Custom Corporate Gift Baskets

You ever thought about where those silly childhood games come from? Me neither. But, something happened to me a few weeks ago and a lot of my childhood memories are tainted. I’m not even sure if the best food gift baskets could cheer me up at this point.

Anyway, I work for an amazing company, and I don’t say that lightly. Trust me, I’ve had a lot of jobs over the years. Boss Gifts offers a platform that sells customizable gift baskets for him and her. As fun as my job is, there’s a TON of paperwork involved, especially at the close of a sales quarter. We had so much paperwork at the end of the last quarter, we just couldn’t find a fair way to divvy it up without ticking someone off. I guess in a way, it was a good sign—all the paperwork meant that we’d sold about a million customized baskets.

After much arguing, bargaining, and dispute, our boss, Billie Jean, stepped in with a solution.

“Alright folks, listen up. I know how we can fix this, and it may actually be a little fun,” he said. Our ears were pricked at that point. This fun that he spoke of, was a rarity out of his mouth, so we really did want to know more. “Since no one wants to do all the paperwork for our incredible custom corporate gift baskets, I propose we have a little healthy competition. We’re going to play a game. Hangman, maybe you've heard of it—it happens to be in our personalized toy basket.” Now, this sounded interesting.

“And, whoever wins, gets one of our best gourmet gift baskets. However, the loser—the last one to guess the word—they get no gift basket and all the paperwork.”

And that’s where this whole debacle started.

So, there we were, facing an office-wide hangman competition. Billie Jean gave us all a small whiteboard and instructed us each to add thirteen blanks across the bottom for a thirteen-letter word. He said he knew just what word to use—one no one would ever guess right off, but we could all relate to.

We did just as instructed. I got a little creative and even drew a bunch of office gift baskets around the whole whiteboard. I knew I was going to win. Hangman was my game—mastered in the fourth grade when my teacher had us play to win one of those unique gift baskets for students.

There were eight of us total in the office that day handling all the corporate gift baskets for employees, counting me and not counting Billie Jean. His role would be to go from desk to desk and allow us to guess letters in between catching calls about unique corporate gifts and gift baskets for employees working from home. He would be making the necessary marks for our “hangman” when we missed.

“And, so let’s begin …” I caught a call about unique corporate gift baskets as the bossman started making his rounds.

You could tell by watching facial expressions and the boss what was going on at each desk. He would stand beside the person, they’d scratch their head, stroke their beard, and bite their nails, and then propose a letter. If they got it wrong, it was always an eye roll, a sigh, or forehead slap in exasperation. If they got the letter right, it was a smile, a chuckle, or a quick “Thank You” mouthed at the ceiling.

As I was talking to a cool guy about luxury corporate gift baskets, Billie Jean made his way to me. I quickly speed-talked through the company spiel about corporate gift baskets with logo tags and corporate gifts for employees before sealing the deal on new luxury gift baskets for the client.

“Go ahead, Kenna. Let’s hear your guess’” he said.

I thought about things, like really thought about them and whether that word could be related to the company. I thought about corporate gift baskets for clients and then corporate gift baskets for employees. But then, it hit me, the word was probably not related to office gift baskets at all.

In the end, I decided to take the safe route that always proved fruitful in the past. I’d start by guessing the most frequently used letters in the English language, from the most used to the last: e-t-a-o-i-n s-h-r-d-l-u.

“E,” I offered, fingers crossed.

“Incorrect,” Billie Jean said, bending over to draw a hangman base on my board. Thirteen letters and no E? What kind of word could this be? Crap!

Billie Jean kept making his rounds. I sold a ton of custom corporate gifts within the first few hours. My productivity was off the chain—I’d never sold custom corporate holiday gifts so fast. I even sold a freaking batch of personalized business products.

By the fourth round, I had two As and two Os on the board, but I was still no closer to guessing the secret word. I got a little disheartened after about round eight when I realized the two ladies in charge of custom logo corporate gifts and personalized business gifts for clients had already guessed the word.

It was around lunchtime when four of us all guessed the word, one right after another. The word had nothing to do with corporate gifts for employees or unique custom gifts at all. That stupid thirteen-letter word was definitely something we should all know quite well: papyrophobiac. I suppose he was right to use that word since we were all so obviously terrified of getting stuck with all that paperwork.

When the game resumed after lunch, it was down to two remaining players.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I was tickled pink that I’d guessed the word, got out of the paperwork, and managed to sell a ton of luxury corporate gifts and luxury branded gifts in one day. However, by around an hour before quitting time, I was getting pretty fed up with hangman.

There were two employees left. Jalinger, normally responsible for upscale client gifts accounts, and Crabtree, in charge of executive corporate gifts. Let me just say this before my story takes a turn, these are two of the smartest guys I know. I mean, they have to be because they handle gift ideas for VIP clients. But after round after round of them guessing the same ten letters at a time and even tossing in a few numbers and punctuation marks, I had questions about their true intelligence.

It’s hangman. The game’s easy, and technically, there are only twenty-six letters to guess. This doesn’t take the same kind of science that’s required for selling luxury corporate gifts for employees. Yet, they just couldn’t get it.

Poor Billie Jean, I guess he must’ve explained the rules to the two of them a dozen times and gave them a million chances. And, since he didn’t want the game ending in a tie, he just kept making their hangmen more and more elaborate. I swear, when I walked by Jalinger’s desk, his whiteboard looked like the hangman had on a full outfit, earrings and all, and was actually holding gourmet gift baskets in each hand.

When it hit five o’clock, the game still wasn’t over. We still had no idea who lost. Even worse, the next day we had to come up with plans for the best corporate gift baskets and best luxury gift baskets, and the game just continued between the two of them.

Corporate gift baskets for employees are a good idea, and I was beginning to think that maybe we needed to male some unique gift baskets for Jalinger and Crabtree with some kind of tee shirt to commemorate the day neither of them could lose at hangman.

“Is it corporate gift baskets with logo?” Jalinger guessed.

“Is it best US gift baskets,” Crabtree asked.

“Is it office gift baskets?” Jalinger asked, and I swear it went on like this all day.

By day five, we were all beginning to get the idea that Jalinger and Crabtree had something up their sleeve—possibly a hatred of luxury corporate gifting companies and high-end corporate gifts. For all intents and purposes, I really thought the duo from the gift ideas for VIP clients department was trying to get fired.

By the end of day five, Billie Jean had mentioned the idea that maybe they should just flip a count, but Jalinger and Crabtree were ready to let us all know the jig was up. There would be no coin flipping, no corporate gifting companies in USA, or high-end corporate swag.

“Here’s the thing, y'all. We’ve done this to teach you—employees of the top corporate gifting companies—a lesson.” We were all quite confused by Jalinger’s statement.

“You see, Hangman is a mockery of everything we stand for—luxury branded gifts and luxury corporate gifts for employees. You won’t even see hangman as one of the luxury corporate gifts UK-style because of its history. Hangman was built upon a horrible idea that top corporate gifting companies know nothing about,” Crabtree supplied.

“What’s hangman based off of anyway?” I had to ask.

“Look it up,” Jalinger and Crabtree said together, and then divided up the paperwork between the two of them.