I did not realize this until mid-afternoon today, so I had not done anything for my secretary. (And have I mentioned that having a secretary is really cool?) I've never had a secretary before so I am pretty clueless about what to get and how much to spend.
One of the other attorneys dropped my office at about 5:00 to make sure that I knew. She recommended flowers or a gift certificate. Personally, I am not a huge fan of the gift certificate. I mean, you might as well just hand over cash. And in certain situations it just feels strange to give cash (or its cousin the gift certificate). Besides, then the recipient knows exactly how much you think she is worth.
So I started looking at flowers. But apparently I should have started looking last week. Because the only floral arrangements available for next day delivery were icky. I really wanted a pretty flowering plant. I found a beautiful azalea topiary, but it wasn't available until the end of the week.
So I started thinking outside the box. I ended up ordering a fruit bouquet from Edible Arrangements. I have seen them in person before and they are really pretty. And my secretary is the healthy-living sort, so fruit seemed better than other kinds of goodies--although I did make sure to order a bouquet with plenty of chocolate-dipped fruit.
So what do y'all think? Is the fruit bouquet ok, or should I have just gotten over my issues and bought a GC to the mall?
5 comments:
I actually thought about a fruit bouquet (sp) as well but ended up getting a Cookie bouquet from Cookies By Design for my secretary and flowers for our office admin. I also didn't know about admin professional's day until about 2:30 when my secretary pointedly reminded me about it.
The edible arrangements are awesome! Those Cookies by Design are pretty gross actually (sorry Melissa -- my friend got me one and they tasted nasty). Having been a secretary for many years, I can tell you that most secretaries really do appreciate gift certificates. They don't really enjoy "a nice lunch out" (two hours of forced small talk with your boss?!? No thank you!) Instead of flowers, how about a plant? I got my secretary a Home Depot card and a lavender plant because I knew she was working on her house and she had mentioned that she wanted to plant some lavender (plus it smelled so good!) Even a $10 Starbucks gift card and a Hallmark card would work fine. Just the gesture is nice. What you have to watch for is flowers... If her partner gets her flowers, you can end up outdoing him accidentally. I got put in that awkward situation once with a stingy partner and an awesome associate. The partner brought a small bouquet and the associate brought in a huge, beautiful arrangement. It was awkward, to say the least.
I'm a little late on this one, but wanted to comment anyway! Gift cards are always nice, but not since you're just starting out. Once you've been there awhile and have moved up the pay scale, then more generous gifts are appropriate. I think the fruit bouquet is a lovely idea, and very thoughtful! I'm sure she appreciated it.
Thanks for the comments. My secretary genuinely seemed to like the fruit bouquet. She showed it to me after it was delivered and it was very full and pretty (probably much more so than a similarly priced bouquet of flowers)
PT-law mom, I did consider the possibility of competing floral arrangements, which is another reason I didn't go that route. But I think the partner with whom I share a secretary did a GC, because I saw a card from him on her desk that morning.
I think my firm also got all of the secretaries GC's--is that the norm? They also catered lunch for them.
I think so. The mid-size firm gave us all $50 AmEx gift cards and the BigLaw firm gave all secretaries (and paralegals) $100 AmEx gift cards. Way to keep AmEx in business. ;)
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