in the christmas spirit.

I have a spherical glass paperweight, the kind with the glass detritus suspended inside, a nature-store give-it-to-anybody sort of gift. I bought the paperweight two years ago, intending to give it to my boss. I had taken some flack from my co-workers for buying gifts in previous years, so that year I baked lots of cookies and made little cookie bags for anyone who had done something nice for me. I wrote little notes thanking each person for whatever specific kindness they had bestowed upon me, like helping me replace the toner in the copier, scraping ice from my windshield one night when they left before I did, bringing me a cake made out of flowers for my birthday, whatever. I was then overwhelmed by the feeling that my coworkers perhaps meant less intimacy by these gestures than I was acknowledging, and that made me throw the little heartfelt notes away, but I gave out the cookie bags anyway.

I bought the paperweight because once you've given your boss a gift, you can't really not give a gift in the subsequent years. Well, I suppose you could, especially if you and your boss had some disagreements in the intermediate year, if your boss wasn't Christian and didn't celebrate the holidays anyway, or if you weren't planning to be in the office on the days before Christmas. Each of these things was true for me, and yet, in the Christmas spirit, I figured I'd better get him something anyway because I knew he would casually drop onto my desk a gift card that his (nouveau-Jewish) wife would insist he bestow upon his employees.

As it turned out, the day I lugged the cookies and the paperweight into work for distribution, my boss was out because the boat he was building had suffered some kind of tragic ding. That was my last scheduled day of working before my vacation began, and so I took the paperweight back home. The week off made me forget about bringing the gift into work after the new year, and so it sat on a shelf, wrapped, for months. Sometime around March I noticed the gold box and decided to deliver the gift in order to gain some mid-year brownie points. I think I was due for a performance review, anyway.

I carried the box into work and left it on my desk. The first time I saw my boss that day was in a meeting, where he belittled me for something stupid. I can't even remember what bothered me so thoroughly, but after the meeting, I marched myself back to my office, closed the door, liberated the gift of its wrapping (and thereby its very giftitude), and placed the paperweight in a prominent location on my desk. I received several comments of admiration for the paperweight, and whenever anyone would ask where it came from, I just explained that it had always been there.

I just unpacked the paperweight again recently, and gave it a prominent position on the megashelves. Each time I notice it there, I smile a little. I left that job and that boss over eight months ago, and I still cringe when I think of his ridiculous anklebiter management technique. This year I baked no cookies, wrote no little notes of gratitude, and certainly didn't shop for an insincere gift for someone for whom I was rapidly losing admiration, and who never really liked me anyway. I've never not given a better holiday gift than that paperweight.