When I group up, times were simple.
OK, that’s a lie. When I grew up our inner cities were burning, cops were shooting kids on university campuses and Nixon was in the White House. I have fond memories of my childhood, but I don’t delude myself that times were simple.
Even though it was a turbulent era, our home life was simple and we lived by some ironclad rules: Brush your teeth. Go to church. Do your homework. Always say thank-you.
It is in respect to the last rule that I see the most changes. Do people not send thank-you notes anymore? I can’t count the wedding gifts, the baby gifts, the birthday gifts and Christmas gifts that go unacknowledged. In a world of instant messages, is a text message, an email, a tweet that says “Thanks!” too much to ask? Am I wrong to get annoyed when I don’t know that a gift was received until I get the cancelled check?
When I was a kid, my Aunt Gloria, who was generous, sweet and loaded sent gifts for every occasion, usually cash. This made her a favorite of both my brother and me. When we would see an envelope from Aunt Gloria, who lived in Ohio, my brother and I knew it was a good day. We would open the card, count the cash and watch in dismay when my mother swooped in to take it out of our grubby little fingers. “Write your thank-you note,” Mom would say primly, “and you’ll get the cash.”
Since my dad had his own business, he would often thank his good clients by sending a gift. He always sent what he called one of the “3-Bs:” a basket of fruit, bouquet of flowers or bottle of wine. When his clients would send him a thank you note, he would thank them for the thank you, and sometimes they would thank him for the thank you to their thank you.
Perhaps we no longer have time for the social niceties. I send gifts to my nieces and nephews upstate even though I know they won’t acknowledge. After all, that’s their parents fault; no 10-year old boy is going to write a note without a knife in their back. I send the wedding and baby gifts, Christmas and christening gifts and really don’t even have the expectation of a response, but in the back of my mind I assumed that in the professional world things were different. Boy was I wrong.
This point was driven home recently when in the course of 6 weeks we bought one home and sold another. In both transactions the respective realtors dressed beautifully, drove cars that cost more than my house, and, when it suited them, made my partner and me feel like the most important people on earth. After the respective sales were closed, we waited, expectantly, I must confess, for the wine and the flowers to arrive. We are still waiting.
The realtor who sold us the new house shook our hands heartily after the closing. The realtor who sold our old house sent us a text message afterwards: “The deal closed. Congratulations!” After such warm expressions of gratitude both realtors treated us with the regard one usually reserves for used dental floss.
In light of the response showed by these professionals, it dawned on me that perhaps I was holding my nieces and nephews to an unsustainable standard. So I keep sending the gifts, which go unacknowledged, and console myself these kids will have a great career in real estate.
