I know it's not very seasonal, but I was just reminiscing about moments of acute social shame and embarrassment (as you do,) when this one popped up from where I had been desperately repressing it.
When I first started working for a fairly corporate style language school in Barcelona, it was just before Christmas and people drew names for the Secret Santa (Papa Noel in Spanish, though they didn't call it that. Maybe it was 'amigo secreto' or something.)
The school was in a very smart main street in the centre of town and had ideas above its station - it even employed marketing staff who were purely there to flog their rip-off courses to punters.
The marketing staff were Spanish and dressed immaculately, the teaching staff were poor, scruffy and English. I totally forgot about secret santa until about 2 seconds before I had to leave for the restaurant - the lovely bodega on the corner had closed and all that was open was the dodgy corner shop, with the most expensive wine at around 5 euros - even for Spain, where you can get lovely wine for a few pennies, this is pretty damn cheap. What could I do? It was that, or a prepacked tortilla.
'Never mind' I thought. 'At least its anonymous. And everyone opens their presents at the same time, who's going to know?'
But when it got to the presents stage of the evening, to my horror, it was like a spotlight was shone on the present-opener. With great ceremony, they had to go up to the top of the table and receive it out of a sack, while everyone around the table stamped and clapped and chanted 'Quien ha sido? Quien ha sido??' ('Who has been?') And despite specifying a 5 euro limit, people were getting silk ties and silver photoframes, so I felt a little one-upmanship was going on.
When the unlucky colleague who got my 5 euro paint-stripper vino tinto opened it, his face fell and the whole table went quiet for a moment. I wanted to crawl under the table, but it would have been a dead giveaway.
Call me a coward, but I did not own up to it, I could not admit 'quien ha sido '. Because after all, in the rest of the world Brits have an unfortunate reputation for being LOUSY FREELOADING CHEAPSKATE TIGHTWAD BASTARDS.
Can't think why.
About teaching and crying
1 day ago
10 comments:
Been there, done that. Last xmas I obeyed the £5 limit and got some poor sod jokey magic tricks and card games. Everyone else took it way too seriously. Still, I went home with a litre bottle of Gin and some rather fine shot glasses.
Bah humbug - I dislike Christmas precisely for reasons like secret santa parties etc. The bloody asshole should just have been glad to get SOMETHING - considering there are children all over the world that don't have food, wine, presents. WHAT A PRICK.
And there was I thinking all Catalans were cool.
Christmas sucks like an intern, kids. Don't do it.
Tim, I gather there are those who don't see interns that suck as such a bad thing.
Secret Santa is a lovely idea, although our office too has some who aren't too good at sticking to budgets. The best part was when the Boss decided not to take part, seeing how long it took people to notice the flaw with a Secret Santa scheme with only three participants...
Hurrah for Christmas in March! My family, which now has a teeming younger generation, always does the "Just little presents, and just for the kids" thing, and then the children yelp in horror when you've bought them a paper mask, or a toy duck which doesn't do anything but just simply bees a duck and their parents look on and pat their shoulders and think, "There, there, don't worry about Uncle BiB. He's famously mean." Which I am, when it comes to giving rich kids Christmas presents. I promise to buy you at least TWO drinks when you're here though. (Can you, for the eighteenth time, remind me of the exact dates? I'll write them down this time. Is it the weekend after next as ever is?)
Hi Razorhead - see that shows some imagination... I got a pen, could it be more boring?
Sar - I love your indignation.
Tim - Catalans, they're all obsessed with appearances. Nice metaphor! *applauds*
QE - ha! You could have just all swapped fivers.
BiB - yes, I know what you mean. It was just the tumbleweed moment which drew attention to my meanness that I wasn't prepared for...
Coming on the 2nd, going on the 4th - hope a midweek drinkie is okay - if you let me know a bar (meet Tuesday eve?), we'll come and find you! Anything you need from sunny England, like marmite or English books?
This reminds me of a very amusing SS story. I may blog it. :)
It´s not christmas's fault (never have got to grips with the grammer of the apostrophe and the plural with words ending in s), it´s office parties'. I´d rather have a bottle of vino collapso than a silk tie any day. Well done for not confessing, good english behaviour!
Great, Rad. Share the shame... ;-)
Em - Vino Collapso! The regrets...
Tis done milady
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