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Steve
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I would first consider all possible alternatives to asking for the item back.

Is the item so expensive that it can't sensibly be written off? I would suggest that anything worth (to you) a good day's pay or less can be written off.

Secondly, is the item still going to be giftable to your daughter once it is unwrapped, manhandled, used, and the box or wrapping potentially thrown away? There's no point asking for second-hand goods back.

Thirdly, if the gift can't be replaced in time for Xmas, is your daughter old enough to have a sense of humour about the situation and wait for a new order to be delivered to you after Xmas? A wry honesty about the situation would likely be the best policy.

Others have mentioned the potential for workplace issues to arise, such as a perception of favouritism that may arise if the gift is of obviously higher value than the others.

if special treatment of this one employee can't be retrospectively justified (e.g. by being the only woman on the team, by being lower paid than others, by long service, by her particular role and closeness to you, or by a genuinely outstanding work ethic), then once again honesty and humour may be the best policy.

Let her know that there was an ordering error by your wife, but that you'd like her to keep the gift anyway. Perhaps you can couch the approach in terms that you wouldn't want the outsized value of the gift to look unseemly - you still want to collect the gratitude for gladly making the gift, you just wouldn't want it to imply an unprofessional motive, but rather that a blunder has put you in the position of being able to make a randomly chosen employee extra happy this Xmas.

If you still find a compelling reason to ask for the return of the item (and it would be interesting to hear that reason), then the only possible thing to do is to be braced for the mild ill-will you might create, explain the situation, and ask when you may be able to collect.

Steve
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