An Appropriate Message Isn’t Always in the Cards

You’re sitting at your desk, minding your own business, when suddenly someone slips a sticky workplace wicket in front of you.

So and so is having a birthday, or a baby, or is leaving the company, and a group greeting card is being circulated to mark the occasion.

In days of yore, this was not much of a problem. You simply signed your name and passed the store-bought creation along.

Nowadays, however, one is expected to personalize the generic with a customized note, a wry observation or the oh-so-clever quip.

And therein resides the dilemma.

What to say? What not to say?

If this sounds like a minor concern, consider this:

In excess of 7.4 billion greeting cards are now being sold annually in this country, a total that increases every year, according to industry statistics.

“I’ve noticed a real trend toward personalizing cards over the past couple of years,” says Cindy Papageorge, a senior secretary in the corporate relations department at Hartford Life in Simsbury, Conn.

“It’s a tossup between promotions and birthdays for the most common card, but we also get them for births, weddings, everything.”

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Rachael Bolton, a spokeswoman for Hallmark Cards, says that after her company noticed the increased propensity for personalization, the folks there did some research.

“We found there’s a simple reason why people write little messages on cards,” Bolton says. “A personal note greatly enhances the value of the card to the recipient. It’s a real trend in business, both for the greeting card and the handwritten note. People value something someone did in a personal way.”

Of course, knowing this does little to alleviate the angst many feel when faced with the prospect of having to get up-close and original.

Much of the worry is well-placed. Expressing one’s self succinctly, conveying emotion or making someone smile is tough work, even for the pros.

At Hallmark, for instance, the eight full-time writers who churn out humorous captions for the company’s line of Shoebox cards have 90% of their proposals rejected.

Gordon McKenzie, who spent 30 years at Hallmark cards as a writer, says the conventional wisdom is that everyone has five original greeting cards in them, but it’s the sixth one that is the hardest to write. That’s cold comfort for those who may be compelled to compose half a dozen handwritten ditties in a busy week.

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A key factor for many people facing the greeting-card challenge involves the order in which they receive the card.

Papageorge says she prefers to be toward the end.

“I generally like to see what everyone else has written,” she says. “I like to see if people are just writing a phrase or maybe a whole paragraph.”

One alternative to card-signer’s block is to fall back on the tried and true, the chestnut: “The place won’t be the same.” Or, “You’re only as old as you feel.”

Or you can go the minimalist route: “Best wishes.” “Good luck.”

Another option is to have a stable of instantly accessible bon mots: “When Mozart was your age, he had already been dead 15 years.”

The problem with all these approaches, however, is that if you get the card toward the end of the pass-around, you run the risk of having your loyal standbys usurped by some other desperate soul, leaving you sucking creative wind.

On the other hand, if you opt to be an early signatory, you are under pressure to set the tone. Do you go with something special, something safe, something sentimental? A miscalculation can quickly make you end up looking like the office dork.

And they don’t have a card for that--yet.