There's a famous paradox
called the Abilene paradox, based on an account
of a family of four adults who had taken a day out to Abilene
The dreaded office-based
Secret Santa is a good example of an Abiline paradox – the vast majority of
people wish it didn’t exist, but act as though they are happy it does because
they think they’d be the lone party pooper. They wouldn’t be: secretly most of
their colleagues feel the same, but are staying equally silent on the matter.
Secret Santa is advertised
as each team member buying a gift for the one person they draw out of the
hat. In reality, though, it is each team member entering into an
obligation to not have to buy a gift for the rest of the team that they didn’t
draw out of the hat. In a team of 8 members, Secret Santa isn’t introduced
for the purposes of Jack buying a gift for one person, it’s so Jack doesn’t
have to buy gifts for the other six. This is understandable too – a work team
of 8 members would exchange a total of 54 gifts if they all bought one for each
other - and almost nobody would relish that prospect.
The total number of Secret
Santa gifts purchased in a team of 8 members is 8, which makes Secret Santa fun
and worthwhile on the surface. But whoever originally thought up the
Secret Santa idea did so because he or she knew that things are better when all
the pressure is off staff members - when they don’t have to worry about who is
buying what for whom, whether there will be an imbalance in the
giving-receiving ratio, and whether exchanges have price equivalence.
Secret Santa is preferable
to each member buying everyone else a gift, but even more preferable to Secret
Santa is having no Secret Santa at all – thereby creating a team that is saved
the obligation of buying any gifts whatsoever. Ask anyone on the quiet if
they’d rather we didn’t do Secret Santa in the office this year and most will
happily say no. Ask a team together and most will say yes. That’s the Abilene
