Receiving a gift is generally thought to be a pleasant experience. However, certain gifts can be a disaster rather than a delight and might leave you with feelings of sadness, anger, or disappointment. Sometimes it’s the circumstances surrounding the presentation of a gift that can change its meaning from exciting to hurtful.
I decided to learn more about what makes an awful gift and asked our Panda community to share their worst experiences yet.
To learn more about gift giving, bad gifts, and the importance of gift wrapping, Bored Panda got in touch with a gift wrapping expert, aka The Gift Wrapping Queen, Jane Means. Read the full interview below.
More info: Instagram | janemeans.com
#1
When I was 10, I lost my cat to the road because my mother didn’t believe in indoor cats, I was devastated. A few weeks later for x-mas, my aunt gave me a book called 101 Things To Do With A Dead Cat. I spent the rest of the evening crying.
20 years later, I sang Ding Dong the Witch is Dead in my head at her funeral. She was a hateful woman.
#2
Nothing. My family forgot to get me anything at all for Christmas one year. The husband and kids all forgot. I was in my 40s but felt like a child that had been kicked. I’ve never forgotten how it felt.
#3
Our Christmas gift at work was a chocolate-covered apple. For the Christmas potluck (yes, we had to provide for our own party) I sliced mine up and brought it. The boss’s face!
#4
My weirdo father gave us 3 boys each a special present one year. He gave me a dirt bike (imagine my excitement), my brother the key (to my dirt bike, and I didn’t get one), and my other brother – he gave all the gas. Apparently, nothing worked without something from my brothers. We all had to get along to make it go . . . . I’m not sure if my pop was genius or demented. (Probably both)
#5
My inlaws expected a gift for every single holiday (including birthdays, retirements, and anniversaries) even when we were struggling, but when my birthday came around they gave me a card without anything written inside except their names. A gift isn’t necessary, but you can’t even say something nice?
#6
A birthday card from my dad, three months late, and he spelled my name wrong.
#7
Over the years I have collected quite a stash of gifts that I have never used for one reason or another. Someone once gave me a nose hair trimmer in the shape of a great, big, yellow finger, for example. So I understand the motivation behind this thread. I just don’t agree with it.
Every time I have chosen and given a gift to anyone, it has been done with the intention of improving that person’s day, even if it only raises a brief smile. When I receive a gift I only consider what is in the giver’s heart rather than what is in the parcel before me. So even if the gift is a great, big, yellow finger, I am grateful for it, because it shows that the giver cares enough to go out, choose it, buy it, and wrap it. And great, big, yellow fingers can’t be that easy to wrap.
#8
No one wished me Happy Birthday when I turned 11. They completely forgot about it because it was on a Monday and we had to celebrate it on the weekend (which was fine by me). I just wanted someone to say something nice to me on the very day I was born, even if I wouldn’t get a present. Instead, I got yelled at for “being selfish”.
For me, it wasn’t the worst birthday present, but the worst birthday “day”.
#9
I’m not religious, but my grandparents are. When I was 14 they gave me a copy of The Purpose Driven Life, a Christian book. I stuck it on my shelf and was like, oh well, whatever, not gonna read it. I felt kinda crappy about it because they made it clear they thought I was going to hell.
Six months later my best friend pulled it off the shelf and started flipping through it, reading passages ironically, and found $20 bills tucked into the pages randomly.
Like. They were trying to pay me to convert? It was pretty funny at the time. We shook the cash out and spent it on pizza. That part of the present was great actually. But the book, not so much.
In hindsight, I laugh about it. I thought this list could use a laugh, a lot of these are sad.
#10
This text for me from my mother.
“Your uncle died today, happy birthday”.
#11
My family went on vacation to Disney World while I was in school and sent me complementary hotel toiletries as a gift.
#12
My mother-in-law came to visit us for Christmas. Our relationship was already rocky as she would wait for my husband to leave the room and then start berating me about my weight.
(I was hit by a car when I was walking while pregnant, so I put on a lot of weight from bed rest and just haven’t been able to lose it.) And when she wasn’t making me feel self-conscious, she was talking down to her partner and generally treating him badly.
She’s also a hoarder who lives on attending and doing yard sales. Lives. For. It.
I didn’t have high hopes for Christmas. I wasn’t expecting any gifts from her, and I was okay with that. Four or five gifts in for my husband she tossed me a small package.
Inside? A rusted angel ornament.
“I hope you like it, I couldn’t sell it at the yard sale for a nickel.”
The trash gained an angel that year, and now she doesn’t gift me anything at all anymore.
Bonus, she doesn’t come to visit anymore either. Merry Christmas to me!
