My wife and I don’t drink coffee or caffeinated drinks. We do look for deals, and when my wife found a cooler bag with insulation that was stuffed full with juice drinks, we purchased it. We found out when we got home that there happened to be some cans of capuchino drinks we would never drink. It’s not like we bought them on purpose. They were included in the price of the drinks we did want.
“Why not give them away at school? The other teachers might like to drink them,” I said.
My wife was skeptical, “Give it away to coworkers?”
“Sure, why not.”
I packed the drinks with my school gear and forgot about her strange reaction to my decision to give them away. She wanted to give them away at her school, but since it was my idea, I stuck to my resolution to give them away where I worked instead.
As I was walking out the door, she stopped me and told me what to say when I offered these cans of drinks to my coworkers. In no way was I to suggest that I was giving away the drinks because I got them with another purchase. I had to explicitly state that I had bought these drinks as a gift to my coworkers.
This struck me as odd. First of all, who would ask why I was giving the office some drinks? If I see some food or a gift from a student, I ask who gave it to me, not why. Who is so deeply suspicious of a gift that they would think to say anything other than, “Thank you?”
I promised I would state, for the record, that the drinks were a gift, even if I thought it was silly.
Koreans are NOTORIOUS for re-gifting. It’s unsaid that most of the soap and shampoo I get as gifts will end up at my Mother-in-law’s house. People don’t even care in my wife’s family. It’s just practical redistribution of items. We don’t all question each other as to the source or reason of purchase if we are given something we can use.
I walked into the door at the office and dropped the drinks off for everyone on the communal “food” table. The only person in the room was the rude Korean woman I don’t like. I set the drinks down as I unloaded my bag. “These drinks are gifts to everyone, please drink one if you would like.”
“Why did you bring them? Did you buy them for us or…?”
Ah HA! So that’s the kind of person that would ask about the source of free drinks, even as a gift. I couldn’t believe my wife knew the first question out of someone’s mouth would be. She hadn’t even said thank you before she started trying to find out about the gift. Unbelievable.
I lied, “Oh, no, I bought them to give to everyone. Please, drink one.” I think she’d rather choke on her own bile than actually take a gift I offered. I probably should have drank one myself to show I hadn’t slipped in any poison after the look of suspicion she shot me. She didn’t believe my gesture of good was worth believing.
After my first class my director thanked me for bringing the drinks to school, and she put them in the communal refrigerator. It turns out my foreign coworker doesn’t drink coffee in any form either. I’m not sure the afternoon Korean teachers knew about the offer, as they arrived after the drinks had been squirreled away by the director. I don’t know if ANYONE actually drank one, but it’s not like I’m going to worry about it. A gift given is best forgotten about.
