Must I really shell out on every unnecessary staff gift? Hardly a day goes by in my office without another collection for a member of staff. While I am perfectly happy to contribute generously towards a gift for a colleague who is retiring or moving on, there are now collections for people who have been promoted within the organisation and are moving to a department on a different floor. Does such a move really merit a gift? Is it acceptable to sign the card but decline the collection? Middle manager, 47 You ask whether a promotion merits a gift. The answer is no, strictly speaking it does not. But then strict speaking has never had anything to do with the way gifts are given at work. The rule is that they seldom go to people who deserve them; instead they go to people on whom fortune is already smiling. At least the colleague who has been promoted is still going to be in the company, so there may be a point to being nice to him. It is even less clear to me why we shower gifts on people who are defecting, leaving the company for something better paid and altogether more glamorous elsewhere. While we routinely cough up for them, we shy away in embarrassment from people who have been made redundant - and who could really do with a decent send off from those who survived the purge - giving them nothing at all. Equally it is not clear to me why having a baby merits a gift from colleagues. It is generally a nuisance when a team mate goes off on maternity leave, and a bore when they come back with an iPhone full of photos. And yet we regard this as an event crying out for a gift, whereas people who have had a whole line of miscarriages and failed IVF attempts never get presents at all. But this is how the system works, and you have to go along with it. Part of working with people is that we are supposed to be happy when good things happen to them. And if we aren't happy we must pretend to be. That is what it is to be part of a team. Your question tells me you've never been the person lumbered with the task of passing the envelope around for a staff collection, or else you'd know how unattractive meanness looks. I've seen people take a fiver out of their wallet, put their hand into the envelope, and when they take it out the note is still tucked into their fist, ready to be put back in the wallet when no one is looking. Or worse still they put in a fiver and remove a tenner. Or they contribute a handful of change that turns out to add up to 15p. The best way to view these collections is as a tax. So sign the card, put some money in the envelope, and tell yourself that you are being a good corporate citizen.