#13
My mom has received some pretty awful gifts. One year, my dad got her a pedometer for her birthday and nothing else. For mother’s day, my grandparents gave her a broom. I still feel bad for her.
#14
Almost all the gifts I received from my late aunt. Old-fashioned, worn-out bags or clutches that she wouldn’t wear anymore; stained clothes (which sometimes had holes too); outdated touristic guides from the ’60s; any object that she wanted to get rid of; useless flyers and ads that she’d collect from her vacations. I felt angry and humiliated, and all the “gifts” ended out in the trash bin after her visits.
There is a lesson I learned from this – never treat people like that. Get a proper gift. A flower or some fresh fruits are rather cheap and will always be better than your personal trash. And if you still decide to give personal items, make sure they have some value (such as a useful book, a jewel, or an old painting).
#15
The same distinctive bottle of alcohol I gifted them 2 years earlier.
#16
A bottle of wine with the price tag still attached – $1.00.
#17
A metal strap watch. From my ex. Despite him knowing that I absolutely hate metallic stuff. I don’t wear even any kind of jewelry. I despise wearing any. All this after 6 years of being together. The added insult was him saying ‘giving you gifts has become an obligation’
#18
A book on how to handle my introverted mindset.
#19
I grew up in a rural area. Neighbors were miles away. I was the youngest of 3 and we were many years apart in age.
In other words, I only had “school” friends.
Yet, my parents got me multi-player board games. Like, sorry, you won’t be getting to the Head Of The Class in this Game Of Life.
#20
I got a rotten pumpkin… Worst. Birthday. EVER.
#21
For my 17th birthday, my mother gave me a carton of cigarettes. This was about a month after my stepfather and I had a knock-down drag-out fight, which I lost. She made her choice as to which one of us was more important. I was living with my father at the time. The worst part? Christmas was three weeks later and guess what I got for that one?
Another carton of Marlboros.
#22
A birthday card, wishing me a Happy 30th Birthday. On my 29th birthday. From my mother.
#23
Not a gift for me, but my in-laws gave my son a trash can a few birthdays ago.
#24
Used soap! My grandparents were poor farmers and never gave gifts to my brother and me. Except for one year, I received a gift in the mail, wrapped and everything! I was 9 and felt so special. Inside was a large, pink, scented heart soap. Okay .. then I noticed a line around the middle, it opened up and there was a key made of soap inside. It had been used a few times already. I was so sad!! It took me years to realize how poor they really were and had probably gotten it from their church not knowing that it had been used! But at 9…
#25
Everything my mom and stepdad bought me as a kid. Literally, everything felt like it was designed to remind me that they had no idea who I was or were intentionally ignoring what they should have known about me.
Usually, really girly/feminine gifts when I was an overt tomboy (trans but we didn’t have the verbage for that in the 90s), but not as like a manipulative tactic, they didn’t care that I was a tomboy at all, they weren’t trying to change me, they just didn’t bother to notice anything about my personality. I kept just asking to go to the library more often or get new books, and the closest thing they did was get me American Girl books which were waaay below my reading level and not my preferred genre. I pointed out a cheap boys’ bike at a thrift shop, and they got me a more expensive one that was a brand new heavy pastel pink cruiser with streamers. Even when they’d ask what I wanted they just didn’t listen.
To their credit I never told them I didn’t like the things they got me, that felt like it would be super rude, but it was hurtful and uncomfortable enough over the years that I stopped talking about my birthdays in hopes they would just forget.
#26
The Evil Goat Puzzle. My uncle took a photo of some mountain goats, got the photo turned into a 2,000-piece puzzle, and gave it to my grandparents. It would’ve been cool, but the resolution of the photo was so bad, and the colors were all the same (just gray, black, brown, and white) so it took us MONTHS to finish. Every time anyone visited my grandparents, they’d have to work on the Evil Goat Puzzle. My grandparents just couldn’t manage it on their own.
(Oh, I forgot to mention! When my grandparents first started working on the Evil Goat Puzzle, my uncle decided to help them. They made a lot of progress in the first couple of days. Unfortunately, they’d started it on the kitchen counter, so they had to move it to another table. My grandma was about to move it using some cardboard, but my uncle got frustrated and took the whole thing apart. It was a bad, bad day.)
#27
Used foot lotion. It was a secret Santa in the family that year. My youngest sister gave it to me. I guess she was too young to realize she could spend money instead of stealing it from our mom’s closet 🤷♀️
#28
I got a sponge with a face drawn on it for my birthday, courtesy of my Uncle Corey. He didn’t get any birthday cake.
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