The Passive-Aggressive Guide to Giving Christmas Gifts

Every holiday season, millions of people review their Christmas gift list and ask themselves, "Why am I getting THIS person a gift again?"


Our lives are filled with people that we don't really want to gifts to, but feel contractually obligated to do so. Maybe it is your least favorite niece or nephew who accidentally spilled Kool Aid on your beautiful leather couch. Maybe it is the co-worker you secretly don't like, but you're getting gifts for everyone on your team so you have to get a gift for this person, too. Maybe it is someone close to your significant other and you've never quite figured out what it is your S.O. sees in this person.

It doesn't matter; what matters is that you have to buy a gift for someone you don't particularly care for. It is a tough place to be, but this guide will help you find the perfect gift that is both passive and aggressive at the same time.

The main thing to do is to not think of gifts as objects - think of gifts as a message. A message that says, "I am supposed to like you and do something nice for you, but my heart is not really in it. So I am honoring the letter of this gift-giving law but not the spirit." There is a deep vein of tacky in everything about Christmas for this sole purpose. Tacky Christmas ornaments. Tacky Christmas clothing. In fact, Paul McCartney let the world know how much he passive-aggressively hates it by penning the worst song ever and then associating it with Christmas.

The key to being passive it to avoid the "watching with glee as the person opens the present" experience. You don't want to see the flash of disappointment as someone opens an ornate package only to find it contains tube socks. Well, maybe you do, but if this person also doesn't like you, the passive-aggressive gift might lead to a fight, and the whole point of being passive is that you want to avoid a fight while remaining as annoying as possible.

By hiding from the gift opening experience, it opens the door to writing the passive-aggressive note. The passive-aggressive note is a long-honored tradition by people who pride themselves on being "helpful" in quotes when everyone knows good and well they just want to be as grating on the nerves as possible.

Classic example - For Christmas, give a person a Diet Book with a sweet little note on the cover page that reads, "I know you have been struggling for some time, and I just wanted to help. Merry Christmas!"

This example accomplishes so many things at once:

• It takes on the veneer of being helpful.
• It is really snarky and more than a little insulting.
• It is personalized.

Personalized gifts are KEY to being passive-aggressive. Everyone gets tacky gifts from their passive-aggressive friends. But truly passive-aggressive people simply REGIFT the tacky present. The best way to block the regifting process on a hideous present is to personalize the hideous present.

For example, a Christmas sweater with a big goofy reindeer on it can always be re-wrapped and sent to your Uncle Murray next Christmas. HOWEVER, a Christmas sweater with a big goofy reindeer AND a monogrammed name of "Mitch" on it... Well, Mitch, you are stuck unless you have a kid with your same name and you want to punish the poor child.


Because children receive the most presents at Christmas time, they also receive the most passive-aggressive gifts. Ask any child how they feel about getting clothes for Christmas and you will hear a heartfelt tale of woe. It is possible to take passive-aggressiveness up a notch, however by giving children wonderful gifts that are sure to drive their parents insane.

For example, give the child a book of knock knock jokes. Or, better yet, give the child a set of drums. Or a collection of fun silly polka songs. The success of Barney the Dinosaur comes directly from passive-aggressive relatives giving presents to the children for the sole purpose of driving the parents beyond the border of nutsville.

In fact, a lot of industries are based on passive-aggressive gifts. The impulse buy aisle before every check out counter is a hotbed of passive-aggression. Nothing quite says, "I didn't think of you until the last minute, so here is a can of peppermint bark," than waiting until the last minute and buying a can of peppermint bark.

So there you go. Buy something crappy. Dress it up. Personalize it. Write a passive-aggressive note. And then run far, far away.

Merry Christmas!

The Most Horrifying Thing Known to Man

The other day, the Mrs. and I went to see WALL-E (which we loved).

However, there was one terrible thing we endured at the theater - awful awful trailers.

One of them (which I now present with warnings) was for "Beverly Hills Chihuahua." The Disney advertising machine went into overdrive on this one and resorted to some good ol' fashioned Cold War Brainwashing techniques for this trailer.

Basically, they give you a rhythmic beat and the words "chihuahua, chihuahua" repeated over and over and over and over and over and over and over again until there is nothing left in your mind.

When the trailer ended there were children in the theater still chanting "chihuahua, chihuahua, chihuahua, chihuahua."

It freaked me out.

To illustrate, here is the trailer:



And this is how I felt when watching it:



This whole thing reminds me of my rant about The Matrix (although, to be honest, it doesn't take much to get me to rant about The Matrix) and my rant about the Disney Chip.

My rant about the Matrix is this - the entire premise of the film is flawed.

