17th Dec 2007
Ms. Theologian Passes on Rugelach for the Boss
Dear Ms. Theologian,
My boss of nearly four years, a wonderful awesome person, is Jewish, and I’d like to make him some Rugelach for the holidays. But is that uncool? Is that overly religious?
-Wondering
Dear Wondering -
Ms. Theologian loves the idea of giving your boss a Great Boss gift (though, of course, boss gifting raises other ethical concerns, which GhostGirl can speak to as she is frequently boss gifted). And Ms. Theologian is even more thrilled to hear that you have a boss that could be described as wonderful and awesome. This is a rarity in her experience.
But she is not so sure about the rugelach. There are two questions here for Ms. Theologian:
1. Are we assuming that because your boss is Jewish he likes rugelach? Ms. Theologian thinks we are, and this makes her ethically (and theologically) squeamish, because there are all sorts of assumptions that we make about people based on their presumed culture and religion, which may or may not be true.
2. What “holidays” are we talking about? Just the “holiday season” (one of Ms. Theologian’s hated phrases)? Christmas? Hannukah? Because it ended on the 12th, right? And we do know that many of Ms. Theologian’s Jewish friends are quite annoyed with pressure to celebrate Hannukah in a big way as if it’s a “Jewish Christmas.”
So, Ms. Theologian thinks you can do the following: a. make rugelach for the entire office or b. make cookies or something else small and edible for your boss. But Ms. Theologian suggests passing on making rugelach for your boss unless you’ve had a conversation like this:
Him: I just love rugelach!
You: Really? Because I love to cook.
Him: If only someone would make me rugelach for work in the middle of of December!
So, make the rugelach for the office, or make cookies for the boss, but Ms. Theologian advises skipping the combination of rugelach made for the boss despite your good intentions.
-Ms. Theologian
P.S. If you’d like to write to Ms. Theologian, send an email to ms dot theologian at gmail dot com.
Rugelach for the whole office gets my vote. I looked it up on Wikipedia and it looks tasty!
It’s really good.
I’ve added a link. I particularly like it with chocolate. Of course, I like anything with chocolate.
Regarding point number, Hannukah was, at least until the 1890s, an admittedly minor Jewish holiday. But at the insistence of the Zionists who wanted to celebrate a military victory and a desire to compete with the overwhelming force of Christmas, it was bolstered in importance.
From the POV of a boss–As my own boss says “Gifts flow downhill, not uphill.” I give my peeps gift cards every year–I’m uncreative, and that’s pretty much the standard anyway here. It makes me DEEPLY uncomfortable when they give me something in return.
One person gave a GC of $5 more than I gave–ACK. Another person (who is ALWAYS trying to give me gifts) gives me things I will never use.
It makes us bosses uncomfortable because it smacks of bribery. Also, we want to reward you for a job well done. The way to do this for employees is generally monetary in some way. The proper way for employees to thank their bosses is with a sincere thank you. That’s all we want. Seriously.
That said, small, homemade gifts of food are appreciated. They aren’t expensive (remember, we know your salaries… and that doubles the discomfort, because believe me, my Xmas bonus was much, much bigger than theirs) and we can share them with others in the office, which gives us pleasure and removes any burden from us of having to use said gift when we don’t want it.
The other issue that I neglected to bring up is that it’s tricky to fix someone a special cultural food (assuming the boss likes and is open to receiving rugelach in the first place). Like with baklava, I consider most of what is eaten to be an abomination.