The (not so) "Secret Santa"

It’s that time of the year again. Workplaces all across the universe are revving up for the festive season and that old favourite, the secret Santa rears its ugly head. You wonder whose name you’re going to pick out of the hat and if whoever gets stuck with you actually likes you enough to buy you something other than Avon cosmetics or a whoopee cushion! Twenty seven years ago we had a toddler and as Christmas was looming and we had no money I persuaded my old boss to take me back as a part-time manager in the department of a local government office. I job-shared with another part-time mum and it was honestly one of the worst jobs I’ve ever had. The lower grades resented us and the other managers and senior staff just dumped all the grisliest old cases on our desks each morning. Some of them hadn’t seen the light of day for ten years. So my secret Santa was almost a complete stranger to me. She was a full-time manager in her late 40’s and I knew nothing about her likes or dislikes, hobbies or interests, character or disposition. Did she have a GSOH or was she a misery guts? Who could say? And as it’s a secret I couldn’t really ask anyone for inside info. The monetary limit was £5.00. (You could get a lot for that in the 80’s). I popped into M & S on the way home and bought a gift I would have been pleased to receive, wrapped it up, labelled it “Guess Who” as usual and left it under the office tree. Well, by her reaction when she opened the parcel you’d have thought it was a lump of dog poo wrapped in fancy paper! She looked around the room and yelled “who the f%*” gave me this?” I was stunned and gawped in horror like everyone else. You could have heard a pin drop and I slowly slunk away back to my desk. Sometime later and still a little shell shocked by my accidental error I learned that my secret Santa recipient had a secret of her very own. A seemingly happily married woman she was having a bit of a fling with a married manager in the office. Now at that time the Department was in the habit of sending staff to quite pleasant hotels, usually in sunny Bournemouth for a week’s training and in the evenings after a few drams in the bar the trainees could get a little frisky and didn’t always end up in their own bedrooms. Perhaps my innocent gift triggered a guilty conscience. What was this heinous present that put the fear of god in our adulterous colleague? Well, it was a tiny food hamper containing English breakfast tea, a miniature pot of marmalade and some biscuits. It would appear she had put two and two together and assumed that someone had guessed she hadn’t breakfasted alone at the hotel. Three months after Christmas my husband received a large enough pay rise to enable me to resign so with relief I left the office without ever being discovered as the person who unwittingly put the kibosh on an illicit affair. First published December 2015.