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
Any.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/DLI5sZJpaIA
All gift cards are dumb. Wanna know what is like a gift card, but better? It’s even usable everywhere! Heck, it can even be tossed into a savings account, or 529, or whatever! Two-dollar bills. Well, so can all cash, but two-dollar bills as too.
I work for a company abroad (I am not in US).
They gave me a USD 100 gift card for Amazon. Could only be redeemed in Amazon US.
Now I have 100 bucks to spend on US Amazon.
No US travel expected in the short term. Any phisical good I buy will have expensive shipping and will be taxed to the point is not worth. The gift card does not allow you to buy a more “global” gift card, like prepaid Netflix of sorts.
Will need to spend it on ebooks for kindle. Mostly in a foreign language too, because that is also region locked.
Not that bad, but certainly could do better use of that money.
The last two places I’ve worked in the UK offer a “cycle to work” scheme where you can buy a new bicycle, no upper limit on price, and not pay the income tax on that amount of your salary.
I cycle to work, so people think I love this perk. But I have a collection of 90’s MTBs, and the very last thing I want to do is buy something modern that makes them feel like crap.
Was it Mitch Hedberg with the line about gift cards? “I took money you can spend anywhere and turned it into money that you can only spend in one place! You’re welcome!”
I was doing my fiduciary duty for the parent’s estate and found a small life insurance policy from Met Life. They wanted to send me a debit card instead of a check. Had to push through several transfers and a closer a la quitting Amazon Prime to get a real check. Gawd, I wonder how many people just take the card and wonder six months later where their couple grand went. Worst gift card ever!
Goodness gracious, that’s the stupidest and most irritating thing I’ve heard today.
A couple of minutes work on google reveals there are a number of places that will buy your gift cards at a discounted price for cash. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a couple of physical places here in Phoenix that do that as well.
Huh, I was just learning about money laundering at work today!
I got a gift card to a local grocery store and spent it on a different gift card that I could spend wherever I wanted. The checker stopped short of calling me a f-ing weasel, but I could tell what he was thinking.
One of our “perks” at work is for managers to hand out coupons worth $10 toward a gift card for a job well done or some such thing. We also automatically get one on our birthday. The first catch is there’s a $30 minimum to trade them for a gift card. The second catch is we used to be able to get a Visa gift card, now they’re only Amazon. The third catch is that each coupon has been 10 bucks since I started there 30 years ago, so it’s effectively become slowly less valuable. You can’t even get a decent fast food lunch for 10 bucks nowadays.
A coupon toward a gift card is the most amazingly cheap gift since George Costanza’s donations to charities in other people’s names as holiday presents.
Well, I didn’t mean “coupon” in the sense of a discount like at the grocery store. It’s a slip of paper that we take to HR, who will then convert its full value into a gift card.
One more barrier to redeeming it. I bet some people don’t do it lest they appear cheap or desperate to HR.
It’s not a big deal. And no, everyone does it. My original point was that it has gotten less and less valuable over time, not that it was burdensome in any way.
Someone in your HR needs to learn about awardco. It’s a company my work uses where they can give you points that you can turn into all sorts of giftcards (including VISA). Easy to use website, instant redemptions and the minimum redemption is like $1-10. So much better than when they would give everyone a walmart gift card for thanksgiving and I had to actually find something I wanted to get from walmart.
Actually this reminds me I was gonna get somebody a gift sub to the Autopian. No joke or snark, this just reminded me, but now I’ve got to remember who it was.
Wait, I have a second terrible option. We have a credit card that offers $50 to Saks as a “perk.” The 3 items there that are under $50 are never in stock. But if you want $8000 sneakers, you are in luck.
(We’ll never use that “perk.”)
Is that Amex platinum? Can’t remember if it was saks or some other stupid fancy store. I found shampoo that was “only” $10 after the $50 credit.
That’s the one. Found a candle once for $65 but all else tends to be sold out.
Where can I get one of those Malort gift cards like in the topshot?
$100 Circuit City gift card. Yes it would need to be gifted in 2026.
Throw in a blockbuster for an extra treat
Can’t go wrong with a JoAnn’s card either!
I’m digitising VHS tapes this month and seeing commercials for a litany of dead brands feels weird. One commercial break in a mid-1990s show was literally 100% dead brands: Wards, K-Mart, Mervyn’s, and Oldsmobile.
I thought K-Mart was still kicking?
Is it? I remember it going bankrupt in the ’90s and how it was a big deal. But maybe I’m making stuff up.
Apparently they are thriving in Australia?
A former employer gave me a $25 gift card to a fancy steakhouse in Houston, which was nice except not a single item on the menu was less than $25 and I lived in Minneapolis.
We live in California but recently received a $150 gift card from a friend for a pizza place IN CHICAGO.
(Love Chicago but do not see us getting there for a visit in time to use this gift card)
The company HQ was in Houston, so I’m sure they weren’t thinking to hard about what office people were in when they sent out the gift cards to folks. I ended up giving it to one of my Houstonian coworkers, which is when I found out that $25 wouldn’t even cover the cheapest appetizer at the restaurant.
