Corporate Thank You Gift Baskets

When you work for a corporation, you talk to people you didn’t even know worked there every day. My office was on the 7th floor, and I was lucky if I knew anyone from the 6th or 8th.

So, when a DM on Slack from Jake Roberts popped up, I thought nothing about it. He was just asking “for his boss” about unique corporate gifts, specifically corporate thank you gift baskets. He went on a spiel about how his department was trying to get better results from their team and boost morale.

Jake obviously knew how we kept spirits high in the office, so I shared the information. I told him which department to go through, who he needed to speak to, and what information they would need for a purchase order.

Jake seemed nice. He asked polite and reasonable questions. He even started to slowly bring up other people; some were on my team. Jake must know them, right? It was all friendly and seemed totally legit.

When I left the office that night, it started to feel sort of weird that a conversation about customized corporate gifts lasted most of the day and started to feel sorta personal.

I didn’t know that Jake had his own idea about what corporate gifts for employees should be. And it wasn’t fruit.

The next day I headed into the office. I wasn’t even thinking about Jake. I had gotten good at having amnesia about nonsensical day-to-day things. I knew what I needed to get done today, and that was all I had on my mind - until I went to make myself a cup of coffee before going to my desk.

“Did someone named Jake Roberts ask you about corporate gift baskets for employees yesterday?” Anna was waiting in line behind for subpar office coffee.

I answered with a simple, “Yeah, why?” I was still barely paying attention, I had piles of paperwork on my desk that required me, and I had wasted too much time yesterday.

Anna’s voice turned into a sudden whisper, “He mentioned that Ro from HR gets luxury corporate gift baskets for every five employees that she gets through the onboarding process successfully.”

“Hold. The. Hell. Up. That can’t be true, right? I don’t even get luxury gift baskets for perfect surveys, and she gets them for just having people sign shitty documents?”

It didn’t even dawn on us that Jake wasn’t real or that he was starting shit. He was on our Slack channels and obviously asking more than one of us about things that only people in the company would even know.

After the weird morning exchange, I went to my desk and began doing my tedious work like usual. About mid-morning, I got a ping. It was a DM from good old Jake.

It started normal enough. Jake thanked me profusely for explaining how office gift baskets worked on the 7th floor and that his department decided to send their remote team members a home office gift basket.

I let Jake know I was busy, but I was glad I was helpful. I thought that was the end of it, until after lunch.

Anna tip-toed to my desk and, in the same conspiratory whisper to let me know that Jake told her that the remote workers were getting better office gift baskets than we did and for less work.

Anna then timidly mentioned that she told Jake that a specific employee who worked from home was known to miss Zoom meetings. She thought it was because she always had a hangover.

I told her in a not-so-polite tone that I had work to do, and the stupid gift basket drama was not worth either of our time.

Anna had not taken my tone personally. We had worked together for years, and she knew that my stress level got higher the later in the week it got. No about of corporate gifts made it easier, or even less tedious.

Half of the office had beaten me there when I came in the next day. And, well, that was super strange, and I was instantly convinced someone had died.

Nope, Jake had somehow gotten a supposed complete list of corporate gift baskets for employees. It was in spreadsheet form with names, the reason, and dates. Here’s the thing - I knew it was total bullshit because I was on that list, and I sure as shit knew I hadn’t gotten a gift basket in a year, not even a gift basket for group work.

But, because Jake had obviously put too much time and effort into this ‘database,’ everyone was up in arms and, believing it all, hook-line-and-sinker.

The cell that contained the reasons for the rewards is what really caused a shit show. It was as juicy as any Venmo payment leak and included everything from ‘FAVORS’ to “FUN WEEKEND.”

Jake wasn’t happy with just a list. He started blowing up all of our DM’s with fuller explanations for the corporate gifts, and by the time we got off of work, the office had turned into a full-on dumpster fire.

Friday came around, finally, but no one seemed to care. The only thing they cared about was that Joe Blow got one of the best custom gift baskets for taking the boss’ kid to a baseball game, while Tammy Toe and Timmy Thumb didn’t get a corporate gift basket for employees even after hundreds of cold calls.

I just assumed by Monday, this would just go away. It was not abnormal to have a weird few days in the office. We all had unique personalities, and sometimes they would collide. But this was stupid, and it followed us into Monday.

Then Tuesday, then Wednesday, and before we knew it, it had escalated again. Jake sent out a complete list of personalized corporate gift baskets for clients and which one of us they came from and why we sent it.

Thank Christ my name wasn’t on this particular list, but it didn’t stop me from having to answer questions. When asked whether or not it was true that one of our bosses was having an affair with both an employee and a client, I lost it.

I felt like my head was going to explode as people on nearly every floor were cross-referencing these Excel spreadsheets and coming up with new theories of who was doing what with who and on what days. It was a shit show.

It never occurred to us that Jake Robers might not even exist. It had stopped being about him days ago. Which is what this person wanted.

After that initial conversation with Anna, I didn’t hear Jake Roberts’s name. No one would say it out loud. It was like a curse word that we all knew existed but were trying to hide to protect our reputation.

Over the next few weeks, things sort of started to get quiet. I stupidly assumed because everything had stopped. I wasn’t getting messages from Jake anymore because I may have used not-so-professional language to tell him his list was bullshit and to leave me out of whatever drama he was trying to create.

The corporate gift baskets for employees stopped, but that wasn’t unusual. There was an ebb and flow of productivity in our office.

About a month after the first message from Jake, Anna came to me with a new list of gourmet gift baskets that Jake Roberts sent her. We looked it over together and had a big laugh. Our very married, very lesbian team leader was listed as a recipient of one of the best luxury gift baskets on the market and was from the CEO for a ‘wild weekend.’

Jake had given away his hand, and now everyone was saying his name. The back and forth gossip of illicit affairs and stolen moments were now being revealed as a huge ruse.

But what now? Who was Jake Roberts? Why did he have it in for everyone? Who hurt his soul so much that he spent weeks fucking with us? Did someone in his life withhold love and never send him unique gift baskets?

Once we all started comparing notes after the latest list of luxury corporate gifts, Jake Roberts stopped DMing and disappeared from our Slack chats.

The lists made their rounds, even after Jake was long gone. When the top people in the company got ahold of them, they directed the IT department to track everything from those weeks of conversations. They wanted to know if the crazy came from inside the building.

We won’t ever know because IT can’t find a trail, and to this day, they take it a huge loss and don’t want to talk about it.

However, we love to talk about it. We send each other the most ridiculous lists with even more absurd info in the memos. We’ve even started a list of unique client gift ideas, which we make sure everyone knows is a joke.

It does help us come up with good ideas, though. Jake didn’t even realize he got our imagination juices flowing and seemed to break the boring funk we were in.

Our branded corporate gifts are better than ever, our surveys come back with helpful feedback, and we make sure we laugh about Jake Roberts at least once a week and secretly thank him for a few weeks of excitement and a lifetime of stories.