The measure you give is measure you want to receive

This holiday season I've stumbled upon a very fascinating phenomenon. This is extraordinary. Mostly for the reason that I don't tend to think about such things. I think Solomon said it best: "For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief"

Anyways the totally fascinating thing that I've discovered is that people tend to give gifts that they want. At a recent gift exchange with a co-worker, he gave me a box set of the first 4 seasons of 24. He loves 24 and probably would have loved to have received this gift (maybe even from me) I gave him iTunes gift cards, mostly because I know he owns an iPod, but also because there are some albums that I would buy if I had received some iTunes gift cards.

I found myself doing the same thing when shopping for door prizes for an office party. Shayna and I went to the 5 below store (really cool store by the way). She was helping me pick out door prizes. She found a label maker key chain that she felt would be perfect. I thought it was stupid, but I did find an AM/FM radio pen that I thought was pretty cool.

Needless to say that since it was my door prize we got the pen. Since most of the office is organizational freaks, the key chain would probably have been better.