The best inexpensive employee appreciation gifts

Greg was in charge of planning the surprise birthday party for the big boss last year. We were all working from home due to COVID, naturally, so it made it hard for the guy in charge of buying the present, which was me. Greg had left the task entirely to me, but, as usual, entirely meant he had given me pointers and sent me dozens of messages with options and ideas. He can be really bossy. Not happy with all the stuff he had sent me, one week before the day, he casually told me a story about inexpensive employee appreciation gifts his wife’s company was sending out to its employees. He went on and on in endless audios, which of course, I just listened half-though. I caught the words inexpensive gift ideas for employees and thought he was kidding. It was the boss, and everyone was chipping in. We had to go big, like that time HR gifted us all with a inexpensive team building gifts, but bigger. And then, I had an idea, and I submitted it to the group chat: “how about we think of ideas for presents of things made by ourselves to give him this year.” I remembered how much he liked it when Rosie brought home-made brownies for breakfast last year. Everyone was so supportive. I setup an excel file in a Google Doc called “Birthday Present Ideas” and sent the link to the whole group. And then, I thought that it could be a great idea to use some of the money chipped in to send appreciation gifts to the whole group. Kind of a souvenir to the party, like maybe coffee mugs with the company logo we could all use to toast that day and then keep. Yeah! It was a great idea.

The Google Doc was bursting up with ideas, and we still had one week left before the party. Everybody thought the personalized mug was such a unique gift for employees that I went ahead and cross them off already. I started to skim through the ideas pitched by the rest of the team and found some cool options, like a breakfast delivered to his home or a gift card to his favorite sporting goods store. Stacy built on from my unique employee appreciation gifts and suggested some employee appreciation gift bag ideas also. This was shaping up to be a great party already. At least to the extent that was my responsibility. Nobody knew what Greg was doing himself. It seemed that he had delegated all the tasks. But nobody dared ask him either. We would have to wait and see in a week’s time. I wanted to do something cool, and so I became obsessed both with finding the perfect meaningful gifts for employees as souvenirs for the party and with going through the shared file to build on other’s ideas. The mug was going to be a hit, and everybody would get one, not only the birthday person, which was an extra thought.

I could not find the right mug for the occasion, though. I found a wholesale that advertised staff appreciation gifts under $5, but it didn’t have any mugs, only pens and calendars. Maybe I could choose some other cheap staff appreciation gifts, but my heart was set on the mugs already. The shared file was a bit slow that day, so I decided to take matters in my own hands and added a few options for cakes and cupcakes. I even suggested who should do them. I knew who the bakers in the group were! Greg himself did great drinks, but as we were all going to be home this time, I didn’t think we could have a drink delivered to each one in the team. But we could definitely include a cupcake in each gift bag, together with some inexpensive motivational gifts for employees. Yeah, the drinks were off the table. Maybe a thermos with coffee so we could all toast with it on our new mugs! Now, that was an idea. I still had to find someone to make the mugs, though. And there were only five days left already. I was burning the midnight oil that night until I found the perfect mug maker.

I decided to go up a little higher with the price and searched a site offering employee appreciation gifts under $10. They had some mugs there, yeah! Finally. However, they would not engrave the company logo and the birthday party motto. So, I had to dig a bit deeper. I decided to ask the team if anyone knew some suppliers that could do this, so I went to the shared file and saw an entry from Linda, from the front desk. I didn’t remember any Linda that worked the front desk, but then again, it had been over a year since I had seen the front desk and my memory was not that great either, so I didn’t give it much thought. Her idea was awesome! “Why don’t we all sing Happy Birthday together to kick off the party that day?” That was gold. The boss would love that. It seemed that Linda knew him well, and she was on to something. I saw Pete had left a link of a site for unique gifts under $10 the day before and I went to check it out. They sold personalized gifts under $10 there, and what was promising was that there were plenty of mug shots on its home page.

I sent an email to the page proposed by Pete and decided to call it a night. I received a page worth of staff appreciation gifts during covid ideas back from them the following morning. It looked like remote employee appreciation gifts were in vogue those days. A lot had changed in businesses the previous year and a half, and most businesses had gone along and adapted their offers to the present times. Those were the survivors. Who would have known I would find what I had been looking for under covid employee appreciation gifts. Finally, the personalized mugs I wanted, with the option to engrave anything on them, plus the company logo of choice! And they were delivered in 48 hours, which was perfect, as it left me a day to prepare the gift bags, which Pete had already purchased and moreover, he had said he was picking up Rosie’s cupcakes and coming to my place to help me set the bags up. All that was to do now was to think about delivery to each house that day. We were only six, so that was not much. I had to get the addresses and see who would volunteer.

We also had to practice the birthday song. I setup a meeting to practice for the following morning. I would tell them about the mugs then. And I could make sure everything was going as planned with the rest of the stuff, like the coffee and the cupcakes. I would not mention the cheap bulk gifts for coworkers I had found and was going to include as well. Those were meant to be a surprise for them all. After all, gift ideas for employees on a budget had in fact given me the idea to use part of the budget for a surprise last-minute addition. Now, what birthday song to choose? The standard Happy Birthday or something more personalized? I had time now I had found those bulk employee appreciation gifts and had taken care of delegating all other tasks. I had heard some complaints on the singing from some of the members of the team, but come on! It was just a zoom song. Nobody was going to record it or anything. Plus it was a team effort, not some individual karaoke like the end of the year party of 2015, when they had filmed me singing at the top of my lungs.

On the day prior of the party I wanted to add some more gifts to the bag, but Greg talked me out of it. I almost purchased more personalized employee appreciation gifts. It seemed I was getting obsessed one more time, this time with gifts for employees. Obsession was something that ran deep in me those days. Gosh! That was the last time I would volunteer to plan for a virtual birthday party. Luckily, virtual gifts for employees were easy to purchase, but my desire to be a perfectionist wouldn’t let me enjoy any part of it. During the rehearsal song meeting, I realized it was harder than anticipated to be able to all sing in tune. And Linda was conspicuous by her absence. I thought about calling it off, but the morning of the birthday everything came out just as planned. We sang beautifully and everybody loved their bags. When we were about to wrap things up, the boss had a confession to make. The was no Linda, and he, as he had admin rights to all the Google Docs files, had discovered the party planning shared doc and had included the birthday song idea. We would get even soon!