Collecting money for a wedding gift at work

[kristof]

I lead a team of eight at work. One of them, Joe, also works in two other teams with two other managers. He's getting married. Another manager he works with reached out to me and the third manager suggesting we get him a gift from our teams. He has a registry online with a general 'bucket' basically to help the new couple get started in life. So the idea would be for everyone on each of her three teams to contribute what they want and the total to be sent to them.

I'm pretty uncomfortable with the idea of collecting money from my coworkers and especially as a manager I don't see how I could communicate this plan without worrying that members of my team will feel pressured to contribute. However from talking to a few people and googling a bit this appears to be a pretty common thing (at least in the US where I work) and I generally find wedding gifts and registries really tacky, so I'm wondering if I'm overreacting.

Should I just go along with this, or is it reasonable to push back and say I'm not comfortable with it?

[economista]

At my workplace there is always a collection or wedding, baby, and retirement gifts. Usually they send around a card and if you want to contribute toward a gift card you can drop cash in. No one knows who puts in cash and who doesn't, or how much. I see it as no big deal. For my wedding two coworkers gave me individual gifts and I got a gift card from the team. For my first baby I received a number of individual gifts from my registry as well as a communal gift card. I see it as a nice thing that helps build community.

[ChickenStash]

Places I've worked also just passed around a card to sign and people could chip in some money if they wanted to. If folks wanted to do something individually, the card kinda acted as notice and they could do their own thing.

Some places didn't do anything for "life events" like that so doing nothing wouldn't be unusual, either. Maybe just a congrats email from an individual that found out from word of mouth. It greatly depends on the how close the working group is.

My only caution is to make sure to be consistent on how things like this are handled, possibly even asking higher-ups or HR about the corporate culture or any policies. If Joe gets a nice card and gift for getting hitched and a few months down the road, Jim-Bob or Peggy-Sue don't when they get hitched there could be problems.

[Sibley]

Pass a card around. If people want to contribute towards a gift, they can. Managers should NOT be involved.

[Catbert]

Pass a card around. If people want to contribute towards a gift, they can. Managers should NOT be involved.

+1 especially on Managers not getting involved.  Once managers are involved the stakes for treating everyone the same goes way up.  If you organize Joe getting a wedding present, what about Judy that no one likes who gets married next year?  Or Ed whose parent dies?  Or?  Or?

P.S.  If anyone ever suggests that be incharge of the birthday club - run away as fast as you can.

[kristof]

Thanks for all the responses. One of the individual contributors on the other team got the ball rolling and reached out to everyone on my team, so I think I'm pretty much good now without having to make a call one way or the other.

I should have mentioned we're all remote in various different states, which makes the anonymous collection part trickier. Anyone know of online tools to do this, in case it comes up again? The main one that comes up when I Google it is CheddarUp but it doesn't seem to provide a way to pay anonymously.

[Adventine]

If you're all remote, just a link to the wedding registry would probably be the easiest option. Those websites that collect money for newlyweds likely take a cut before transferring money to the couple.

[Loren Ver]

We use to do collecting for big events when I worked in big corporate.  We did it for everyone in our work group no matter how anyone felt about them-consistency was important.  Dropped off cash while signing a card wasn't really anonymous so we just had someone that wasn't gonna share information do the collecting.

I know this because I was the one making it happen.  I was volun-told to do it once, but I was going to make sure we didn't do it all willy nilly.  I was just a minion (non-manager) and I was in charge of collecting the money, circulating cards, then me and another co-worker got the stuff, wrapped it up (when needed), etc.  We also made sure to even out the dollar amounts between celebratorees as needed (ie Joe's wedding in April got more money then Bill's wedding in Sept, we'd throw more in the pot to even it out).  We weren't a big group so it was easy enough to do and the discrepancies were usually due to people being on vacation.  But then we also weren't having a game of favorites being played through me.  Private gifts, go for it, but not the group congrats or I'm so sorry notice.  I was also able to help the non-American co-workers that were confused by this phenomenon but didn't know how to proceed and needed to ask someone but didn't want to feel like they were being graded for asking.  Good times.

Loren

[Michael in ABQ]

This is bringing back memories of working in a corporate environment and even in an office of ~30 people it felt like a card was being passed around every week. The usual routine was you had to find someone who hadn't signed it yet to pass along. I think there may have even been a by name list included so you could make sure everyone was checked off.

On the other hand, my coworkers threw us a couple of baby showers (by child #4+ there's no expectation of a baby shower) and in one case everyone chipped in to buy a pretty nice stroller ($150-200). Most people in the office were older so not a lot of birthday cakes or celebrations for that.


Now that I'm self-employed our one employee got married and my wife and I just bought something from their registry on Amazon and had it shipped directly to her house. We also gave her a card with some cash at the wedding since she invited our whole family, plus giving her a week off for the wedding and honeymoon.

