Okay, first, I realize that this doesn’t have a hell of a lot to do with cars, but for some reason I find it really funny and weirdly fascinating, so I thought that was reason enough to share it with you. So I will. And, look, if David asks if this was about cars, I’ll tell you what, just tell him that it was about some early car trivia stuff and I was talking about how Peugeot has a pretty good claim on the first mass-produced gasoline-engine car, with 64 Peugeot Type 3s built between 1891 and 1894. Also, they may have had the first frunks? Which were wicker!
Okay, there, we got some good car stuff out of the way, so now let’s get into what today’s Autopian Asks is about. You see, earlier today, Mercedes was telling us how, as a lame-ass reward for being the traffic leader at the Old Site, she was given some sort of gift card. And then the next week they told her not to write “weird” stuff. Their loss, of course, she’s on Team Autopian now, and she can write whatever the hell she wants.
But I’m getting off track; I wanted to know what kind of gift card they gave her, which got me thinking about some really ridiculous gift cards one could get. Which led to me thinking aloud (well, visually aloud) in Slack:
See, the idea of being given a $1500 gift card to Jersey Mike’s just strikes me as inherently funny. But since we’re imagining, why stop there?
A $7,500 gift card for Coldstone Creamery would make me livid. There would be an inherent frustration, because how could you complain about being given $7,500 of anything? You should be grateful, right? But $7,500 of weirdly custardy ice cream would feel like a cold, too-sweet prison.
The more you think about stupid gift cards, the funnier/worse it gets, I think. I like to consider pairings: what if someone gave you a $7 gift card to AutoZone and a $600 gift card to Arby’s? You’d desperately want to ask them if they mixed those two up, right?
Even a boring, expected gift card gets deeply weird once the amounts get high enough. People give out Starbucks cards like candy, but once you get one with, say, $1,200 on it, it starts to feel pretty messed up. Who would do such a thing? It’s madness!
What about giving someone a stack of 50 gift cards with $1 each on them, to every place possible? Is that worse than a big amount to one dumb place?
Does Roto-Rooter make gift cards? As a homeowner, if it didn’t expire, I might be good with a $500 gift card from them. How about, like, Airgas? That’d be okay; never have to pay for welding gases again, potentially? How about a Mattress Firm gift card for $12? Or $800 to Clean Colonics?
It’d be a funny conceit in a movie if someone had to stash away a huge amount of money that was either stolen or in danger of being stolen or something, so they, say, put $250,000 on a Schlotzky’s gift card. I wonder if there’s any way to launder gift card money like that? Aside from selling sandwiches you just bought in the parking lot for a buck less? Cash only.
Anyway, let’s see if we can think of the worst possible gift cards, amounts, and combinations! It’ll be fun? Right?
Top graphic image: DepositPhotos.com
I’m thinking dildo warehouse…
(Non-members won’t get it but Pete did a great photoshop on an Amazon box in the background of a fan belts or slack post)
$5k on a gift card to Bad Dragon would definitely be a life altering experience.
Be aware, if you’re gonna Google, they are EXTREMELY NSFW.
Is this not an appropriate gift for the white elephant office party?
There’s a joke about elephants here I’m most definitely not making.
As I noted back then, dildopolis is a much better bet. I bet gift cards go a longer way there too and you just can’t beat the personalized service.
Harvey’s Restaurant… when given to someone in South Carolina.
Literally any regional chains that don’t do business where you live. Gotta check about the related companies and the recipient’s habits though.
For instance there’d be no fun in me sending Torch a gift card for Hannaford, or more likely David sending him one for In-N-Out, if he could just spend the former at Food Lion and the latter when he’s in LA on business approximately once a month.
True. Maybe the dumbest gift card would be a Manny-Peddy for David. Totally ruined on him!
This made me wonder if Torch is a Food Lion, or Harris Teeter guy. My guess is Food Lion. I’m not sure he’d respect that nonsense Harris Teeter day care center font thing they have going on.
I’m highly skeptical of any supermarket named after an animal you can’t buy there. See also Giant Eagle and (now-defunct) Big Bear.
What about the Piggly Wiggly!
Oh… nevermind.
I was a night manager at a Piggly Wiggly while I was in college! We were Big on the Pig!
My son is too (he’s wearing a Piggly Wiggly shirt right now).
He’s in the triangle, he could be a Wegmans or Publix guy, too.
