My baby shower at the office was yesterday. It was great and I received wonderful gifts and a two gift cards for very large amounts of cash. So large, in fact, that I’ll be able to furnish Noah’s room with no out-of-pocket cash. Suffice it to say, hubby and I were very appreciative and want to show it.
Obviously, thank you cards are in order. I already know that I want to give nice thank you cards to the two organizers. One’s a Beanie Baby fanatic, so we’ll give her one along with the thank you card. The other’s a Mickey Mouse fanatic, so we’ll give her some sort of Mickey Mouse memento along with her thank you card.
What about the rest of the office? They gave very generously. Do I send individual thank you cards or do I give a thank you card to the whole office? If I send individual ones, what do I say since I’m not thanking them for a specific gift but rather their donation?
Send individual thank-yous. They don’t have to be specific, just “thank you for your generous gift, it’s been great working with you, blah blah.” I don’t think that group thank-you cards are considered proper etiquette.
I thought so, too, but it’s like eighty people. Generally, people around here send an office-wide thank you card that gets posted in our kitchen. We’ll get crackin’ this weekend, though.
So here’s my next question: I don’t want everyone to get the same card. Obviously with so many people involved, people will get duplicates but I want to purchase several kinds of blank cards. I’m an art buff, specifially of the Impressionists, more specifically of Caillebotte and Cézanne. Are blank art cards OK or do the thank you cards have to have some sort of baby theme?
I’d say general cards would be just fine. I know that Miss Manners frowns upon cards pre-printed with “Thank You” on them, but I don’t think she gives any other requirements.
Yeah, don’t worry about making them all different. Hallmarky cards with bunnies and whatnot are nice, but as Ferret Herder says, strict etiquette actually calls for a blank card, plain or simply monogrammed.
But heck, eighty people? I’d be tempted to just print something out on the computer and sign each one by hand! So many people don’t bother with thank you cards at all, I bet you’d knock your coworkers’ socks off anyway.
If you handwrite a note to each person, then, by gum, my hat’s off to you! You’ll have enough etiquette karma stored up to fart at a funeral.
Well, eighty thank-yous seem like a lot. A LOT. Also, do you really know that everyone contributed? In our office, there are always some people who for personal reasons choose not to put into the kitty. They celebrate the event, of course, but not by contributing.
What I did after my graduation party (where my gift was three gift certificates, from a group contribution) was send one nice thank you addressed to everyone, with individual notes to the organizers. Then I brought in a special food treat for all to enjoy, and told everyone that it was to make up for my lack of personal, individualized thank yous.
We gave a surprise potluck-lunch-and-baby-shower (for child #2) for my officemate. It was about a dozen people, so he brought in homemade chocolate chip cookies the next day as a thank you (with a general note next to the cookies). I felt sufficiently thanked.
As Cranky pointed out, you don’t know if everyone in the office contributed, so I think for that reason alone, individual thank-you notes would be inappropriate. I can imagine someone who didn’t give would feel at the very least awkward at getting one. I think a collective note to the group and individual thank-yous to the organizers is more than sufficient.
I think that it might be nice to bring in pictures of what you did with the money–the decorated nursury–and spend some time gushing about how much you love it, love that you could do what you wanted, love that you have such great coworkers that you could do what you wanted, etc.
