Like many companies, in March of this year, the whole CarrierDirect office went remote. We kept our friendly office culture alive by interacting via fun slack channels, weekly virtual lunch meetups, and most recently, with a virtual secret gift exchange.
The event was proposed by our new junior project manager, Caroline Cannon. Maggie Norman, our Director of People, recalls that Caroline pitched the idea within days of starting at CarrierDirect. First things first!
As Caroline had her initial meetings with various members of the team, she floated the notion of a holiday secret gift exchange by her new colleagues. With the idea being met with enthusiasm, and the fact that CarrierDirect had never hosted an event like this before, Caroline jumped in to organize and implement.
“Caroline kept everyone's spirits high with weekly reminders (in the form of poems) and made sure everyone who participated had tons of fun,” noted Maggie.
Yes, you read that right. Poems.
The invitation to participate and a reminder of the event came to us in verse:
'Tis Tuesday afternoon we have now begun,
And here I am to promote good fun!
In three days time, the survey will complete,
And then I will get to check the spreadsheet.
Hopefully I will find a full list of names,
So we can commence the fun and games.
Each full-time employee will get assigned,
To a coworker that they will keep in mind.
They will search high and low until the 10th of December,
Then a gift shall be sent to the fellow staff member.
Please, oh please, click the link below,
And while you're at it, give your best "Ho, ho, ho!"
- Caroline Cannon, Junior Project Manager and Secret Gift Exchange Organizer
Behind-the-scenes-fun for Caroline included being the messenger between gifters and giftees about status and delivery of their gifts. For now, gone are the days when you could leave an anonymous gift or note on someone’s desk while they were out for coffee.
Finally, the anticipated day came and the gift reveals commenced. Each person presented their present and took a guess at who sent it to them.
The most notable guessing game was for Caroline’s own gift. Since she organized the whole event, she knew who her secret gifter was, however, her gifter happened to be Chicago-based like Caroline, and thus was able to personally complete the final mile delivery of the gift. As a humorous surprise for the team, Caroline had doorbell video footage of this person sneakily dropping off her gift. She shared the video for the team to guess who it was.
In the dark Chicago evening, a mysterious person, decked out in CarrierDirect gear, arrived at Caroline's door with a large gift bag. As this person debated where exactly to place said gift, we hear Caroline’s dog bark, and we witness the gifter startle and run away into the night.
It was none other than our CEO, Peter Rentschler, going the extra mile, as always, with his project.
Gifts included but were not limited to:
Do we sense a new CarrierDirect holiday tradition in the making?