If someone gives me a $25 gift card from Murray’s I’d gladly fly over to Minneapolis to use it.
It’s so much better than Peter Luger’s, which by today’s standard isn’t too much of a compliment.
A gift card with an NFT (remember those?) embedded in the chip.* No cash value, other than what you can sell the NFT for.
*Note that if it’s embedded on the chip, and you have to sell it by transferring possession of the gift card, is it really a digital token anymore? Would you be gifting/selling the token, or the plastic?
I’m kind of a handy guy, so one year, my MIL went to Home Depot and bought me a $50 gift card for Christmas. Since I’m also a car guy, she bought me the one with Tony Stewart’s NASCAR ride on it.
Coolcoolcool.
Until I went to use it.
Turns out, while she bought it at Home Depot and it was covered in Home Depot liveried cars, it was ACTUALLY to the NASCAR store.
So I ended up ordering a Team Chevrolet jacket.
Oh well….
Ouuuuuch
From the outside that is pretty funny. Really have to lean into “it’s the thought that counts.”
So what gift card did Mercedes get?
Third worst I think are gift cards that force you to spend money. These are gift cards to some place that you may not already go but are for too little to make a full purchase. A friend recently sent my wife a $5 Starbucks gift card. We almost never go there, and nowadays $5 doesn’t even cover an entire drink.
Second worst are generic gift cards. They are just like inconvenient cash or check. It doesn’t force you to use the money for something fun and it still forces you to screw around. I got a $250 gift card from work a few months ago, and I spent it on a utility bill. At least from work it makes sense because I think it smooths out some of the tax issues and annoyances with small bonuses like that.
Absolute worst for me would be any size, but especially a high amount, gift card to some place I dislike, am morally opposed to, or can’t enjoy. We got a $100 gift card to some weird suburban Italian restaurant once. It’s bad for two main reasons: it makes me feel bad for being ungrateful, like any off-the-mark gift, and it makes me feel sad for the missed possibility of having that money to use for something we would actually be excited about. These are best to regift if possible.
The tax issue is key here. Where I worked, it wasn’t worth it to make someone fill out a 1099 (and process it…) when they are owed a couple hundred bucks. Visa giftcard it is!
I usually take those and just buy myself an Amazon gift card with it. I know I’ll spend it there eventually, and it never expires or accumulates fees like most prepaid debit cards like that do.
$69 to European Wax Center – Insulting to get, mortifying to redeem.
This may be the most devious one.
Well OBVIOUSLY the person who gave it to you thinks YOU’RE HAIRLY LIKE A GORILLA!!!
LOL
A $50 gift card to Massage Envy, where the cheapest “massage” is easily into the $100’s and most require some monthly plans that cost $100’s more…my wife received one as a gift and when we went to check it out, we noped out of there!
The worst gift card I’ve ever received was a $5 gift card to Cinnabon (from an employer, shocking). This is insulting on multiple levels:
#1: I’m not 100% sure $5 buys you a full size Cinnabon. Even back then.
#2: Eating a full size Cinnabon doesn’t entirely make sense. It has to be a desert right? You can’t like, eat a fucking Cinnabon in the middle of the day? Right? I am by no means a health nut, but a Cinnabon in the middle of the day seems like something you’d have to plan a whole day around, and you’d have to be very, very stoned to do so (eh maybe this isn’t the worst idea).
#3: The nearest Cinnabon was 140 miles away in a NYS Thruway rest area.
I think #3 is actually the biggest problem, then #1.
#2, I guess you just don’t live near any malls. I’ve only ever eaten Cinnabon at a mall, it’s a common part of the mall-day experience. Like getting Orange Julius!
I actually worked at a mall when I received this gift card (this was probably back in 2008). That mall had no Cinnabon. The next closest mall didn’t either. The mall 50 miles away had one, but it closed down a number of years prior.
Edit: I think that particular mall still, somehow, has an Orange Julius. Which is oddly comforting to me.
There’s an outlet mall near me that has an Orange Julius. On the odd chance I’m there, I do get one just to amp the mall experience up even more. Sadly, it’s one story, so no huge center court fountain to drink it by.
You’re better off. Most of the mall fountains around here have run dry. I miss a good mall. And neon. I miss neon decorative lighting.
You know what is still around at malls? Chrome plated display racks. They must be insanely well made or somehow are still selling to the stores there. Either way, they haven’t changed much since the 80s. Wow.
On the other hand, it would border on performance art to drive a combined 280 miles to redeem your $5 at Cinnabon.
Jim Gaffigan has a whole bit about Cinnabon that addresses #2.
Somehow I forgot about the Jim Gaffigan bit, subconsciously ripping that off with #2, lol.
I absolutely could eat an entire Cinnabon, ANY time of day.
(Not regularly of course)
> You can’t like, eat a fucking Cinnabon in the middle of the day? Right?
Watch me
Ew, no. 😛
My favorite useless gift card: money from jury duty ($10 per day) paid on a Visa card that charges fees if you use it. It’s a middle finger from the court system ‘thanking’ you for your service.
