The High Road

This was my take on the six-sentence story prompt “Guide” for this week. I went with a take on a person who got someone they really disliked in the office secret santa, and what they chose to do about it. This one was based on my secret Santa at work, where I was really glad I didn’t get one specific person, and what I would have done if I got them.

---

I wanted to let my conscience be my guide, but I also kind of wanted to buy a crappy gift because I got the office asshole as my secret Santa.

I looked at gag gifts, bad gifts, stupid gifts, then I set them all aside thinking that this wasn’t the kind of behavior I wanted to encourage, and he was just the type to take it as a one up kind of challenge.

I decided instead to kill him with kindness, and recalling an old picture on his desk of him as a kid with an older woman, and the way he brushed it off, I went to work. It took a few distrusting trips to his cubicle to get a better look at the scarves they were wearing in the picture, but I got the pattern, spent my 20$ in yarn, and knitted all my seething resentment away into a scarf that I wrapped perfectly.

On the day of the exchange, he opened my gift, and I braced myself, waiting for the off color comments, the inappropriate gestures, and instead was rewarded with a gruff thank you, and him stalking from the room. As he later told me, voice choked with tears, he had lost the scarf from the picture, knitted by his late grandmother, less than a week prior, and I was so glad I had chosen the high road.