The story goes like this - the robots decided to enslave humanity so they attacked and put humanity in the Matrix. This is preposterous. All they had to do is say, "Hey! We created this totally awesome place called The Matrix! Just sign in and you get to wear leather, do kung fu, and make time with hot women in red dresses" and people would line up in droves faster than you can say "Whoa." There is no need to "forcibly enslave" anyone. Heck, I'd sign up if they thew in an unlimited supply of bacon.

Which leads me to my rant about the Disney chip. One day, in the near future, the Disney company will come up with a chip to implant in your brain. It will be terrible and awful and it will eventually enslave humanity, but every child on the planet will want one and will whine and whine and whine and whine until he or she gets one.

And there is nothing anyone can do to stop it.

Just like Beverly Hills Chihuahua.

Chihuahua...

Chihuahua...

The Argument Against YouTube

Customer Complaint and Corporate Joy

As some of the more business-minded ones of you out there may know, Bank of America just bought out/merged with MBNA.

My wife and I have been MBNA customers for some time, and have been really pleased with their service, even when they jacked around their agreement terms that one time.

Digression
Here’s that story. When we first signed on with MBNA for a credit card, the rule was this: if you pay the bill in full before the end of the bill cycle, they don’t charge any interest. So we set up all of our bills to hit before the end of the bill cycle. After several months of this they changed the policy so that they charge interest unless the bill is paid in full by the BILL DUE DATE, which is about a WEEK EARLIER than the end of bill cycle. So one month – WHAM – our bill is chock full of interest charges where there were never any before. We called to complain, were connected WITHOUT ANY WAIT TIME to an intelligent, courteous, living person who WAIVED OUR INTEREST FEES until we could readjust our bill paying schedule to accommodate this new timeline. The call from dial to departure, took all of five minutes. We were blown away. This was one of those positive experiences that made us evangelical for the company.
End Digression

So it was with disappointment and sadness when I saw that they were bought out by Bank of America. This is how I found out: I tried to log into my credit card account to view my balance and got redirected to a new website.

This new website not only told me I couldn’t view my balance until I agreed to new terms of service, but it made me click through TWO PAGES OF ADVERTISEMENTS before getting to the service agreement.

Because I distrust banks that rely on advertising revenue, I actually sat down and read the service level agreement. Which is hard to do because it was written by lawyers and if you read material like this too much, you start thinking like a lawyer. And, frankly, I don’t want to start oozing piles of ick.

The text of the service level agreement is quite impenetrable, but I highlighted all the areas where the words “fee” and “charge” were used. And then I called my trusty ol’ MBNA phone rep to explain the exciting new fees and charges to me.

First thing I noticed was a 15 minute hold time. This was something I NEVER experienced before with MBNA. The first thing my wife said was, “We miss the old MBNA.”

The rep said, “Oh, we’re still the same company.”

“Then why did I have a 15 minute hold time when I’ve never had that before?”

“Ummm… how can I help you today?”

Then the rep didn’t know the details about the fees, and would put us on hold while she found out. Whoops! Wouldn’t you know it, the phone got just a wee little disconnected.

So… eventually we got the official word which was this – If you download your credit card data in a Quicken file while you have Quicken running in the background, they charge you $20 a month. But if you download the Quicken file and DON'T have Quicken running in the background, banking with Quicken is free.

Which made us… happy is not the right word… neither is satisfied… um… NOT AS ANGRY AS WE COULD HAVE BEEN.

Except – get this – you CAN’T DOWNLOAD QUICKEN DATA FROM THE WEBSITE UNLESS YOU AGREE TO PAY THE $20 A MONTH SERVICE FEE. Which means the person on the phone lied to us, or was lied to and just passed that lie along.

This is bad because our household lives and breathes Quicken. We pay for the software and the upgrades, and somehow, that doesn't seem like enough money out of our pockets. Banks and credit card companies see this need to CHARGE CUSTOMERS EXTRA for using Quicken, when, in my opinion, they should be FINANCIALLY INSENTING people to use Quicken instead.

Seriously. Quicken SAVES time and money. So why do financial institutions feel this neet to make it suddenly WASTE time and money? It baffles me.

Oh, and they put the credit card on a new billing cycle so this month the window to pay our credit card bill without getting charged interest went from 28 days to 14 days. Thank you, Bank of America. Thank you for spreading misery all over the world. Your evil overlords are pleased with your work.

And I write all this because while getting more than angry about what a lousy customer/corporation relaitonship I was forced into, I was forwarded a nice little video of the Bank of America executives celebrating the merger. Good to see my issues are being dealt with in such a serious manner.

Normally supporting struggling musicians makes me happy. Not this time.