Dread and Smiley Faces Greet All Those Cards That Circulate at Work
You would never mistake Kristin Eitzel for the sort of bubbly person who makes liberal use of exclamation points. But that's what the accountant often becomes when she gets back to the office after spending several weeks at a client site.
Inevitably, she's greeted by a pile of birthday cards for co-workers prepared by an office secretary and already signed by others at the firm. "So now not only do I have to think of one witty comment," she says, "I have to think of [several] distinctly unique, witty comments." Instead, though, she often writes, "Happy Birthday," and draws a smiley face with two exclamation points for the eyes.
"It's ridiculously eighth grade and I don't know why I always revert back to it," she says. But, she adds, "I don't understand why 35 people in the office have to do the same thing I do -- try to think of something to say."
Almost nothing at work seems as simple as signing the get-well, going away, or birthday greeting card, but nothing on the job is so disproportionately difficult. One doesn't need a PowerPoint chart, a process meeting or a clarifying email to know what to do. Simply remove the card from its unmarked manila folder and before passing it on write your missive on anything but the horizontal axis. Easy, right?
"It's this moment of incredible pressure like standing on top of the diving board doing a triple flip at the Olympics and you've never actually done this before," says James McDonnell, a partner at a strategy consultancy.
Part of the difficulty lies in the fact that greeting card notes have a trove of rules, mostly unwritten. For starters: encapsulate relevance, wit, sentiment and reminiscence in less space than a Haiku takes.
There also can be a discrepancy between the sentiment that must be expressed and some of the underlying facts. In the case of going-away cards, for example, we feel pressure to be incredibly kind even though someone is voting with his feet, notes Mr. McDonnell: "They've said, 'I may not be so thrilled about it here. I may not be so thrilled about you.' " But even if it's someone you've barely spoken to, he adds, you can't just say, "I have chosen this moment to finally recognize your existence, now that I am assured I will never have to cross paths with you again."
Mr. McDonnell belongs to the camp that believes it's preferable to sign late in the continuum, figuring that, "if you're lucky, all the space is taken up." But that theory has its detractors. "You definitely don't want to be at the end," cautions Alesya Opelt, senior director of marketing at interactive promotions company ePrize. "You have everyone else to compete with and you're cornered out of the good real estate on the card."
Still, even with an expansive location, Ms. Opelt finds it easier to enumerate what she can't write than what she can: You can't talk about someone's age, burn a bridge, use more than one exclamation point (a rule often broken, she concedes), or say anything to offend the rest of the audience, which extends well beyond the card's recipient. "Leadership and people you don't talk to are judging you because that's the only interaction with those people you have," Ms. Opelt notes.
Public affairs consultant Trish Wexler adds another don't: "You can't cross out." Accustomed to her computer's "Backspace" key, Ms. Wexler sometimes finds she has written something that sounded funny in her head before it looked so offensive on paper. Then she is faced with either excising words on a card that may land in a keepsake box handed down for generations, or trying to make "You will have great attendance at your funeral" look like "You will have great things coming in your future."
And if you think that you're not writing for posterity, best wishes. "I have one of those goodbye cards in front of me," says Rich Layton, founder of Transform Communications, a branding consultancy. Before he left his former company, colleagues passed a card around and most wrote notes like "Hope your future is bright." But some simply autographed the note without saying anything, including his manager. "You wish that the guy had something encouraging to say," says Mr. Layton, even though it's already 29 years later.
In the 22 years that engineer Don Benjamin has worked for his employer, he has written notes in dozens of cards but still finds the experience frustrating. For him, much depends upon how well he knows the recipient. If it's a colleague he's worked with for years, "adding some snippet of good wishes to the card seems to trivialize our entire relationship," he says. "Can I really say goodbye forever all wrapped up into 'Best wishes and may I have your Aeron chair?' " If he barely knows the person -- or better yet, doesn't like him -- writing the note is easier. One solution: "Words can't express my feelings about your leaving the company."
But even now, Mr. Benjamin is still unearthing unwritten rules of office greeting card etiquette. Late last year, when he gathered in a conference room with 40 colleagues to sign the company Christmas card, he made the mistake of signing just below the card's printed greeting. A colleague told him: That's where the company president is supposed to sign.
