Celebrating Valentine's Day at Discount School Supply

Hi. I’m Judy McGuinn with Discount School Supply. This Circle Time blog is written by the staff at Discount to try to give you a little insight into the way we work together and how we feel about what we do. This post is a special insight about our company.

We have an employee group called the Employee Communications Forum (ECF). It’s made up of elected representatives from each department, and I’m the sponsor.

We’re in the middle of our Valentine’s Day celebration, and I’d like to tell you about it. You probably know that Discount School Supply is the leader in arts & crafts supplies for the early childhood market. So if there’s one thing we have plenty of here, it’s arts & crafts supplies. Last week, the ECF organized a Valentine Craft Day. The project of the day was for everyone to make a Valentine Mail Box. Did you ever make one of those in elementary school? I did – I made it from a shoe box and covered it with doilies. Anyhow, we had a veritable smorgasbord of materials to decorate our individual Valentine Mail Boxes. We ordered enough “blanks” for everyone, and they all went!

Each person puts his Valentine Mail Box in his cube or his office. And for the week of 2/8-2/12, staff members can “mail” Valentines to one another through a special ECF delivery service we run this week only. You may think that adults in the work place would be uninterested in receiving Valentines from their co-workers. But not here! Last year, we did this for the first time, and as the week progressed, the “mail” turned into an avalanche of Valentines. People who didn’t expect to get one got lots. People took the time to reach out to one another with handmade Valentines, candy hearts and, yes, plenty of doilies. It was honestly one of the nicest experiences I have ever had, and the feedback the ECF received indicated that most of us felt the same. Not only do we spend our days making and distributing great products for children, occasionally we don’t mind acting like them. We wish you all a very happy, heartwarming Valentine’s Day.