Purchasing items for the office.

[susans]

What are some of the more fun items you have purchased for your office?  Do you ever order something special for you?   I am guilty of purple pens, and colored post its.  As for fun things, we had a celebration at a bio tech company I worked for,  first years - first billion dollars, on top of planning a fun party in a aviation musuem, I got to order custom made glass pieces of art for everyone in our division (about 150).  It is such a pretty piece of art.   I always had fun researching the printers trying to get the best one.  

OH one other fun purchase!  At that same celebration I hired  "The Bird Guy" for entertainment, he brought in 2 macaws that were so friendly and fun, to bad the flash didn't go off on the camera!  

[saraheliza]

I, like many of us, love stationery - so my idea of fun stuff is not necessarily the same as everyone elses in the office.  Recently we have bought a lot of super-clips - a cross between staples and bull dog clips.  The fun bit about those is that you can fire them quite a long way if you get the angle right!

Also, as we work with young people in our office, many of whom live alone, we do hampers at Christmas.  The shopping for those is fun - last Christmas we made 50 - you can imagine the looks you get in the supermarket buying 50 of everything.

[officeguru]

I love to order 'cute' stuff for our office & department.  But, since I'm keeper of the Budget (thus, having to explain if we go over budget in any of the accounts) I'm very limited to how far I can push the cute/fun stuff.  

However, when it comes to getting the gifts for our everyone in our department (which are held quarterly) we have more leeway around the set account dollars (though we can't go hog wild!).  The only major hiccup I've found is that the majority of the staff have been here about an average of 6-9 years.  They've gotten all the pens/mugs/shirts they can handle.  Those of us here who don't have those kind of things, want them.  So I have to get the other admins to get a feel for what is acceptable for the majority of their staff.

[samiller]

I try to order the most cost effective items but I still try to have fun with it. One item that I recently recieved as a promo is a box of red, white, and blue paper clips, they were really neat.

[countrigal]

In one of my previous jobs, where I was in charge of ordering (and budgets), I managed to buy Franklin Covey dayplanners, that were in a bag-type carrier, and everyone got to choose their color.  (total of only 15 folks, but that's what allowed us to order these)  Since most of us were women, these were extremely handy in that they were business-like, allowed us to put our "necessities" in them, and removed the need of a purse in addition to the dayplanner.  Most everyone who got one ended up using it as their purse and carried it everywhere, as they could keep all their appointments (both professional and personal) on that one planner and had it with them no matter where they went.

One year, I went to the dollar store and personally bought pencils with big silly erasers on the end, depicting the holiday that was being celebrated (Christmas, Easter, whatever) and brought those to the office and gave one to everyone.  It was nice, because it wasn't just for that holiday, as it didn't say any words, and I could share them even if the recipient didn't celebrate the holiday.  For example, I have a pencil that was from my Easter selection that has a purple lamb for an eraser, and the pencil has lambs and hearts on it, in pastel colors.  Some might have Easter eggs (or Christmas trees), but just as many were just items that would work for winter or spring seasons.  For only $1.00 each, these were not too expensive to give to everyone, and brought lots of smiles.  I still have 5 of the ones I used for Easter-time, and when folks see them in my pen holder, they stop and pick them up and smile.  So they're still working!

Otherwise, items purchased had to be from government contracts with an eye to the lowest cost available.  If pens could be purchased for $1.00 a box, but the ones you preferred were $3.00/box, you still got the $1.00 box unless you could offer a work-related reason you had to have the others -- personal preference did not enter in, ultimately.  So that's why the 2 examples I gave were such big deals.

CountriGal
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