办公室贺卡：字里行间的考验
你决不会误认为克里斯丁?艾泽尔(Kristin Eitzel)是那种总是一惊一咋、动辄使用惊叹号的人。但当这位会计师在客户那边工作了几周后再回到自己的办公室时，她常常是目瞪口呆。
等待她的是一堆送给同事的生日贺卡，这是办公室秘书准备好的，其他同事都签了名。“现在我不仅要想一句机智诙谐的祝语，还要想好几句完全不同的妙语连珠的话，”她说。尽管有这种想法，但她常常只写一句“生日快乐”，在旁边画一张笑眯眯的脸，眼睛是两个感叹号。
“语言难度非同一般，但我不知道自己为什么老要干这种事情。”但她又说，“我不明白为什么办公室里的35个人都要做跟我一样的事情──绞尽脑汁去想该说点什么。”
办公室里似乎没有什么工作比在康复卡、告别卡和生日卡上签个名更简单的活儿了，但似乎也没有什么任务比这种活儿更棘手。它不需要PowerPoint图表，不需要开进度会议，也不需要写电子邮件来澄清什么。你只要打开未做标记的宗卷夹，把卡片拿出来，除了水平折叠线上不写字外，可以在任何地方写下你想说的话，然后传给另一个人。容易极了，不是吗？
“这种时候有一种难以置信的压力，就像站在奥运会跳水比赛的跳板上，你要完成一个翻腾三周的动作，可是你以前从来没有干过类似的事情，”一家战略咨询公司的合伙人詹姆斯?麦克唐奈(James McDonnell)说。
造成这种困境的部份原因在于：贺卡的祝贺语的确有一些规矩，但大多数都是不成文的。开头语要融中肯、机智、感情、回忆于一身，还要言简意赅，所占空间比一句俳句还要少。
但有时，必须表达的感情和潜在的事实之间并不一致。比如写告别卡，尽管有人会对某人的离开举双手赞成，但我们还是感到有一种压力，即要表现得无比的友好。麦克唐奈说，“有的人说‘我也许对这件事并不感到兴奋；我也许对你也不那么感冒’。即便你很少跟这个人说话，你总不能说，‘既然我以后再也不会跟你碰面了，我选择在这一刻最后承认你的存在’。”
麦克唐奈支持这样一派的观点：最好等别人都签完了再签，“如果幸运的话，所有地方都被写满了。”但也有人批评这种理论。互动式行销公司ePrize的高级营销总监阿莱斯亚?奥佩尔特(Alesya Opelt)提醒说，“你肯定不想落在最后，其他人会抢卡片上的好位置，你会被挤到边边角角去。”
然而，即便书写的空间很大，但奥佩尔特还是觉得不能写的东西比能写的东西更容易列举出来：不能谈论别人的年龄，不能断了自己的后路，感叹号不能超过一个（她承认，这条规矩被经常打破），也不能说得罪其他读者的话，因为除了收卡人，还会有很多人读到你写的东西。“管理层和那些你没有交谈过的人会通过你的话对你有所评价，因为这是唯一一个和这些人产生互动的途径，”奥佩尔特说。
公共事务顾问特丽斯?韦克斯勒(Trish Wexler)补充了一条禁忌：写下的东西没办法划掉。韦克斯勒习惯使用电脑的退格键。有时她脑子里想到一些很好玩的话，但落笔之后才发现很容易伤人，可是这下却没有退格键可以用了。最后的结果是：要么仅仅当作在卡片上做做文字练习，然后这张卡片会被人保存在纪念品箱里，“流芳百世”；要么就要想方设法润色润色，使“如果你死了，将有很多人出席你的丧礼”念起来更像“未来将有很多美妙的事情在你身上发生”。
如果你觉得并不是写给子孙后代看的，那么最好写下你最美的祝福。“我有一张那样的告别卡摆在面前，” Transform Communications品牌顾问公司的创始人里奇?莱顿(Rich Layton)说。他离开原来公司的时候，同事们轮流在卡上留言，大部份人都写 “祝你前途光明”之类的话，但也有一些人──包括他的经理──只签名，没写任何话语。“你希望这个家伙当时能说一点鼓舞人心的话，”莱顿先生说，“尽管事情已经过去29年了。”
工程师唐?本杰明(Don Benjamin)在为雇主工作的22个年头里曾写过许多卡片，但他还是觉得这种事情很棘手。他觉得，写贺卡要取决于你对接收者的了解有多少。如果是一位共事多年的同事，“只言片语的祝愿似乎会使我们的关系显得平淡无奇，”他说。“我能说‘奉上我最好的祝福，另外，我能用你的Aeron办公椅吗？’，而我真正的意思是“永别”吗？”如果你对这个人了解甚少，或者你并不喜欢他，那就容易多了。有一种解决办法：“言语难以表达我对你离开公司的感觉。”
甚至到现在，本杰明还在挖掘办公室贺卡礼仪的不成文规矩。去年年底，他和40位同事聚在会议室里签公司的圣诞贺卡，他犯了个错，把名字签在印刷祝语的下面。一个同事告诉他：那是公司总裁签名的地方。
