ALT-1 When is it Acceptable to re Gift
Most of us have had the experience of getting a gift that we know that we won’t ever use or need. It isn’t anything that we want and we can’t just return it without a receipt at times, or we don’t want to bother with the hassle. This is where the concept of re-gifting comes in. There are some times that it is considered rude or extremely inappropriate to re-gift and other times that it is okay. There are some unspoken rules about re-gifting. The following are some times when it is okay to re-gift.
If you are certain that the person that you are giving the gift to will not come into contact with the person that you originally received it from, then you should be safe to re-gift it. For instance, if you get a gift at a work gift exchange and are going to a family gift exchange, these two different groups of people are probably not going to come into contact with one another. Re-gifting in this case should not cause a problem at all. The odds are fairly good that the person will never know that you re-gifted the item that you received from them.
There are some people who truly don’t mind if you are going to re-gift an item that they have gotten for you. While there may not be many people that are like that, some are, such as myself. If I get someone something that they don’t want, I would certainly rather they use it to give to someone that they think would enjoy it than that they keep it just for the sake of appearances for me to see. If you know that someone really doesn’t mind, then there is no problem with re-gifting whatsoever.
If the gift that you have received is something relatively generic, such as something that could be purchased at any “big box” type of store, re-gifting is certainly more acceptable than if it is a more unique type of gift. A handmade gift is never really okay to re-gift, as this is something that the giver of the gift has really spent their time and energy on because they’ve thought that you would really like it enough to spend this effort on.
A good idea, if you are going to re-gift, is to keep a sticky note or a tag on the items that you are going to get rid of. Write down who you got it from originally so that you can avoid the complete and utter embarrassment of re-gifting to the giver of the gift.
