We have officially entered the most dangerous phase of the corporate calendar: the Secret Santa window. It starts with a seemingly innocent sign-up sheet in the breakroom and ends with you standing in the middle of a Target at 9 p.m., staring at a row of festive mugs and wondering if your coworker actually likes aromatherapy or if they’re secretly allergic to everything. It is a high-stakes social experiment designed to test exactly how much you can learn about a person you’ve only ever spoken to about the quarterly goals.

There’s also a special kind of anxiety that comes with the $20 price limit. If you spend $15, you look like a Scrooge; if you spend $25, you’ve broken the sacred contract of the cubicle. The goal isn’t necessarily to give the best gift. It’s to give a gift that won’t be immediately regifted at the next company party.

We’ve all been there, trying to act surprised when we open a box of chocolate-covered pretzels that we saw sitting on the back seat of the gifter’s car that morning. It’s a beautiful, awkward, and entirely unnecessary tradition that we all participate in anyway because the alternative is being the office pariah.