I forgot about Publix somehow.
And I had no idea there were Wegmans down there. But I guess all of my wife’s relatives live in Raleigh and south, where there are none.
There are 2 Wegmans in Raleigh, 1 in Chapel Hill. So three in the Triangle.
There’s one in Wake Forest too!
You would think you could use them at other Kroger owned location, such as Harris Teeter of which we have plenty of in NC, but alas you cannot.
I’ll note I vacationed in NH a few year ago and shopped at Hannafords a couple of times and was surprised when I recognized a bunch of the bakery items and the Hannaford branded stuff looked a lot like HT Traders items.
One of those stupid thing of the month memberships.Pajama of the month,dog food of the month,ect.Who even buy those things willingly?
We did a subscription to Snack Crate for a while. Each month, you receive snacks from a different country. My son enjoyed it but after half a year, the novelty wore off. Still have fond memories though.
I could see that being kind of cool. But also, say you find the perfect snack from cambodia…you really going to go through the trouble of figuring out how to import it?
Apparently, Jelly of the Month club actually exists now!
Because, Clark, that’s the gift that keeps on giving the whole year ‘round.
I despise Starbucks as anyone with functional taste buds and or neuro function should. I hate how common those cards are. I’ve figured out I can just give them to my nieces my daughter has figured out it’s shit too now but still interested in Dutch bros still a win I think.
The low value cards at high price places are annoying. Especially if you don’t ever want anything to do with those places. Or not even close to you to do something with. I would hate to have be given a lvhc brands card or some fancy over priced nonsense like that. Especially because if you have to buy it for someone you can find it cheaper elsewhere. Just handing the money possible to scammers. Or strange places or like one off place. Like I’ve seen some of the tool trucks have gift cards but just that one guy maybe they have a system wide one now. I used to hate best buy gift cards too because there was nothing I really wanted a decent price. It doesn’t feel like a gift but a weird hostage situation. The tool truck would definitely feel like that.
$50 at a tool truck, best buy, fancy place. It’s enough you want to spend it but not enough to really get much and you keep thinking I could get something just as good if not better cheaper.
A $200+ McDonald’s or Starbucks or any regular fast food or coffee place would probably piss me off.
I had a $200 gift card to a fancy restaurant I got from work and also a $5 Macdonalds gift card I got as punishment for winning a stupid bet with a coworker.
One day I met a tweaker homeless couple asking for food and when I meant to give them the Macdonald card I gave them the steakhouse one.
I wonder to this day what happened as I’m not sure they ever would have been allowed in given their clothing and cleanliness situation.
Starbucks for me depends on the expiration, if it’s valid for my one annual trip down the New York Thruway it’s useful. Otherwise nah.
“ I despise Starbucks as anyone with functional taste buds and or neuro function should.”
I’m a 17.8g in, 37g out; pour over at 203 deg F, city roast or + at max kind of snob. I’ve been known to call things “flavored milk drinks”. Starbucks is fine. It’s fine! It’s by no means good, but it’s entirely predictable and better than the ash tea that’s been cooking on the hot plate at the diner.
Everytime I get conned to going in there it’s always burnt water. I guess that’s consistent. Over saturated over temp probably over pressure. Maybe even too coarce or grind somehow. I rather just go to 711 and let the $25k machine make me a drink. Coffee snob and Starbucks just doesn’t go together. I can applicate a cheap coffee it’s its own thing but Starbucks is something else.
I’ll drink old diner coffee over the burnt motor oil they call “medium roast.” And don’t get me started on their dark roast.
As a trucker… gimme the glass bulb burner coffee any time.
Not a trucker, and a fancy-beans-and-pourover-at-home guy, I loooove 7/11 coffee with creamer foppon road trips.
Same. I’m a Chemex coffee nerd, but Starbucks is.. fine. Is it great? No. Is it awful? Also, no. I think of it as a dessert place, similar to getting ice cream.
YMMV I suppose.
“I despise Starbucks as anyone with functional taste buds and or neuro function should.”
I personally don’t despise them, I merely dislike them.
They are vastly overrated and overpriced. And I dislike the stupid names for their cup sizes. A “small” is not “tall”.
Plus, I don’t like their business practices and how they like to flood a specific area with too many locations and drive the local mom and pop shops out of business.
And the fact they are American and I’m Canadian is another strike against them in my view.
I prefer to stick to local coffee shops.
