The employee was not happy with the gift he received from his Secret Santa and expressing his displeasure did not work in his favor.
Several things can go wrong when it comes to gift exchange events at the workplace or home. The person you are gifting something to might not like what you gave them or vice versa. But in this case, one man ended up losing his job over a Secret Santa gift exchange after it went awfully wrong. A man named Jeff (@hittaa_jeff) on TikTok had shared a video where he talked about the Secret Santa gift he received from his office but didn't quite like it.
Little did the man know, the clip where he expressed his honest opinions about the gift he received would cost him his job. Jeff participated in the Secret Santa gift exchange event at his job and later made a video about it when he took issue with the gift he received and expressed how dissatisfied he was. He didn't open his gift at work but took it home instead and the gift was revealed to be a Christmas lantern. In his TikTok video, Jeff expressed his frustrations about not opening the gift at the office and the overlay text on his video made it clear that he was done with his job and this Secret Santa tradition.
Unfortunately, the video made some rounds until Jeff's Secret Santa chanced upon it. His Secret Santa texted him and told Jeff that he could have straight up told her if he didn't like the gift. “Your secret Santa here just wanted to let you know I came across your TikTok about the gift I gave you. If you weren’t satisfied with your gift you could’ve said that. If you don’t like the lantern please don't throw it away my grandma gave it to me before she passed it’s collectible,” the co-worker wrote to Jeff.
“If the limit on the flyer received said a minimum of $60 and no items from your home why would you do the opposite?” Jeff writes back, citing the rules for Secret Santa. The co-worker had a crude response to it and she revealed that she won't be talking to him at work anymore and ended up blocking Jeff's number. Things took a turn for worse when Jeff showed up at his workplace after a few days and he was called into the supervisor's office.
In another video, Jeff revealed that the supervisor took away his time card, key to the building and fired him instantly after citing his tardiness as the reason behind him losing his job. Jeff revealed in his follo-up video that he does acknowledge being late at his job a couple of times. One time he "picked up a shift" and another time he was "only nine minutes late." Things went south even further when the supervisor refused to let Jeff inside to retrieve his belongings but he was able to slide inside after the supervisor let one of the other employees in.
The supervisor's departing words made it clear that Secret Santa did play a vital role in Jeff being fired. He said, "The company saw your TikTok about your Secret Santa present.” Jeff was in clear disbelief that he got terminated over posting a video on TikTok to share his opinions about the gift he received. "She brought me some stuff from her house that she probably made," Jeff stated. “Because somebody didn’t follow the Secret Santa guidelines.” He also showed the Christmas lantern at the end and claimed that the bag it arrived in smelt like cigarettes. In a separate clip, Jeff shared that after he got fired, his Secret Santa texted him and asked him to send the lantern back if he was not going to use it.
People had mixed feelings about the series of videos Jeff made to summarize the whole situation up to the point he got fired. @danirose17 shared a similar experience and wrote: "One year they did a Secret Santa at my work, one lady received $5 worth of snacks from our vending machine. The limit was $25. Ridiculous." @ledesmalayla added: "The audacity. If you can’t afford a gift exchange then don’t participate. It happened to me. I got an ornament for my gift exchange from a doctor. I never seen her the same since." @prettyni joked: "He is so traumatized he can’t even remember the event name."
Follow Jeff (@hittaa_jeff) for more videos.
This article originally appeared 9 months ago.