In the last episode of The Office—a damn fine rendition of the original British show, by the way—the boss starts up a gift-giving-and-taking game of Yankee Swap. This is a game in which everyone brings a gift and puts it under the tree for the giving part, and then all hell breaks loose in the taking part.

Once upon a time, in that office in which I found my own personal hell, the big boss, Chert Bitterman—whose name really isn’t Chert Bitterman, but we’ll call him that for the purpose of this story—invited everyone over to his beautiful, super-upper-middle class home for a well and expensively catered Christmas dinner and party. In keeping with office politics, I went with H.E. while everyone else in the office went with their wives … or, in the case of Milly Ganabitch—the only other female employee—with her husband.

Hors d’oeuvres were served both at the fancy bar in the wide backyard patio, which were decorated by the shiny columns of the outdoor heaters and gorgeous landscaping, and in the living room, where the lit and stately looking Christmas tree stood over the presents everyone brought. Dinner, on the other hand, was lavishly served on two dining tables, and Chert’s wife Anna Swide (also not her real name) never had to lift a finger as the troop of caterers brought everything to the table.

After dinner, Chert introduced White Elephant.

White Elephant is just another name for Yankee Swap, and anyone who has watched The Office episode which featured this game knows that it can be a rather fun or rather mean little activity, depending on the circumstances and on whom you ask. Everyone brings gifts that are anonymously wrapped and perhaps cost a certain amount, like $20 or less, and all gifts are placed under the tree. The first person selects a gift from the tree and opens it, and if no one takes it from them, that’s the gift with which they end up. The second person then has a choice whether to take the first person’s gift or select a new one from the tree, and so on. Anyone who has their gift taken away from them can either choose to take someone else’s gift or select a new one from the tree.

It’s essentially the raping and pillaging version of the Secret Santa game.

Anyway, I was selected to go first, and I, with my uncanny ability for going for things that hurt me, somehow managed to pick a gift that turned out to be a stun gun. Hell if I could understand why anyone would think it makes a proper Christmas gift, but let’s just say that this stun gun became the iPod of the gift-giving-and-pillaging party. Needless to say, it was taken from me not too long after by someone who opted not to choose from the gifts under the tree.

So I picked another gift. I can’t remember what it was—perhaps a nice shirt or some boxer shorts—but they were taken away from me, too. Everything I picked got taken away by someone else at least twice or three times because I also had the uncanny ability to choose the best or the most expensive gifts—not that I can tell from the wrapper or from the size of the box; I just have an instinct for these things.

In the end, while some people only got to play once by picking or stealing their gift, I got to play during the entire game by picking a new gift every time someone else stole mine. I ended up not only being the first player, but the last player. The gifts went in and out of my hands that quickly, and since I didn’t have the heart to steal anyone else’s gift, each gift I opened was a new surprise.

It sounds cool, but it really wasn’t. Remember, I have an instinct for choosing the best gifts in the blind. So as the gifts dwindled under the tree, the choices left were getting worse and worse. In the end, because I refused to be mean and take someone else’s gift and because after having yet another gift taken away from me I was the last person without a gift, I chose the last gift under the tree, which turned out to be a box of cheap candles.

Man, did I feel cheated. I went from having the most popular gift in the party—which I actually didn’t mind having taken away from me at the time because it scared me half to death just holding it—to having what was clearly the gift that everyone was glad they didn’t get. And while everyone enjoyed themselves, with Chert’s son stunning himself on purpose with that damn gun, which incidentally made the rounds as it got stolen the maximum amount of times a gift can be stolen at White Elephant, I sat there and stared at my stupid cheap candles.

The gift I brought, a cute little stuffed animal that cost considerably more than the candles, I’m sure, went to Anna, which I guess was fine by me.

So long as it didn’t go to Milly.

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