Your Holiday Biz Gift Advisor

The holiday season is a time to reward employees, vendors and customers with gifts that show you appreciate them, but the battlefields of commerce are littered with the corpses of those who made a “faux pas” by presenting the wrong present.  How do you navigate the minefield of law, customs and taboos surrounding biz gifts?  Ask Your Holiday Business Gift Advisor, that’s how!

Dear Holiday Business Gift Advisor:

I recently had to let my long-time secretary go.  “Ethel” was a jewel, typing 80 words per minute, memorizing my sales team’s coffee and pastry preferences, and making sure I didn’t forget minor holidays like my wife’s birthday.  However, she had become a bit of a “smart-aleck” over the years, pointedly joshing me about the Burpee seed packets I would give her every year for Christmas.  “What am I supposed to do,” Ethel asked at the end of calendar year 2013–which is also our fiscal year-end–“Grow summer squash to put food on the table?”  Ha ha, so funny I forgot to laugh.

I have hired a new “gal” whom I will call “Yolanda”–I have always liked that name.  Yolanda is not as proficient as Ethel, as she has trouble with the complicated “L-M-N-O-P” sequence of the alphabet, sometimes putting the N before the M, which mixes up the filing.  However, she is never sarcastic and wears low-cut tube-tops even when it gets cold so that her nipples stand at attention, which my customers appreciate.

“We’re out of Manila folders–should I call the Philippines?”

Since Yolanda has only been working for me for two months I don’t want to set the bar too high this year, she will only expect a better gift next year and then get all pissy like Ethel was.  I am thinking of the Peek-a-Boo teddy in red and black lace from Frederick’s of Hollywood, but if you think that is too much too soon let me know.

(dictated but not read)

Fred Mofuno, CEO
Mofuno Industries
Hamtramck, Michigan

 

Dear Fred:

Business executives like yourself have a “bull’s eye” painted on their backs these days because of sexual harassment laws, so you should proceed with caution before giving a female subordinate a gift of sleepwear.  I would go with the Cross-Your-Heart Push-Up Bra in ecru, lavender mist or wild heather for an employee who is still in her probationary period.

Dear Holiday Biz-Gift Advisor:

Every year at our office Christmas Party we have a “Yankee gift swap.”  This year I drew #1 out of the hat and went first and picked out a DVD of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” my favorite movie of all time because of my boyhood obsession with Donna Reed.  Well, wouldn’t you know it, Hugh Boykins, regional sales manager for Northern Vermont went second and took my gift from me, which royally frosted my ass since he makes more money than me and my wife combined so he could afford to just buy the damn thing.

Norma Blasberg was running the swap and said “Okay, since Hugh took your gift, you get to pick another.”  Well, she didn’t say there was any I couldn’t pick, so I decided to take my “Wonderful Life” right back saying how do you like them apples? to Boykins.

Boykins cries “Unfair!” he is a hothead and since nobody had the official Yankee Swap rules on them Boykins says it’s a trick play.  Since he yells a lot Norma gave it to him.

I don’t think that is fair and would be interested in hearing your view of the matter.

Clell Furnell, Jr.
Vice President-Finance
Granite State Chucking Company

Dear Clell:

Have you people heard of something called a “computer” yet?  And that there is this thing called “the internet”?  It takes but a second to avoid Holiday Party hostilities by simply typing “Yankee AND gift AND swap AND rules” into your search engine–ask your secretary, she’ll know how to do it.  She has time as right now she is goofing off watching that video of the cat playing the piano.

While there are several sources of Yankee Gift Swap rules, all agree that if player #3 takes an opened gift from player #2 then the player who is “giftless” can either open a new gift or take player #1’s gift but cannot take back #3’s gift.  This is Rule 3.01 in the New England Yankee Gift Swap Association’s Official Rules, same as Rule 8 in the Atlantic Coast Conference Gift Swap Rulebook.  I know that is a lot of numbers for you to absorb, maybe you should lie down with a cold compress on your forehead.

 

Dear Ms. Business Gift Advisor:

I believe I am pretty “gift savvy” but a guy I know got hammered by the Missouri Department of Procurement for giving a Black & Decker Weed-Whacker to the lady who awards the contracts for mowing state highway median strips.  I recently sent the Pettis County Commissioner of Curb Cuts a case of Old Overshoe Bourbon as a “nice gesture” to show we appreciate doing business with him.  We realize we are “under the microscope” as far as ethics goes being in the concrete business, so we would never engage in anything illegal or improper to win a contract to put food on the table for our family and send my daughter to Northeast Central Missouri State so she can *sniff* hopefully have a better life than yours truly.

I was wondering–isn’t “procurement” a form of prostitution?  If not, doesn’t the fact that a case of Old Overshoe is worth a lot less than its retail price because of the damage it does to your digestive system mean anything?  Also I thought I had to have “criminal intent,” that’s what they say on TV and I was only trying to make some money.

Thanks for your time,

Donald Waylan, Jr.
President, Waylan’s Redi-Mix Concrete

 

Dear Donald–

Yes “procurement” has something to do with prostitution, but not when you’re in the concrete business.  You are looking at five-to-ten years in a medium-security prison, buster, as “bid-rigging” hurts every one of us except the people like you who flim-flam honest public servants for your own benefit.  If you want me to keep this out of my column–which is carried by over 16 papers nationwide–I would suggest you send me a case of Kendall-Jackson Chardonnay, and not the cheaper “Avant” stuff either.

Top of the line.

Dear Ms. Business Gift Advisor:

My boss took the advice in your November column to include a handwritten note with each holiday gift box we send out from Neuman’s Retractable Awning Company.  I copied out the sample you provided that went “Dear Jim, wishing you and Judy and your family a wonderful holiday season!”

Last night my boss went to his country club and now he’s all mad at me because three people were “ribbing” him about the note, saying they weren’t named Jim or their wife wasn’t named Judy or whatever.  I think you should have been more explicit that we were supposed to personalize the personal notes, it is a very busy time of year for me what with having to put up the tree in the reception area and send out Christmas cards and the bills in addition to all the other crap he shovels on me.

Viola LeMaire
Executive Assistant to Steven “Buzz” Herndon

 

Dear Viola–

If you have risen to the lofty position of “Executive Assistant” you must know something about basic business etiquette and protocols.  First rule of business:  Always get people’s names right!  No wait, that’s number two, number one is “Always make money.”  Let’s see, is that number two?  I guess not, I seem to recall number two is “Always get the money out of the company before the IRS slaps a lien on your assets.”