The loophole of the card is it will let you transfer from the card into your checking account without a fee that was buried in the fine print of the card agreement.
I’ve been called to jury duty twice, about 20 years apart. Both times I was compensated at a rate of $10/day. Though I was excused from work (as legally required) and was salaried, both employers required me to turn over the jury duty payments or else they’d dock my salary for each day of jury duty.
The gift card sounds like a good idea to me (though in the most recent case, my boss would have demanded the gift card and then spent it on himself).
In my Juris-my-diction-crap you can decline the payment from the court. Which I always do, as I’m already being compensated for my time and it’s not worth the hassle.
Good to know – thanks!
dude, my job only required me to show them the signed paper saying I was at jury duty to still get my salary, I didn’t have to give them the ~$10 compensation rate. we get the option to donate it at the courthouse, or a check.
Your employers were much nicer than mine.
Not sure if this is stupid, or just sort of mean, but a $100 gift card to Victoria’s Secret, or better yet, some boutique lingerie store, for your single guy friend. That’s something he can’t pass off to a family member or friend without it being awkward, so he’s forced to either double down and upgrade his personal wardrobe (hey, no kink shaming here), or hold onto it for some future relationship, where he gets to obsess internally over “how many dates before it’s ok gift someone underwear??”
I recently (jokingly) offered my happily married friend a referral code to my divorced parenting communication app. That’s sort of the opposite?
Back in college I was part of a white elephant gift exchange with a bunch of other single college students and a guy ended up with a Claire’s gift card. He was not nearly as amused as the rest of us when nobody would steal it from him.
ALL gift cards are stupid. Some much more than others. Especially in states that permit expiration dates and monthly fees.
The LEAST stupid gift card is a VISA debit card issued by your credit union and only then if there are no fees, charges, expiration dates or other nonsense.
Want a real, no brainer gift? Give them the universal gift card: CASH. That way they decide whether they want to buy a piece of plastic.
I agree that in many situations, gift cards are stupid, and cash is preferred in many cases, but me and my brother got into this thing where we sometimes intentionally gift each other gift cards to certain specific stores pertinent to our respective hobbies.
Cash often times disappears into the whirlwind of daily life (gas, groceries, bills), and while receiving cash is surely welcome, sometimes a gift card forces us to stop and get something for ourselves for once, which can be kind of neat every once in a while.
I may not remember the exact tank of gas or groceries that someone’s cash gift ended up turning into (again, not to say I don’t appreciate it however), but I’ll likely remember the, say, side mirrors I got from Speedway Motors or Jegs or Summit with the gift card they gave me.
If you like gift cards that’s great. I despise them because they tend to benefit the issuer as an interest free loan or even as a gift depending on whether the card is lost, expires, evaporates from fees/inflation or just sits in a drawer till the heat death of the universe.
I understand they can be of benefit to folks who don’t have other cashless payment methods but for folks like that I think the aforementioned VISA debt card is the way to go.
That is a valid point, and I agree that the ones that expire or evaporate from fees are completely silly and wrong.
In most (maybe all?) states, gift cards turn into unclaimed property after long enough. I think eventually it goes to the government. Still problematic maybe but at least the issuer doesn’t have a financial incentive to prevent redemption.
Slight change to my comment. The stupidest gift card would be a universal gift card of CASH in a defunct currency like 500 French Francs.
Tbf those bills were neat. Not that you’d see them very often.
https://www.leftovercurrency.com/app/uploads/2016/11/500-french-francs-banknote-blaise-pascal-obverse-1.jpg
It is a good looking bill, suitable for framing even.
Unfortunately not suitable for much else anymore. Except maybe as a gift of nostalgia.
My favorites were the 50F notes:
https://villers-collections.fr/WebRoot/Store20/Shops/e673a548-6679-4b40-9738-0bb3f1ac4c84/542A/D92D/7A25/711F/383C/0A48/354C/8164/Billet_50_FR_-klm_ml.jpg
I used to have a US dollar bill that I’d got in change from a Thai airport, and as I’ve never been anywhere near America it wasn’t much use to me.
I found that it made a great bookmark, it’s as thin as paper, but much more hard wearing. I have no idea what happened to it, I think it’s probably tucked in the back of one of my books…
This is a good one. There was a house in my current neighborhood that gave out coins from defunct currencies on Halloween. There is no other look of disappointment on a kids face from finding out the “money” they received is valueless.
The stupidest gift cards are the ones that charge a fee to purchase and then reduce the balance each month they’re not spent. Years ago, my mom gave me a Mastercard gift card like that. If she’d been smart she would have just given me the $105 or whatever that it cost.
Other annoying gift cards are ones for expensive restaurants that only cover a small portion of the meal.
Any gift card that is wildly under the value of what the place sells. Like 10 bucks to a steakhouse or 100 dollars to a rolex dealer.
Finally, its time for my $25 gift card to Hermes to shine!
If Hermes even offers such a thing, it would be made out of titanium and come in a leather gift box.
And still barely cover the cost of a keychain!