I never thought of myself as a truly competitive person, since in my profession I never felt an intense desire to defeat other radio personalities. I was always in favor of togetherness and enjoyed the fact that most people on the radio know each other behind the scenes despite being on separate stations. When I played sports I usually just focused on my performance and wasn’t concerned about my opponent. Yet what started as a thoughtful holiday gesture has turned me into a woman obsessed with not allowing others to have better results than I.
The idea came from someone’s online post. They bought a collection of soft drinks and snacks, placed them in a box, and added a sign for delivery drivers to take something for their ride. The sign thanked them for making holiday shopping easy, and since I buy most of my gifts electronically nowadays I was going to use this idea on my own porch.
I made a special trip to the grocery store for these items, which included some small Diet Coke bottles, various crackers, and a cookie. I put them in a wooden box, made the sign, and set it in front of my door ahead of a busy week of deliveries.
The original post I saw included a video from their Ring, showing a driver visually celebrating the surprise snack. I too have a Ring and every time I had an alert someone was at the door, I scrambled to watch my unsuspecting FedEx or UPS elves grab their goods. However, no one seemed to pay attention to my gifts.
I had posted what I was doing on my social media, which inspired others to do the same thing. Yet, they reported great success and I still had all my original groceries in that box. Not feeling satisfied I moved the box to what I thought was a better position on the porch, placing it on top of another box in case these women and men were not understanding what my sign meant. Still no empty box.
Instead of being filled with holiday cheer, I tried to figure out what these others were doing and how could I beat them? How could I get a celebratory dance on my camera? How could I be the envy of the neighborhood as trucks couldn’t wait to deliver Christmas presents to my door? How could I get a note of thanks from some hungry employee who got a much-needed surge of energy from what I had provided? Did I need to go back to the store for more expensive foods?
Then I realized my undesired results likely came because of my motivation. The true meaning of a gift is to give without any concern for attention or recognition. In an age where we can report online about how our lives are going, our egos can easily get involved and give us a competitive complex. I stopped checking my Ring videos and knew the effort was enough, even if no one took a thing. And you know what? After a few days, the snacks slowly began to disappear.