No, this idea seems nonsensical to me as a general practice. Why give gifts to people for doing their jobs?
if someone went above and beyond their typical job requirements to help me, that would be a different situation. ETA: To clarify the type of effort I mean... we are giving gifts to our father's caregiving team this year, despite the fact that we pay them very well. They are most definitely going above and beyond in a very challenging situation.
Because doing something nice for someone whose work benefits you is nice? Because sometimes being selfless feels good? Because giving to those less fortunate, whose lives touch our own, creates a sense of community and goodwill? Because you want to reward hard work in jobs that are often pretty thankless? Or if you want to be mercenary about it, because a small amount of money buys goodwill that just might come in handy when you have a sudden or unusual need?
I don't think it's a requirement or anything and have no judgement toward those who don't do it, but it's kind of incomprehensible to me that this is incomprehensible to someone.
Why give gifts to anyone? If that's your logic, how is it any different than giving a gift to your mom or your niece for Christmas or whatever holidays they observe, or their birthday? Why give someone a gift just for being Christian or for being born? Because sometimes giving is nice, when we are able to do so.
Parumpuhpumpum?
I see that you are framing it more as 'doing something nice for someone', which is slightly different than what I thought was being asked. I read the question (given the examples of people given) as more like 'tipping'...that is, do you give random people that you barely know personally extra gifts for doing their jobs? Which, no, why would I? I interact with dozens of different people in business transactions over the course of a year...it seems weirdly arbitrary to give gifts to some of them when I don't have any relationship with them.
That's entirely different from giving gifts to people with whom I have personal relationships, or people who have extended some special kindness to me, or people who have gone above and beyond what a normal interaction would expect.
It's also different to just randomly give a gift to someone, to give them happiness for no particular reason, which I also enjoy.
That was not my impression of what the question was asking.
ETA: I should also say, I donate to the food bank etc and try to be helpful to those less fortunate than me.
And, e.g., we spend A LOT of money every year gifting things to my husband's grad students when they graduate, as an example of what I would think is appropriate gifting to people that are not family or friends. So I'm not a scrooge in the way your post might be assuming.
However, I personally find most gifts given to me by people I hardly know to be kind of pointless, if not actively undesirable, and perhaps I project this when trying to pick gifts for others... I guess I assume that if I don't know someone well enough to pick a fairly personal gift, I probably shouldn't be worrying about gifting to them. And I certainly am not interested in receiving those types of gifts either.
I guess I think a card with a sincere personal 'thank you' is more desirable in these situations.
