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.
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.