Secret Snowflake

Of all the things that could make my day stressful working with refugees and immigrants- the most surprising thing did yesterday.

Secret Snowflake.

Oh yes. It's similar to Secret Santa, but apparently when you replace the word Santa with Snowflake it alludes to something much more stressful and serious.

They told me nothing at work. Simply- Molly, you're in charge. Distribute names on Monday and email everyone a reminder about the rules. So I take 30 individual pieces of paper with names on them, fold them each up, put them in a hat, draw out names and place them in a spreadsheet with other names (oh yes, it has to be entirely random) and then send each person a personalized email letting them know who their Secret Snowflake is. Ugh. All of this on the busiest day of the week, while I'm trying to juggle immigrant information and refugee complaints and fax machine break downs and anything else people want to ask me about while I'm on the phone.

And do you know what? Apparently, that's not how they did it last year. Or so I was told after the fact. They like to be able to draw their own names. They don't all like who they got assigned to. Please tell us something about them Molly, you're the one who gave me the name!

Are we in the fourth grade? This is what I'm hearing 'Teacher, but, he's looking at me!'

We work with people who've fled their country because of persecution and I actually have people so upset about their Secret Snowflake that they won't even look at me the rest of the day! Who are these people?!