how PIF hawaii started

i started PIF hawaii at the company i worked at. i wanted to come up with a way for our employees to better connect, think about others, and improve the already great culture that our company has.

the idea basically started from one gift. one of my co-workers always complained about not having caller-id on her fancy phone. for some reason, she couldn't have the top-of-the-line speaker phone and caller-id in her office (the fancy speaker phones had no caller-id). no idea why. nevertheless she endured that for a year or so. she'll kill me for saying this, but i finally got tired of her complaining and decided that i would make it my goal to solve her problem (i'm joking about the complaining part). i talked to our IT staff and figured out that her office supported caller-id but we didn't have separate caller-id boxes; since she had the fancy phone, she was out of luck. so, i decided that i'd surprise her with a gift. i went to radioshack and bought her a caller-id. later that night, i started to think about the many other random gifts that i could give other co-workers. for example, i wanted to get one co-worker a coffee mug, because every day he uses a small little styrofoam cup for his morning coffee. i didn't really think about "pay it forward" yet, but i knew that i wanted to do get other co-workers small gifts too.

the next day, i gave the caller-id to my co-worker. we tested the device and it worked. she was happy and really thankful. and i was happy to do that for her. we talked later about why i got that for her and i explained that i wanted to get gifts for some of the other co-workers. somewhere in our discussion we figured out that we should try pay it forward. what a great idea!

so, i set out to bring pay it forward to my company. and it started the very next day when my caller-id-coworker bought another co-worker a coffee mug (actually the nice japanese tea cup). then, i PIF'ed (pay it forward) three other people and the movement took off. reaching at least 20 other employees in a month. people got stuffed animals that made noise (a office toy), a custom made t-shirt, a rubiks cube, a series of books, expensive chocolate, wine, gift certificate to a spa, helping someone move their furniture, and screwdriver. and more importantly, each gift came with a smile.

at some point, i knew i wanted to take the great success and fun our company was having with PIF to the rest of hawaii. and i guess now, i'm ready to see if its going work. i'm pledging to PIF at least 3 people. and i hope that some of my co-workers will too. it doesn't have to be something expensive or even that great. it really is the thought that counts. really, i promise.

i suppose the biggest unknown is whether this blog would be utilized at all. will people want to share their stories about PIFing or being PIFed? i have no idea. we shall see. whatever happens, i just hope that people think more about other people. its the small things that really make a difference.