There's a shop in York which sells soap. It's called the Yorkshire Soap Company, strangely. I'd guess that most of their customers go in there to buy soap. I went in once and had a look around. I must point out that I didn't want any soap, I just wanted to look at soap. It's not a hobby of mine, I just like unusual things. Right next door to the soap shop in York there is a shop called 'The Imaginarium' which I also went in because it was full of weird curiosities and it had a full-sized model of the mechanical bird from the 80s version of 'Clash of the Titans' in the window. If there's a way to get me into a shop, it's that!
The soap in this soap shop serves two purposes. Firstly, it sells soap you would buy and use yourself to clean the parts that need it and secondly, it sells the type of soap you would never buy for yourself and use but you would buy and give to other people as a novelty gift for birthdays, Christmas and International Soap Day. As you can see from the picture below, they sell a type of soap that's a bit in the middle - it's soap in the shape of a cupcake. It looks nice, smells nice and, whilst not that practical, is a nice addition to any bathroom.
There is another soap that they sell. It's not practical in the slightest and you definitely wouldn't want it in your bathroom for any reason. This soap is in the form of a goldfish in a bag. It's not been long since fairgrounds were still able to give goldfish away as prizes for hooking ducks and knocking coconuts off sticks. I don't know if it's just me but although this isn't an actual live goldfish, it still make me feel a bit uneasy.
When I saw this for the first time, I wondered what sort of person would buy this. Actually, not so much the sort of person but the reason someone would buy this. The only scenario I could think of was that horrific time of year when someone you don't like, in the office you work in (of which there are scores), suggests you all do Secret Santa.
'Yay', everyone thinks, 'having to part with money I don't have to buy useless things for people I don't like.' What could be more fun?
Then, you've got to spend some of your own personal time, trying to find something that won't offend the person you're buying for and, most importantly, not show how much you hope that person either gets a job at a company many many miles away from here or moves to the other end of the building, works for another team and you'll never bump into them in the staff canteen and have to make small talk over the microwave.
I get that Secret Santa is supposed to be a fun exercise in bringing people who don't normally interact in the workplace, together. It's a time to be jolly and thankful. It's a time when you have to try and smile and be pleasant to that horrible one who hates everyone who does the invoices in the corner and grumbles to herself whenever someone's chair makes a squeak.
What I'm saying is, as an introvert, there's definitely more of me that doesn't want to receive a game called 'Pie Face' for which I have no use, and have to buy a light-up bluetooth fidget spinner I saw on a dodgy market stall outside TK Maxx in town in return. In my experience, it's always revealed who is buying for who anyway so the 'secret' bit of the Secret Santa is redundant. When you hand over that Goldfish in a Bag Soap, the person on the receiving end will never shut up about it for years and even leave it on his desk as a talking point.
'That's weirdly specific', I hear you say. Yes, yes it is because it happened at a company I worked for not long ago. One of the lads had got the very fish-in-a-bag-soap as a secret santa, told everyone who came into the office about it and left it on his desk for over a year in order to point to it David Brent-style and tell the same story over and over again.
It got too much for me so one day when he was off, I took the goldfish soap and threw it in the bin. When he came back and asked where it was, I said it must have been the cleaners or something. For this reason, I will be triggered by the words 'Santa' and 'Secret' when used in the same sentence forever more.
So lets all do away with the whole charade and just get together for two minutes on the 20th December each year and exchange five pound notes - that way I can get back to playing solitaire and longing for hometime.
Merry Christmas!
