The best employee appreciation day gift ideas

We all knew Phillip was retiring in two weeks time. He had made an announcement during our last weekly status Zoom call. Greg was in charge of organizing the retirement party. As usual, he delegated most tasks, and I was in charge of presents again. I nailed the personalized employee appreciation gifts in one party and now I would be doing that forever. Not that I’m complaining. Phillip was easy. Unlike that time when I had to prepare the gift bags for the boss’s party and I filled them with gifts for employees appreciation as well. Yeah. It seems that the team liked that too much. I will have to make a souvenir for the retirement party as well. But now, mugs were out of the question, as I did that for the previous party. Maybe I could revisit the other party’s shared doc and check out the remote employee appreciation gifts site that someone had suggested again. However, the more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that here was something fishy about Phillip’s retirement. He had said many times before that he would never retire; he would never be able to live without working or filling his days with things to do. Maybe that thought had changed after one and a half years working from home, though. We’ve all been changed by these pandemic times. It’s possible he has been having a blast at home surrounded by his family and working from his couch. It has had its ups and downs for all of us. I couldn’t picture him doing nothing either. Maybe it was because he had said it himself so many times. It stuck with me. And then it hit me. Maybe he had found something else and he was planning to do it from home.

While I was browsing through the HR internal page to look for the link to the gift ideas for employees during covid site I used last time, I came across a message from Phillip that confirmed my suspicion. He was asking HR some questions on staff appreciation gifts during covid. Was he thinking about starting his own corporate gifts website? So I picked up the phone and sent him a message. Just hi and how are you and small talk for a while, but then I couldn’t resist and I plain asked him if he was really retiring or he was planning to keep doing stuff for HR on the side, like gifts for employees during covid. He said I was nuts and dismissed it, but then I asked him about his questions on the HR page and he said he was planning to buy the team something for his retirement and asked me not to say anything. I was not buying it. He had never been so caring. Maybe I’d have to talk to Jack from HR to confirm. I called him but he didn’t know anything. I’d have to go higher, to the office gossip queen herself, Rosie.

Rosie was the secretary of the boss and she made terrific brownies. Mmmm, I really miss those things from the real office. She can’t send us brownies virtually. But she can send intel. “Hi, Rosie, how are you?” It was harder with Rosie. She loved to gossip, but you couldn’t just ask directly or she’d back down. You had to talk to her first, and she loved talking. So I told her about the meaningful gifts for employees I was thinking about getting for Phillip’s retirement party. She said she had loved the personalized gifts for employees I gave them for the boss’s party. Then she went on and on about that last party and how the boss had pranked us into singing him the birthday song. I had to wait for her to finish before I could come back to the topic of Phillip’s retirement. I asked her to give me some small gift ideas for employees so I could get her to start talking about Phillip. She was delighted that I asked, and said she could bake something if I was planning to send out gift bags for all the team again. Of course I would have to. Everyone would be expecting them.

And then, I got back to the topic of interest, Phillip and his retirement, and I said I couldn’t believe he was finally going to quit working. She said she didn’t think so either, and I heard the hesitation in her voice I had been waiting for. Her whispering-a-secret voice. We all knew it. We had all used it one time or the other. I just waited. I knew she would get it out of her chest. The thing about the office gossip queen was that she couldn’t keep a secret. That’s why you went to her when you wanted something to be known, like I had done a great job with creative employee gifts that last time, or like HR was planning to give us all unique gifts under $5 for Christmas last year, when in fact they were secretly planning to give us those unique employee appreciation gifts. Anyway, we all knew how to use her skills. All of them, including the one that had earned her the title of gossip queen. She blurted it out without any more enticing from me. Someone had heard Phillip was down at HR the previous week. In person, not in a Zoom call, which was big.

I said that could mean he went there to present his resignation and plan his retirement. After all, he had given his two-week notice. But she pointed out the meeting was after his big announcement. And there was no way he would have made the announcement before talking to HR. Besides… She was about to say something else when I heard her screen blipping. It was probably another call incoming. I had lost her. “Hold on,” she said. “Don’t hang up.” That was great. She was hooked into telling me whatever she knew. If I was right, I was going to have to teach Phillip a lesson. I went over some sites that offered holiday gifts for employees during covid and employee appreciation gifts during covid-19 while I was waiting for Rosie for almost half an hour. I had written down several options already. However, if there was something phony going on, I would have to change tactics. She finally finished that other call and came back to me. “Are you still there?” “Yes!,” I almost shouted, and then tried to tone it down a bit. “I heard he was talking to Julie over there. You know she’s been in charge of christmas gifts for employees during covid.

“I don’t know, Rosie. You really think he’d go into that line of work?” She then pointed out one of Phillip’s sons run a photography shop and shots and picture frames always made the best gifts for staff appreciation. She was right. Of course. Phillip was going to go into business with his son and keep charging the company as an outsourced supplier. That was not cool. He was trying to get them to throw him a retirement party for the presents. He was not actually retiring. She needed to make him pay. It was his fault she was again trying to find cheap staff appreciation gifts. Twice in two months was a lot. She had work to do. And now she would not be able to focus on it until she thought of a great way to get back at him for that. She was browsing through the shared doc list from last party and right under gift ideas for office staff there was a pitched idea to make personalized home-made gifts for the boss, like the birthday song. That was it. He was going to get a farewell party, but she would not waste any more time looking for presents or souvenirs for it.

She would ask the team each to make a contribution. Something made by themselves. For Phillip to think about them every day after he was alone and retired, with nothing better to do than reminisce on the old office days. Perfect. Rosie had already volunteered to bake, Jackie got an idea from virtual gifts for employees her husband had received before. Something to help organize your folders at home. It was a terrible idea, but I loved it. When Greg asked how I was doing with the present and if I needed help with some gift ideas for employees on a budget brainstorming, I said I had it covered. I didn’t get into many details with him. He wouldn’t approve. But later on, I got a bit sad Phillip was not going to be part of the team anymore. So I put together a slide show with office pictures and some shots taken at Zoom calls. He was going to get teary. It was the perfect home-made gift to add. And I even threw in some inexpensive gift ideas employees would always love into the mix and ended up making great gift bags again. That was risky. I will be stuck doing this forever.