Gift Card Detail

This week, a member of my department could leave at a moment’s notice to have her baby. I suppose walking around an office with your stomach significantly larger than expected for such a duration of time can more than stand in for a doctor’s note; absences in such an instance are not only welcomed but encouraged. And as the most recent employee in the department to become a parent, I’ve been the focus of so many pregnancy questions on her behalf.

You know, despite the whole “not having a womb thing.” But hey, I try.

A rite of neo-natal passage in our organization is the “surprise” baby shower. It’s a surprise as much as standing on a train track with a whistle in the distance can be. It will be coming to a conference room near you at some point, and you just hope it gets here before you have to go. The one in which we celebrated Katie and Clara was documented here on YAB, in fact. With that in the rearview, I can gladly look forward to my colleague’s shower, knowing I’m out of the spotlight and my only responsibility involves not dropping my piece of baby cake on the floor.

Ok, that’s ALMOST my only responsibility.

As a good friend of the soon-to-be mommy, I volunteered to take a role in the planning and execution of her “surprise” shower. Since most cakes I’ve made have ended in disaster and my handiest balloon and streamer work involved a dorm room and a whole lot of duct tape, I got handed an assignment that seemed much closer to my alley.

Gift card detail.

At first, the task assigned was rather simple. All I had to do was sign the card and throw some money into the pot that would be exchanged for one impressive gift card to a baby store with improper pronoun-verb agreement use that shall not be named. Simple, right? It’s not like all the signers of the Declaration of Independence did the same amount of work – they served their fledgling country in a mere supporting capacity. Who cares if you disagree with the future of our diplomacy? Put some INK on THIS PAPER! It’ll be awesome.

And while the greeting that you leave within the fold of that Hallmark special will likely have a minimal effect on the new baby’s welfare, the cash you slide in the envelope will. For every cute stuffed animal that is bestowed upon a baby, Mom and Dad know that it’s the simple things – diapers and food – that will have a greater impact overall. So how much do you put in? There’s no set amount in the directions. What if you put too little in? What if you put too much?Needless to say, there is a lot of pressure riding on this donation. For bookkeeping purposes, we have a habit of keeping a monetary log on the outside of the collection envelope. It’s a means to keep track of those dreaded IOU contributors. If you follow the fold, and your predecessors went cheap, it won’t make for a very effective gift card. Go too high, and everyone will think you’re showing off.

(Personally, I like to keep my showing off at work to a minimum – you know, by rolling into the parking garage in my Honda. Sweet ride, man.)

Anyway, it was also in my charge to actually take the collection of monies and exchange it at a local store for the gift card. I figured since I am currently in possession of a baby, a weekend trip to the store in question could be likely, so it would be no problem to do this for everybody. However, this weekend was very busy and by the time I remembered on a Sunday night, the store in question was near closing. Fortunately, I know Wegmans has a gift card center, so I thought that the old grocery store could be my Obi-Wan.

And they were…sort of.

Armed with $200 and a fleeting hope, I entered the store. I figured this would be an easy transaction. I give them money, they give me a pastel gift card. Done. I did not anticipate the gift cards already coming in set increments – namely $25, $15, and $10.

Out of time and out of options, I did the math and left the store.

After all, 8 gift cards are better than 1, right?