I'm asking you guys to see if I'm completely off base. I may be -- I grew up in a different culture and we didn't celebrate Christmas, so maybe I just don't "understand" how gifting is supposed to work. I did celebrate birthdays however so I thought I understood.
I've been with him (common law) for 8 years. He has a 13 year old son from his previous marriage.
Last Christmas he asked for a specific telescope that pairs with a computer. Sounded good. He sent me the link (kind of last minute, so the store was out of stock). I could only find the telescope in another town (3 hour round trip), so I went to pick it up. I'm just trying to point out that I did put effort into this.
It was a gift from his son and myself to him for Christmas. I also bought him a few accessories to go with it. He was very happy.
It came with a big user guide and overall it seemed kind of complicated to me personally (I admit I'm really not very tech savvy). He informed me that part of the "gift" is to actually set it up so it's user-ready.
I asked his son to set it up but he played with it a bit and said he wasn't sure how. I told my partner we weren't sure how to set it up, hoping that he'd just set it up himself because he had requested this specific telescope and he IS tech savvy. He never did set it up, and asked that I just hire someone to set it up as part of the gift.
I found someone on Kijiji who said he'd set it up for $175. That seemed excessive and my partner said no....that we (me and his son) could probably just figure it out on our own.
I told him I didn't want to (I admit I felt intimidated by this big complicated looking telescope that works with the computer). He said it wasn't much of a gift if I didn't even get it working for him. This whole thing stressed me out so much that I just avoided the discussion and life got busy and it never did get set up.
This Christmas rolls around (1 year since we bought him the telescope, which still hasn't been set up) and he asks for a new lens thing for the telescope. This gives me a lot of stress because I know now the whole "it's up to you to set up my gift" discussion will be coming up again. He then said the only other thing he wants from me is to set up his telescope so he can use it over the holidays.
I've already decided I'll just pay someone to set it up. It's worth it at this point. And I'm sure if I really tried I could set it up myself. But my question isn't about that. I want to know if I'm totally off-base: if you ask for a specific gift, is part of the gift to also get it in working-order for you? I never thought it was (for example, if I asked for a new phone for Christmas I would assume it's up to me to set it up). But maybe I'm missing something.....
(PS I don't actually know WHY he never has tried to set it up...I don't know if it's because he doesn't know how, or if he truly believes I should put in the effort since it's his gift, which is what he is claiming).
tldr: he asked for a gift, I got it for him, now he says part of the gift is me setting it up (even though I don't know how)
Submitted December 26, 2020 at 07:23PM by Logical-Pudding7396 https://ift.tt/3pqzWhF
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