The only relationship here with a ceiling instead of a floor
Every other page on this site helps you avoid spending too little. This one is the opposite: at work the risk is spending too much, and it is a real risk rather than an etiquette footnote.
Against what people spend
The whole range sits under the typical amount: even the top of it, $25, is less than the $55.65 average reported by Empower (2025). That is the right end for an ordinary birthday and the wrong end for a milestone.
This is the national figure for an adult's birthday gift, not a breakdown for a colleague — no published survey we could find breaks spending down by relationship, and the per-relationship numbers you will see elsewhere carry no source.
Why the upper bound is the thing that matters
A gift creates a small obligation. Between friends and family that is fine — the ledger balances over years. Between colleagues there is no such ledger, and an expensive gift leaves the recipient owing something to somebody they see every day and did not choose.
That is why the sums here are small and the range is narrow. Ten to twenty-five dollars is not stinginess, it is the band where a gift is a pleasant gesture and nothing else. Above it, the recipient starts calculating.
What the right gift looks like
Consumable, non-personal, and needing no reciprocation. Good coffee, something to eat, a plant that is hard to kill. Nothing that has to be displayed, worn, taken home on public transport, or explained.
What makes it fail
Anything personal. Clothing, scent, anything about appearance or body. This is the failure that generates the stories, and the rule is simple: if it touches the person, it is out.
Overspending on somebody who then feels obliged to match it is the quieter failure. They will, and they will resent the arithmetic.
When this is the wrong gift
Not for a colleague you barely know. A gift from a near-stranger requires a response and provides no context for one. A card is the correct move there, and it is not a lesser one.
Not if your workplace has a policy. Many do, particularly in the public sector and in regulated industries, and they exist precisely because of the obligation problem described above.
Not anything alcoholic in a mixed or unknown group. Recovery, religion and health are all common and none of them are announced at work.
Other ideas for the same person
Sources
How these figures are produced: see our methodology.
Price ranges are our own dated estimates of what a category costs unless a published price is linked. They are not offers, and they are not a guarantee of what anything costs today — check before you buy.