Secret Santa and white elephant gifts for coworkers

The office gift exchange follows rules. Spend no more than $20. Keep it work-appropriate. Make it funny, but not so funny that there’s a meeting about it. It should also appeal to whoever draws your name, which could be anyone from the intern to the CFO.

That’s the brief, and Let’s Circle Back. meets it.

The book is a dictionary of office-speak, decoded at last: 500 entries from onboarding through endless meetings, reply-all disasters, video calls, performance reviews and the office fridge. “Per my last email…” Translation: please read the email, the email you ignored. “It’s 90 percent done.” Translation: the last 10 percent will take three months. Everyone who has ever had a job will recognize every page. Most will recognize someone else on every page.

In a white elephant exchange it gets stolen, which is the goal. In Secret Santa it works for coworkers you know well and for ones you’ve only seen as a muted square on a video call. It’s a fair gift for a boss, too (see our gifts for bosses).

It’s illustrated, in full color, and under budget. If the exchange is tomorrow, order the paperback and say the shipping was a supply-chain issue.