The best snack birthday gift baskets

I knew I never should have let Amanda spearhead Operation Boss Birthday Basket. The instructions were simple: find a list of things to put in a birthday gift basket, heck, just search for snack birthday gift baskets and buy one that’s already put together. But could she do just that? No. Amanda had to go and make a whole ordeal of it. I take a look at her desktop and see a spring-cleaning checklist worth of birthday ideas for our boss, Dan. Dan is an old, dust-coated artifact of a man with wrinkles like dried out riverbeds, but we love him all the same. He has been the boss for twenty-five years and has always had a bowl of snacks on his desk. His favorite thing to say is, “Gift a snack spread the joy,” and I couldn’t agree more. That’s why I thought it appropriate to buy him a simple snack basket. But not Amanda, oh no. She gives me a list, sits me at my desk and before I can blink I’m ordering next day delivery birthday gifts for her. The most random things too: a chess set, a camping tent, a basketball and air pump. Basketball was little more than chucking cinder blocks into washing machines when Dan was young, I tell Amanda, so he won’t even know what to do with that. But apparently the title of “Honorary Interim Junior Office Caretaker,” means nothing once you give Amanda the reins on Operation BBB. By the minute gifts are being added to this Google Doc page, and Amanda isn’t even at her computer most of the time. I take a look at who is fervently typing away gift ideas, and in the list of names there is one sneaking, suspicious “Anonymous Alligator” among us.

Wouldn’t you know, one of the things this Anonymous Alligator typed is “snack gift baskets for him.” Whoever this is, they know Dan well. I call out to the office that I will be combing through the internet for a snack gift box, and if anyone has any healthy snack gift ideas to please share them with me. Heads turn my way, and I try to find the Anonymous Alligator in a pair of eager eyes, but whoever it is will not be so easily caught out. Dan walks out in this moment and casually drops a note with the names of the best healthy gift baskets on the internet, then discretely retreats back to his office. This is bad. I’ve become too reckless in my search for the Alligator and now Dan knows about the main plan of Operation BBB. Now I have to take some of the Google Doc’s ideas into consideration. I open the Doc up again and it’s now grown to be several pages long. Hot Wheels cars, a kid’s bicycle, size four tennis shoes. A barbie doll, a Bowflex and a cask of whiskey. What kind of combination is that? Who is writing this stuff?

I mentally toss aside the Google Doc, Amanda, Dan, all of it. I have to focus, here and now, on finding the absolute best snack gift boxes possible. I need to go and talk to Deuce. He’s the only candy and snack gift baskets supplier within a hundred mile radius. He runs a monopoly on this stuff and if I want a snack basket delivery near me, you best believe it’s going to go through him. I’ve seen what happens when someone tries to work around Deuce, and I don’t want it happening to me, I’ve got kids at home. So I drive over to Deuce’s place, but I forgot it’s Tuesday, and Tuesdays and Thursdays are the Dastardly Deuce Choir practice days. I know in the moment that I walk through the front door that I’ve made a mistake. Twenty faces turn from their hymnals in rage. Deuce’s face is purple, someone in the back shouts, “Not Silent Night, you did NOT just interrupt Silent Night,” and I stammer out the words snack gift baskets. Deuce, still visibly peeved, tells his choir to take five. He leads me to the backyard, opens a trapdoor, and shoves me down below.

Deuce flicks on a light and my whole world is flipped upside down. There are Easter baskets, laundry baskets, what I must assume are church tithe baskets. Baskets with baskets painted on the side, baskets with smaller baskets attached like a motorcycle sidecar. There’s a pink sign that reads customized gift baskets for him, the baskets herein filled with crass, unspeakable things. One basket was made specifically for a woman who carried a baby all the way to term without her husband knowing, labeled surprise delivery gifts for him. Deuce sits me down and asks what do I need. I say I don’t know, something big, something revolutionary. No snack and chocolate gift basket will suffice this time, I need the ultimate snack gift basket. He grabs me by the arm and pulls me to a staircase, leading even deeper in the ground. The walls are warm and the whirring of machines fills my ears. Tiny orange men covered in sweat emerge from tiny gaps in the walls, holding basket handles and muttering about the quota, the quota, the quota. Deuce tells me never to repeat what I am about to see here today. Then he opens a red door.

Now, I can’t precisely tell you what I saw in there, twenty thousand leagues under. I’m not about to cross the Dastardly Deuce for you. What I can say is that two and a half hours later, once we lugged the basket to surface level, wedged it into my car trunk, and rehearsed Silent Night once more, I drove back to the office with a rare, satisfied smile on my face. I needed no more snack baskets ideas, I didn’t need to worry about the best luxury gift baskets or about what items to put in a guys gift basket or about same day chocolate delivery because it was all right there in my backseat. Getting back to the office was hell for my car though. I had to start on the brakes at least five hundred feet before any red lights and the weight made my back bumper shoot up sparks against the asphalt the whole way back. But eventually I made it back to the office, called down a dozen of the strongest men in the office, and pulled this behemoth of a basket out and put it in the warehouse. Dan might still be surprised after all.

Before Amanda could hound me about gift box ideas for her plan or the best gift baskets on the market, I simply suggested she go take a look in the warehouse. She came back with tears welling in her eyes. She begged my forgiveness for her bossiness, and I graciously picked her up off the floor, telling her to never again doubt that Don Deuce doesn’t have the best gift baskets and snack gift baskets same dat delivery east of the Mississippi. Then I say stop putting down more ideas on that Google Doc. I know it was you, I tell her, but she looks at me with blank confusion. She asks if I’m talking about the Anonymous Alligator, then shifts her eyes over toward Dan’s office, where Dan is peeping through the blinds. She says she didn’t have the heart to tell Dan that only he spells it Crissmas, not Christmas. That’s when I understood. Dan found out about the Google Doc and typed out his Christmas list for his family in hopes that we would buy some of the gifts for him! Amanda shows me the document, saying there is one more thing we can do for Dan.

So Dan wants us to sing happy birthday for him. I’m still upset over the Crissmas list thing, but I decide to give it a whirl. I call the office down to the warehouse under the false pretense of unionization in the workplace or something, and pull up a youtube video of the happy birthday song. Once I get ridiculed to another dimension for thinking anyone needed a reference for the happy birthday song, we give it a try. It sounds terrible, and I know some of their voices fizzled out at the final stanza, doing that murmur where you don’t know the words to the song but act like you do. I know we need professional help. I call up Deuce, get him to come down within the hour in exchange for my next month’s paycheck. Deuce ain’t cheap. So he shows up, tells me to please leave the room. A half hour later they are all singing about Deuce’s unique gift baskets ideas, birthday gift baskets ideas and gift basket delivery same day service. I’m royally pissed, but Dan had snuck in behind me, and he’s beaming with pride. This is the best gift he has ever received.