkey and stuffing I think. How was I supposed to know that Vijay was a vegetarian? After all that fuss died down, and I had got through the ensuing hell of a verbal warning we got back to normal.

And I swear I saw Vijay eating a bloody packet of them anyway.

I hate Secret Santa Stress. I wish I had never suggested doing it in the first place.

(Thanks for ideas in this piece go to, in no particular order: Nicky Smith, Philip Smith, Kevin McDonnell, Ben Twomey, Gerry Spencer, Tom King and Noel Curry. Thank you for relaying the horror of your Secret Santas.)