At home Yankees games, a randomly-selected ticket holder wins a “Dunkin Donuts Prize Package” wherein they are given 10 $5 gift cards to Dunkin’ — for a total of $50.
Any gift card to a place no-where near you. “Gee, thanks for the $25 to Whataburger, I look forward to spending 10 times that in gas trying to get to the closest one 3 states over!”
How much are those “alpha male” camps? Aren’t they like $8000? If someone got me a gift card for one of those, I’d be appalled. So much money on essentially a scam.
There was a scene in a mid-1990s movie called ‘Reality Bites’ in which Winona Ryder’s character had been given a gas station credit card (fuel only) by her parents.
To alleviate her cash flow problems, she accosted people at the gas pumps and offered to buy the customers’ fuel if they gave her their cash. So a customer who wanted $25 in petrol would give her $25 in actual money, and – using the credit card – she would pump that much into the tank. She became less broke and her father received a remarkable credit card bill. (IIRC this was not a long-term financial solution.)
Someone who received a $7500 card for Coldstone could do the same thing but with ice cream, and no one would receive an awkward bill!
Figure out what the person likes to order and what the total with tax is for said order. Then get a gift card that is a penny short. This is doubly evil with the phasing out of the penny.
*only do this for a large corporation because making them eat the transaction cost of someone using their credit card for that $0.01 is a petty revenge I’m here for
This is why, for the last 10 years, I have had something in an Amazon S3 bucket tied to an AWS account where I have autopay on my Amex going. The monthly invoice is $0.01.
No other charges in that AWS account, just once a month $0.01 to the Amex.
I have no idea what is in the bucket, it’s more amusing this way. Could I find out what it is and delete it? Yeah, but why?
Bonus points for you since AMEX transaction fees are higher.
Why do you think I picked that card? lolol
That is profoundly evil and petty and I applaud it.
But I also want to know what’s in the bucket. Hopefully a 640×480 cat picture.
“What Is The Stupidest Possible Gift Card To Give Someone?”
Every last motherlovin ones of them!
Finally, after YEARS (as politely as possible) explaining that I think they are the stupidest, most diabolical waste of time,money,resources,security, and choice, and in no way are more considerate than cash, I no longer receive them.(or anything)
My opinion on gifts are they are mostly to give someone something they would want but not buy themself. In that way gift cards do serve a purpose that cash doesn’t. If I give someone a gift card then, ignoring the secondary market, they have to use it at that store or restaurant. It enables you to give someone an experience such as a night out or similar especially if they are the kind of person who thinks going out is too expensive and would just save or pay bills with a cash gift. And if you want to argue you should still just give them cash even if they’d prefer to save it, then I’d counter that any gift would fall in the same bucket. Don’t buy someone a sweater just give them cash because they may want to save it instead. It’s also frequently seen as a bit tacky to give cash, to other adults, while gift cards, oddly, don’t seem to share the same negative connotations.
I also buy gift cards for myself at Costco for a 10-20% discount at restaurants I’ll go to anyways.
To answer the original question I would say something that isn’t sufficient to cover a basic purchase (e.g. $5 for Best Buy) or a gift card something that leads to mandatory future expenses or headache such as a gift card for a subscription service that is recurring and nearly impossible to cancel.
definitely a social component. If everyone gave cash, how would that work? In early December you give your coworker $20 and the next week they give you $20?
I have a brother who was/is chemically dependent. He was living on the street at the time. I gave him a grocery store gift card because he couldn’t use it to get liquor or drugs, but I didn’t want him to go hungry. That’s the one time I think a gift card was the better way to go.
How about $1000 at Harbor Freight and $9.99 in credit at the urgent care center nearest to the recipient’s shop?
Seriously, though, getting gift cards is like hearing “bless your heart” in the south. The absolute worst are ones you can “spend anywhere” but get rejected everywhere.
gift card to Urgent Care is the most America thing ever.
Honestly, I’d be really pissed about a Starbucks card, as a coffee enthusiast. I like to buy single-source beans and grind them myself, and something that obliges me to go get burnt dark roast as often as possible would be pretty hurtful.
Imagine you’ve got a McLaren and someone gives you a card for unlimited 97 octane at any Kum and Go nationwide. That’s how I’d feel about that.
My gift back would be a $50,000 Sears coupon.
