Boggins Brothers' Corporate Christmas Card
I happen to like sending Christmas cards. So I tend to send rather a lot. This year there won't be as many as usual, because - - well, you know. The Communist's death and all that. I don't feel very Christmassy, to be frank.
But from the company where I work, we've sent out proper Christmas cards made of - well, card. For the past few years they have been specially designed for us by John, because I hate that "Corporate Christmas Card" look, with a badly-painted Victorian-type snow scene and "Season's Greetings from Boggins Brothers" inside and signatures pre-printed on the card.
The cards that John designs for us are quirky and different, interesting and attractive (rather like many of our actors, in fact) and I send them to people whom I genuinely want to send them to, to thank people who've employed our actors or who are generally an actor-friendly Good Thing.
This year, however, Boggins Brothers and their ilk have moved on. They no longer send their horrible Corporate Christmas Cards.
Instead they send me an email.
It has a crudely-drawn Santa on it and he has some gimmicky thing like a flashing red nose.
The email reads like this:
BOGGINS BROTHERS ARE NOT SENDING ANY CHRISTMAS CARDS THIS YEAR.
INSTEAD WE ARE MAKING A DONATION TO CHARITY.
SEASON'S GREETINGS TO ALL OUR CUSTOMERS.
I suppose it's bad form to reply with "Okay, HOW MUCH have you given to charity? And WHICH charity? Kindly email me the receipt by return as proof."
Is it just cynical old me? Or is it rather that they've hit on a brilliant method to save lots of money spent on cards and postage and time spent sending them - - and claim the moral high ground at the same time!
Subtext - - - "We enlightened souls here at Boggins Brothers know better than to go despoiling the environment by chopping down trees and, unlike you inferior lot who are still sending cards made of card, we are going to save the Third World at the same time. Yay us!"
That does not, of course, mean that I don't like e-cards from friends - I love them. And I don't mind, of course, if someone genuinely does give the money to charity instead of buying cards. It's just the corporate-cop-out thing I don't like.
One company, however - a small company, excellent, run by a husband-and-wife team - sent me a plain email explaining that they were going to make a donation to charity instead of sending cards, and that was fine, because I know that they will actually do this.
And they sent us a box of chocolates too!
But from the company where I work, we've sent out proper Christmas cards made of - well, card. For the past few years they have been specially designed for us by John, because I hate that "Corporate Christmas Card" look, with a badly-painted Victorian-type snow scene and "Season's Greetings from Boggins Brothers" inside and signatures pre-printed on the card.
The cards that John designs for us are quirky and different, interesting and attractive (rather like many of our actors, in fact) and I send them to people whom I genuinely want to send them to, to thank people who've employed our actors or who are generally an actor-friendly Good Thing.
This year, however, Boggins Brothers and their ilk have moved on. They no longer send their horrible Corporate Christmas Cards.
Instead they send me an email.
It has a crudely-drawn Santa on it and he has some gimmicky thing like a flashing red nose.
The email reads like this:
BOGGINS BROTHERS ARE NOT SENDING ANY CHRISTMAS CARDS THIS YEAR.
INSTEAD WE ARE MAKING A DONATION TO CHARITY.
SEASON'S GREETINGS TO ALL OUR CUSTOMERS.
I suppose it's bad form to reply with "Okay, HOW MUCH have you given to charity? And WHICH charity? Kindly email me the receipt by return as proof."
Is it just cynical old me? Or is it rather that they've hit on a brilliant method to save lots of money spent on cards and postage and time spent sending them - - and claim the moral high ground at the same time!
Subtext - - - "We enlightened souls here at Boggins Brothers know better than to go despoiling the environment by chopping down trees and, unlike you inferior lot who are still sending cards made of card, we are going to save the Third World at the same time. Yay us!"
That does not, of course, mean that I don't like e-cards from friends - I love them. And I don't mind, of course, if someone genuinely does give the money to charity instead of buying cards. It's just the corporate-cop-out thing I don't like.
One company, however - a small company, excellent, run by a husband-and-wife team - sent me a plain email explaining that they were going to make a donation to charity instead of sending cards, and that was fine, because I know that they will actually do this.
And they sent us a box of chocolates too!
posted by Daphne at 6:51 pm
3 Comments:
I think you know my job title and what comes under my remit. One thing is the Christmas card. I had to get involved with this just 2 weeks into my new job.
To cut a very long story short, we sent an e-card and the guy who sent it did a botch job and 2,000 (of the 10,000 sent) went with errors with 'Dear [blank]' in them. As you can imagine, I was seriously unimpressed. In prior jobs I owned the whole process but in this new role I'm meant to be delegating, dotted line reports, etc. It's only now after the bodge that people have said "yes, he's not capable of doing it, you should have supervised him intently".
You live and learn. Thankfully I've done enough good / positive things in the company since I've been there to outweigh this hiccup.
I've always found it hard to delegate for that kind of reason - - though I've got some great people around me now. Nice of people to tell you afterwards that your colleague wasn't up to it!
I dearly love getting Christmas cards. I especially love ones with glitter.
I've never liked e-cards.
I'm not feeling Christmassy at all here as we're not celebrating this year. I hadn't planned to send any cards either. I got a few from friends here in the park and it made me feel so warm and fuzzy that I'm going out today to get some cards to deliver. With glitter of course!
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