Spreading the love, one card at a time.

History

Sophie will never forget her first experience of working in Canada on Valentine’s Day. At the time in a business development role, she remembers

“at first it was my colleagues, but then everyone I dealt with that day, whether in an email or on a call, from BC to Ontario, would sign off with their own genuine valentines message, I first I didn’t really know what to say but by the end of the day, I too was spreading the love. That never ever happened back in NZ.” That night she shared her experience with her Canuck fiancé Matt, his reply “Everyone knows Canadians are so damn nice”.

How it came to be

Fast forward to January 2020, “Being nice is an endearing quality Canadians have. I really wanted to find a unique way to celebrate Valentines in an original way for the MacCallum Law Group clan, and spread some positivity during the January blues. Seeing that we had some spare thank you cards with our old logo lying around, we came up with the idea of a new firm tradition, ‘Be my secret thankful valentine’” Sophie recalls.

Everyone rallied to the occasion, and when you walk around our offices, you still see the odd blue card proudly standing on an office shelf. As Sophie reflects, “I’ve lost count of the times that during a tough day, I’ve gone back to my card, re read it and felt inspired by the kind word of my colleague, and to this day, I still don’t know who they are, but I’m thankful. This year’s one, such an empowering message to receive”

How it works

What we do is pull names from a hat, and write a thankful message to the colleague whose name we drew. Something thankful may feature something that the colleague does in their job and/or contributes to our firm in some way. Chocolates are optional. We also have a secret box that we keep in our workroom for people to drop off their cards. Either on the day, or day closest to Valentines, everyone gets to open their card.

While we weren’t able to get together like we did as a group last year, despite the challenges of COVID-19, last Friday, our MACLG clan continued the tradition once again of opening secret envelopes and reading thankful messages. Everyone in our firm clan gets one, even the office dog.