March 20, 2007

Gratuitous Birthday Griping

As I mentioned below, Sunday was the eldest Llama-ette's ninth birthday.

As is our custom, we saved the present-opening until after dinner. One sign of the growing bond among my children: at Target on Saturday morning, the seven year old picked out some kind of pebble-bouncing board game I'd never heard of but that she insisted would be well received. ("Mancala," I think it's called.) Her big sister loved it.

Anyhoo, as the gel was feverishly ripping the paper off the loot she'd brought home from her party, I couldn't help noticing that a great many of the presents had receipts taped to the wrapping.

I may be out of the loop on gifting etiquette, but I'm sorry - in my opinion this is extremely tacky. A gift is supposed to be a gesture of good will, given with sincerity and received graciously. Tacking the receipt on the box makes the whole thing nothing more than a payoff. "Yeah, here. Whatever. Don't like it? Get something else."

Feh.

Oh, and while I'm on the subject of presents, I am here to tell you friends that the instructions for assembling a Schwinn bike are among the most incomprehensible documents I have ever seen. Schwinn seems to have decided to save money by publishing one book that is supposed to cover multiple makes and models. The result is basically useless as an aid to putting together any of them. (Fortunately, I have a gift for that sort of thing, so I was able to toss the instructions aside with contempt and get on with the project myself.)

Posted by Robert at March 20, 2007 10:19 AM | TrackBack
Comments

May as well just give the birthday child a deck of gift cards, and a computer, and let them decide how to spend their loot.

I find the whole birthday party thing to be a sham, where the birthday party is thrown to honor the person's birth, but participants have to be bribed into coming by distributing appropriate 'party gifts' where the incoming loot roughly equals the outgoing loot. Which doesn't really fit the 'gesture of good will, given with sincerity and received graciously' which can often be accomplished with a little time with glue and crayons for suitably aged kids. Instead we are left with a pile of junk that is mostly unwanted, and left lying about the abode until stepped upon and then tossed out with the trash.

Though a reciept would have been nice for the time my gel received a Babrie Van box that was previously opened and then stuffed with a discarded detergent bottle and a few tufts of wrapping paper. No joke.

Posted by: Jon at March 20, 2007 10:52 AM

Kid birthday parties, geeze, don't get me started...
As to the instuction manuals and parts. Things could be worse. My mother told me stories of my father going back into the lab to manufacture parts that weren't included on Christmas eve...
More recently my husband, a mechanical engineer by education, called the Sears lawn tractor dept. to discuss the exclusion of certain parts necessary to the assembly of our tractor. You could literally see the smoke coming out of his ears as he tried to explain to the person on the other side of the conversation what a "kit bag" was... He also manufactured parts right in or garage to get the dang thing to cut the grass. Your bike story pales by comparison...
On another note, have any of you recently noted that instructions for new major appliances are printed in 7 different languages? I have a son who happens to be fluent in 5 languages. I am here to tell you that it doesn't matter what language you speak, all the instructions stink!

Posted by: Babs at March 20, 2007 11:14 AM

IKEA instructions include zero written words (or very sparse) and are somewhat easy, so long as they remember to include all the parts.

Posted by: Jon at March 20, 2007 12:49 PM

Liked Erector sets as a kid. My son got a set at Christmas, still putting the damn thing together. The instructions (with few or no words) makes me want to gouge my eyes out after 10 minutes. I usually end up walking away with a migraine.

Posted by: Haz at March 20, 2007 02:07 PM

Directions? We don't need no stinkin' directions.

Posted by: Zendo Deb at March 20, 2007 05:24 PM

I dunno, I'd have welcomed a receipt on several gifts from my mother-in-law. Why do all baby toys have to have flashing lights and make noise all the time?

Posted by: MelanieB at March 24, 2007 09:45 AM