[MayDay]

I am a manager. I pass around a card to sign and buy a gift myself. I don't ask my team to buy or contribute anything. I give the gift on behalf of the whole team.

I think it just gets really icky really fast to start collecting money at work for any reason. People feel pressured to give,ore popular people get more money than others, someone gets missed entirely and feels shitty about it.

[GilesMM]

We usually had the secretary/admin send around the card and money request.

[bacchi]

This is one thing (among many) that I don't miss about corporate life. Birthdays, weddings, births, deaths, promotions, work anniversaries -- like ABQ Michael, every freakin' week had at least one gift ask. I was the scrooge but, then, do unto others.

[Zamboni]

I'm not going to contribute to a wedding gift unless I'm close enough to the person that I'm invited to their wedding.

I've seen work collections for new babies, and collections around the holidays for the house keeping staff, but never for a wedding. Even the ones for the house keeping staff gives me a weird feeling because of the racially charged past of that . . . shouldn't the company just give them all a raise to show their contributions are valued!

Honestly, though, I think the co-workers who didn't have children (either by choice or because couldn't) must have gotten tired of the cards coming around taking up collections for new babies. Imagine dealing with this while you are struggling with infertility? Also, I noticed that the amounts collected were very pretty inconsistent. And some people had kid after kid and those cards kept coming around.

If I'm close to someone then I will buy them a new baby gift. Having the same employer usually doesn't result in this level of closeness, but sometimes it does.

I think the person who said he is the boss who covers the cost of a gift on behalf of the group has the right idea, as long as it is very consistent.

[Villanelle]

I'm not going to contribute to a wedding gift unless I'm close enough to the person that I'm invited to their wedding.

I've seen work collections for new babies, and collections around the holidays for the house keeping staff, but never for a wedding. Even the ones for the house keeping staff gives me a weird feeling because of the racially charged past of that . . . shouldn't the company just give them all a raise to show their contributions are valued!

Honestly, though, I think the co-workers who didn't have children (either by choice or because couldn't) must have gotten tired of the cards coming around taking up collections for new babies. Imagine dealing with this while you are struggling with infertility? Also, I noticed that the amounts collected were very pretty inconsistent. And some people had kid after kid and those cards kept coming around.

If I'm close to someone then I will buy them a new baby gift. Having the same employer usually doesn't result in this level of closeness, but sometimes it does.

I think the person who said he is the boss who covers the cost of a gift on behalf of the group has the right idea, as long as it is very consistent.

I don't have kids and I was never resentful or uncomfortable or anything else negative about cards for babies.  If it was someone I knew well, I contributed.  It it was someone I kinda knew bet liked, I'd contribute a little.  If I had no real relationship, I didn't contribute.  But I never cared that cards were sent around and people were given the opportunity to contribute if they wanted to.  That goes for babies, marriages, or whatever else they passed cards and envelopes for.  It my workplace, it was always done in a way that there was no real pressure.  The envelope with card and money was just passed down a list.  No one knew who contributed or how much.

Gifts aren't quid pro quo to me.  Just because I've never had a baby shower doesn't mean I mind giving someone else a baby gift. 

[Metalcat]

I'm not going to contribute to a wedding gift unless I'm close enough to the person that I'm invited to their wedding.

I've seen work collections for new babies, and collections around the holidays for the house keeping staff, but never for a wedding. Even the ones for the house keeping staff gives me a weird feeling because of the racially charged past of that . . . shouldn't the company just give them all a raise to show their contributions are valued!

Honestly, though, I think the co-workers who didn't have children (either by choice or because couldn't) must have gotten tired of the cards coming around taking up collections for new babies. Imagine dealing with this while you are struggling with infertility? Also, I noticed that the amounts collected were very pretty inconsistent. And some people had kid after kid and those cards kept coming around.

If I'm close to someone then I will buy them a new baby gift. Having the same employer usually doesn't result in this level of closeness, but sometimes it does.

I think the person who said he is the boss who covers the cost of a gift on behalf of the group has the right idea, as long as it is very consistent.

I don't have kids and I was never resentful or uncomfortable or anything else negative about cards for babies.  If it was someone I knew well, I contributed.  It it was someone I kinda knew bet liked, I'd contribute a little.  If I had no real relationship, I didn't contribute.  But I never cared that cards were sent around and people were given the opportunity to contribute if they wanted to.  That goes for babies, marriages, or whatever else they passed cards and envelopes for.  It my workplace, it was always done in a way that there was no real pressure.  The envelope with card and money was just passed down a list.  No one knew who contributed or how much.

Gifts aren't quid pro quo to me.  Just because I've never had a baby shower doesn't mean I mind giving someone else a baby gift.

I don't have kids either and don't mind celebrating other people having babies, but the point about people dealing with infertility is absolutely on point.

Our society in general has a huge blind spot in terms of the experience of people dealing with infertility, despite it being extremely common.