I am thanked out. Not that I don't have a whole lot of gratitude in my mind, in my bones, for the lovely things that people do but I have just sealed the envelope on my 30th thank-you note.
(So far so good with my slight fear of toxic envelope glue, a la Seinfeld)...
This exercise brings up a few topics for conversation. I love adhering to good etiquette practices and do long for a time when people were more conscious about their pleases and thank yous, but at the same time I have become a combination of an economist and an environmentalist. I really hate to buy or do things that seem like a waste of money or resources.
So let's take the thank-you note as our example. I bought 30 lovely "ecruwhite kid finish" Crane & Co. thank you notes, with "THANK YOU" embossed on the front. They cost $12.95/10. I am not sure if there is PST as well as GST on these, so I am going to not factor in tax at all. Each gets a stamp - and I think those are going for $.46 now? (We bought those "permanent" stamps meaning we paid whatever the price was now and can use them later when postage inevitable goes up again...)
Invitations: $38.85
Postage: $13.80
Warm and fuzzies: priceless?
But this is my whole question - DOES the written thank-you note bring the warm and fuzzies? And is it worth the $50 to buy and mail a card that is, either immediately or soon thereafter, going to see the inside of a trash can and spend its final resting place in a landfill?
I am not saying we shouldn't say thank you - far from it. But I have started to see paper invitations and cards as really wasteful, particularly when I had e-mail addresses for 80% of the people I sent thank-you cards to. But does an e-mailed thank-you have the weightiness that a paper card does? Do you mean it enough if you e-mail it?
I don't know. It would mean just as much to me if I was the one receiving it. To me, it's the message, not the medium.
Call me an old grouch, but I've stopped giving birthday cards to most people unless the card is their gift. I just can't justify spending $5+ on a card that's just going to be trashed. And I love stationery, cards, notepaper, the written letter! I do believe that we don't send enough special, handwritten letters.
Letters, if they are good ones, are usually kept, though. I have a box of good letters like the one my Mom wrote on a scratch pad and left for me at my dorm when I was at Summer Youth University. I have the note my Dad wrote and left for me when he and Mom were staying at my apartment in Vancouver. I keep the postcards Ang sends me from Paris, love notes from Konrad, and countless birthday cards with paragraphs of text so sweet they make me cry every time I read them, from my sisters.
Frankly, I don't think my thank-you notes will be keepers for the people who get them. Though I try to personalize with a nice, heartfelt message and not a rote "thank you for the lovely...", I just can't fool myself into thinking that this isn't just a real waste of paper and Canada Post manpower.
Regardless, thank you. Thank you one and all, to the readers of the Straight Poop who have been here as friends and confidantes for so long now.
Just don't expect a card.
4 comments:
Hey I think you could send out emails as long as it wasn't one of those 'mass' emails ... something more personal...
=) the comment about Seinfeld brought me right back to that hilarious episode! Too funny!
this will come as no surprise coming from me, but there really is no substitute for the hand written thank you card
emails just don't cut it there, sorry!
I think it's too hard to write real thank-you notes in the situations where life requires them these days. I've had two such occasions: first were the wedding present thank-yous, and second were the thank-yous to everyone who helped us after the fire. (I probably should have done thank-you notes to all the well-wishers after I recovered from cancer, but I did not.)
There are just too many to write, so you end up writing the same thing on all of them, and saving the choice prose for the more expensive stuff...and really, that's not fair. Just because someone bought you a bread machine, for example, doesn't mean they think more of you than the person who found a cute violet pot at a local potter.
I think thank-you notes should be more leisurely. Instead of writing them all at once, write them as you have the occasion to use the item you're thanking the person for, and tell them a little story about the first time you used it, etc. Unfortunately, this solution means some people wouldn't get thanked for quite some time.
Maybe in the interim a mass, pre-printed thank-you could go out that says "I'm looking forward to using the gift you sent, and when I do I will drop you a line all about it!" or something of that nature...bah, I don't know.
I feel like a real, heartfelt thank-you note is one of the most valuable things in the world, but I also think that we're really too busy to do them properly in the time allotted.
sweetie. you did the right thing. and in today's world, taking the time to write the thoughts, the words, handwritten words... that is precious. geniune and authentic.
i don't send birthday cards. partially lack of organisation. but also partially for the mentioned reasons. and i don't wrap gifts. rather i try to find a "gift" that is a package in itself. does that make sense? for it to simply be ripped, thrown away, it just isn't right.
my mom used to always right love notes on recycled paper. on shopping receipts. she'd get angry if i didn't bring the brown lunch bag back home. we opened our gifts carefully, with a knife, so not to rip and tear, because the paper would be used again.
i didn't understand that then. but i do understand it now. makes her all the more wonderful to me.
just like you.
miss you babe...
me.
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