Last Minute Admin Gifts that are Still Thoughtful
Office ninjas wear lots of hats, but please don’t ask them to buy their own appreciation gift.
If Administrative Professionals Day (April 22, 2015) snuck up on you without you noticing, don’t panic. We thought this might happen. After all, who’s the one person that makes sure you don’t forget important occasions?
Consider this your get out of jail free card. For the final installment of our 3-part gift guide (be sure to check out part 1 and part 2), we identified 10 easy gifts that any office ninja would be happy to receive.
Give Them the World
$50 per box
This is the most well-traveled of all the subscription snack services. Each beautifully packaged box from Try The World includes snacks from an international city (the exact city is a surprise each time) and includes informational cards about that city’s culture and cuisine.
Sweat Equity
$99/month
Variety is the spice of life, but it’s also a key ingredient to an efficient fitness regimen. If your favorite office ninja loves to stay on top of the newest workout trends, they’ll be stoked to get a month’s subscription of Fitmob or ClassPass. Fitmobbers and Classpassers enjoy unlimited access to their city’s highest ranked gyms and fitness studios.
Loosen up
$99 and up
The last time you looked at your office ninja, did they have a neck? Or did their earlobes end right around where their shoulders began? They may need a professional to identify the source of tension and dig an elbow in there. You really can’t go wrong with massage gift card through SpaFinder or Zeel, an on-demand massage service.
Kitchen Help
$60 and up
For most of us who depend on take-out just a little too much, it’s not the actual cooking that prevents us from making homemade meals. It’s the planning and grocery shopping. Give your favorite ninja the simple joy of cooking by signing them up for a service that does all the dirty work (except the dishes – they still have to do those). Both Blue Apron and Plated deliver fresh, pre-measured ingredients and easy-to-follow recipe cards.
Special Delivery
price varies
But, you know, it’s not like take-out is a bad thing. Your ninja is only human and, despite their best intentions, they simply need a pepperoni pizza or carton of fried rice from time to time. Be the ultimate enabler with a Seamless gift card. Seamless will even personalize it with their name.
Head of the Class
$8/month and up
These days you can learn anything from web design to bookbinding with just a laptop and a Wi-Fi connection. Whether it’s for personal development or just for fun, office ninjas will appreciate the opportunity to learn a new skill through online learning sites like Skillshare ($8/month) or SkillCrush ($175/class or $399/blueprint).
Reading Rainbow
$59.94/6 months
Give your favorite ninja a virtual reading rainbow with a subscription to Oyster ($9.95/month) or Kindle Unlimited ($9.99/month). Both services offer hundreds of thousands of titles from all genres. They’ll love it…but you don’t have to take my word for it.
Snacks that Give Back
$59/3 months
Here’s a snack service that conscious ninjas will feel good about in more ways than one. All snack boxes from Love With Food contain only all-natural or organic goodies. And, as if that weren’t good enough, for every box that’s sold, Love With Food donates two meals to hungry children in the U.S. Let’s see a vending machine do all that!
Wardrobe refresh
(varies)
Personal shopping services like Stitch Fix (for women) and Trunk Club (for men) are perfect for ninjas who lack the time and patience for shopping but still want to look good. Based on your ninja’s preferences, a personal stylist will select and ship a handful of items for them to try on in the comfort of their own home. They’ll keep only what they like and send back the rest. The average price per item is $55 for Stitch Fix and $160 for Trunk Club.
It’s rare that a last minute gift works out so well, but you’re definitely in the clear with any one of these gifts. Your resident office ninja will think you’ve been researching for weeks. Don’t worry, we can keep a secret.
Ninjas, which of these last minute gifts is your favorite? Any other easy, go-to gifts you’d recommend?
These are some great gifts. You clearly put a lot of thought into researching the gifts for all three parts. Out of this grouping, I would probably want Skillshare, Reading Rainbow or Seemless.
I can think of other gift, albeit a huge one. Companies should be sending their admins to workshops and conferences. For those who don’t do it on a regular basis, they should choose two or three every year and send them to one of the wonderful workshops conducted by numerous people in this business. There are quite a few, as you know. That would be a great gift.
That was supposed to read “I can think of one other gift.”
Ahhhhhhhh….SpaFinder. My favorite gift to receive! :)
I think these are all great ideas. I would be happy to receive any of them. If I had to choose, it’d be a toss up between Give Them The World and Kitchen Help. Thanks for doing the research!