Tree: X-mas; Turkey: Thanksgiving

2002-12-30 - 3:36 p.m.

That's my little nod to Conan O'Brien's little nod to the SAT's.

It's the right time of year for me to talk to you about Corporate Christmas, and more specifically, how terrible it is. If you're a tree, or know someone who is, I warn you, what you're about to hear may frighten you. If you happen to be a business of size, skip down to your special part below.

Christmas Cards: This is a big offender in the Corporate Christmas circuit (if I have to keep typing out "Corporate Christmas," I'll never finish this, so let's shorten it to "BS" from here on). All the bigshots of the business world, and there's many more than necessary, send cards to everyone they've done business with, ever. This would be a nice sentiment save for the fact that bigshots have too many cards to send out to be personal with them. Therefore, preprinted hokiness usually gets mailed out with little more than a first name signed inside. This takes out the sentimentality of sending cards, which is the whole effing point of the exercise in the first place. My personal fave of this holiday season was the company that sent out postcards stating that instead of sending cards, they were donating money to charities. Read that sentence over and over until your head hurts like mine.

BS Trees: Who doesn't love the tree? They smell pretty, they're brightly colored, they touch something deep down. They belong in living rooms, surrounded by presents; not in conference rooms, surrounded by receptionists. The other thing about BS trees is the element of penis envy that seeps into all facets of business: the bigger, the better. BS trees are always bigger (i.e. older) than the tree you put in your home. It's common knowledge that you can't close a big deal with a little tree. There's an old Swahili proverb that says "Bickluck ick luckuck mootuck" which means "if your tree is small, then so too is your genitalia." Oh, sure, there's the argument that the big tree in the workplace makes the employees happier. Decorating a tree with the same people I hate the rest of the year doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy.

BS Bonuses: HA! 48% of that bonus was snorted up by your government, both local and federal. WOOO! To put that into perspective, take a candy cane, break off the straight part, eat the bendy part and shove the straight part up your ass. That's a Christmas bonus.

BS Presents: Ahh, trinkets of appreciation that your company gives you to keep you from exposing their accounting secrets. If you're on the bottom rung, you get a piece of shit with the company's name on it. If you're at the top, you get a really expensive and tasteless piece of shit with the company's name on it. Could the money that paid for BS presents be put instead into the BS bonus fund? Yes. Was it? No. There, don't we all feel better now?

Note to Corporate America: Money. Want more? Here's how to cut huge costs in three easy steps: 1) Fuck the Cards. You save money on cards, envelopes, address labels, postage and man-hours (someone has to mail them). 2) Fuck the trees. You save money on the tree, it's transportation to and removal of, and decorations! You can keep the shite presents too. 3) Give your employees December 24th to January 1st off! You save money on the cost of operating your business for 1 whole week, no power bills, phone bills, no supply orders, no faxing, no copying. You do wonders for employee morale (more than BS presents) and honestly, nobody's actually getting any work done that week anyway. For example: where do you think I had time to write all of this?