The Thanksgiving Budget Trap

Right before Thanksgiving, Sarah, our office manager, handed me an envelope with five hundred dollars in cash. Written on the front was: Employee Thanksgiving Gift Budget.

The next second, she dropped a message into the main company Slack channel:

"I've handed the Thanksgiving gift budget over to Mia, the new administrative assistant. If anyone has any special requests, just let her know!"

In my past life, I took that five hundred dollars and drove to every wholesale club in the city, desperately trying to stretch it to buy pies, nuts, and fruit baskets for over two hundred employees.