The gift needs to be able to come off as a genuine gift so there’s some plausible deniability…
Edit: Just so it’s clear, this is purely hypothetical. I just thought of the idea and thought it would be funny to see what a random person on Lemmy might think. This isn’t a serious request and none of the suggestions will ever actually be used.
Any gift that suggests they need to improve something about themselves, especially if they’ve never shown any interest in that. Like a gift card for skincare treatments, or teeth whitening. Maybe a self-help book, or some exercise equipment. Cologne/perfume is good for deniability, but it might come off as more romantic than intended.
Also, giving any of these gifts to make someone feel bad about themselves makes you an enormous asshole. Use your words, be honest with people, and don’t go out of your way to humiliate or irritate people you don’t like. Life’s too short to spend it scheming.
Boss gifted me lotion once. Was kinda amusing in that it sorta was an insult, but like I sometimes bleed from how bad my skin sometimes gets so it’s not like it’s some secret. I think she also apologized in case it was weird.
Doesn’t sound like an insult at all to me. She paid attention, which is great, but was… yes, weird.
If you’d met the kind of people who do this - they just don’t know anything in life they could honestly do otherwise. Sometimes they pretend to do something so well, that a fraction of the effort could be spent actually doing that instead of pretense.
But they sincerely think their ability to scheme is unchangeably better than their ability to actually do interesting things. Or maybe they take pride in that.
The point is - they treat wonderful things like something out of reach, while it clearly isn’t.