Job loss sympathy cards… I realize that its purpose is to be a nice gesture to someone coping with the crushing blow of losing one’s job in this kind of economy, but it seems to me that using a card to sympathize with said person is missing the mark sentimentally. Personally I might find it offensive. I mean, look at it this way. If I had just lost my job, and had no idea what the eff I was going to do about finding another one and some person who I once worked with handed me a card that said hey man….one door closes and a window opens. What do you say to that? Thank you? You have a job and can buy me pointless cards while I might have to sell this so I can buy a can of spaghettios to split between myself and my starving family for the next month. What if they put money in it? How inexplicably rude would that be? Sorry you lost your job, here’s 12 dollars. As if losing your job wasn’t enough, the sentiment following is the real blow to your ego.
The only way I could see these cards being useful is if the employers used them to fire/lay off their employees. Instead of that awkward “We’re moving in a different direction” shpeel, they just hand you a card in a pink envelope. A whole new definition for the term pink slipped! Now with cutesy phrases! They could even put your severance check in it. One stop you’re fired shop. Although I feel that buying the card would then hold the same stigma as when you buy condoms or lady products…Everyone will know exactly what you’re going to do with it.
It is sad. In the long run it’s another company making a quick buck off of something stupid. But the card making business has thrived off of this for a long time. Hell, there are entire holidays with the attached Hallmark moniker, (I’m looking at you Valentine’s Day). The fact that we need to acknowledge another event in the lives of another, especially one that would rather be left under the rug, is superfluous (like that word? I’ve been waiting since the 10th grade to use it in a sentence) I for one will not be buying my unemployed friends cards. I will be getting them really drunk, the way coping with job loss is supposed to go.
Until next time, Do work, son!