$1,500 at Jersey Mike’s wouldn’t last long for a family with their $20 subs, that place it kinda nuts these days. Meant to include this in my original comment.
I can’t even figure out how to use a monthly $5 store credit at Gamestop these days with their Pro membership. DON’T TELL ME WHERE TO SPEND MONEY, but thanks for the gift vibes over here.
$1,500 would only be like 1 sub/chips/drink a week for 1.5 years.
I’ll happily give you a $50,000 Sears gift card right now.
I would so take that card!
I could also eat that much Schlotzky’s, NGL.
My wife has this thing where we’ll be a store and she’ll see something and just wander off and not tell me. A few years back we were at a Walmart in early February and we walked up on this giant wall of gift cards and I turned to her and (jokingly) told her to pick herself out a nice gift card for Valentine’s day.
Great joke, except… she’d wandered off and I had just turned to some random woman in Walmart and pitched this weird proposition. So, turns out the joke was on me.
Which gift card did she pick?
No idea, I mumbled something incoherent and walked away!
The Malört card in the picture is A+ work.
But the stupidest gift card to give is $25 to a fancy steakhouse. Not enough to buy anything and really not even much of a discount, just enough to make it annoying on the server to run it and a credit card. Bonus points if you can give 2 cards for 2 completely different steakhouses so the person doesn’t think and tries to use them both at the same establishment.
The Malort was the first thing I saw, too. Go Pete!
(That one was me!)
Go home, Pete!
Agree with you about gift cards that don’t cover the cost of anything you might purchase; its like ‘thanks for giving me a chore!’
And Mercedes’ disappointing gift card was to…????? You’re leaving me hangin’ here!
If I recall correctly, it was one of those generic Visa debit card things.
I actually kind of hate those things. Most places are not set up to split payment across multiple credit/debit cards, so I end up having to buy a gift card of the same amount just so I can spend the whole thing.
This particularly annoys me because so many rebate programs now give you a prepaid card instead of a check, so now there’s one more step to actually get your rebate.
For me, the one I inevitably get from any work-related source. Starbucks. I HATE coffee to start with, and even if I didn’t I have no interest in overpriced, terrible, corporate coffee.
You could get a muffin.
I just re-gift them.
Here’s a stale muffin! Happy birthday!
LOL! The gift card, not the muffin. Though I would totally re-gift some flavors of muffin too.
Any gift card amount that functions in the same way as those (non-vehicle) ads that tell you they’ll take a triple digit or more amount off the price tag if you buy now; that almost guarantees whatever it is is way overpriced.
So a giftcard that offers you say $50 for specific pots and pans is likely not buying you a lot of ’em.
$50 at Bahama Breeze, not valid at other Darden restaurants
That’s ~2.5 Tropical Chicken Salads – send them all to ME!!!
Though if there are no Bahama Breeze locations anywhere nearby, that would be very annoying, not like they are everywhere. I live an hour from one, and it’s near the airport, so all good for me.
If you enjoy it, you’d better get back there fast, they’re shutting down the whole chain
The one near me was supposed to close the first week of April, but they had a pipe burst in the kitchen earlier this month and decided to just shut down a few months early
Yeah, saw there were closing locations – like basically every chain in that space.
It’s definitely a place where there is only ONE thing on the menu I like – but I REALLY like that salad. Easyish to replicate at home though.
Its the entire chain, all 28 locations. The handful that Darden keeps to remodel into one of their other concepts might stay open a few months longer until they’re ready to start the remodel, but it looks like most of them will shut down in April
Bummer.
.99 cent giftcard to Dollar General
As a non-coffee drinker getting Starbucks gift cards can be cumbersome, I just pass them on to my wife who does drink coffee, but then it’s like where’s MY gift? I was supposed to get a gift!
Dunkin is ok as I can be affluent in Munchkins, not a problem.
Came here for this. I keep getting them. I don’t drink coffee. I have gifted people so much coffee…
That’s the move. Once I embraced the darkness and started passing along the misery of captive commerce, I started telling the inveterate gift-card-givers I prefer plastic from a variety of retailers in smaller denominations. Now I have a constantly-replenished pile of emergency gifts that fit better in a desk drawer than my wallet.
Y’all, Starbucks sells way more than just coffee. Pastries, tea, juice, hot cocoa, salads, sandwiches, nuts, etc.
That thought did not escape me, but it requires going into Starbucks, where it reeks of their burnt sludge coffee.
Fair.