Maybe on a “I don’t like you, but I don’t want you to die or suffer a lot” level you should have signed the card.
But if few people willingly signed the card, that should be a hint to the card organizer that the interest isn’t really there, and pestering people to sign it would not be well received. Yeah, it’s not about the card signers, it’s about the card recipient, but as a hypothetical card recipient, I’d rather have a few sincere wishes than numerous pressured ones.
Brilliant.
::takes notes::
I’m with SomeUserName.
There’s always somebody who buys greeting cards in bulk, indexes them by occasion, keeps a check list of which one he/she has already sent to whom, and an Excel spreadsheet of everyone in the office and whether he or she has signed the card yet or contributed to the gift.
Some day I will work in an office that doesn’t have that person. That will be glorious.
Cards are usually more awkward than appreciated, in my experience. I usually throw mine away with great alacrity. I certainly don’t give a damn about signatures of people who don’t know me or give a damn about me.
The card nitwit in this case should have taken the hint and either sent the card as it was, or sent his/her own gift to the recipient.
Why would you want a card with signatures from people who don’t really know or care about you? I don’t, which is why I suggested that I didn’t need one of the mandatory “please sign your name and pass it on to someone else to sign their name” cards for my birthday. I said that I’d rather have people just say “Happy Birthday” if they cared to whenever they saw me on my birthday.
Of course, this was such an awful, antisocial suggestion that I may as well have been Charles Manson with a swastika tattooed to my forehead. It was so egregious that the person in our office (who Gala Matrix Fire described perfectly above) ended up feeling unappreciated for all the work she did that she stopped doing it, and my little request for a personal, rather than pro forma, birthday wish brought the whole machine to a crashing halt.
I’m such an insensitive lout.
Why is it that women are so into this kind of thing? Why do you want a card that says, “I’m thinking of you, but only because the Outlook calendar reminded me to get a card from stock and write your name on it and coerce everyone else to do so as well”?
I am with you on this one; if you can’t remember that it’s my birthday enough to tell me in person, then you don’t need to get me a card.
I mostly hate getting cards, as I end up throwing them away, for I am not all that sentimental about paper. I get superfluous thank you cards from people in my life who thank me in person for the things that the thank you cards thank me for. It feels kind of like a multi-faceted “Groundhog Day” moment any time it happens, because I’ve almost always been thanked in person, and then poof!, two days later, there’s a thank you card in my mailbox. Didn’t we already acknowledge that you are thankful and that I am gracious enough to accept your thanks?
I do, however, make a point of sending out thank you cards and holiday cards when it’s pertinent.
Will you come work at my office now?
I now work in an office where such greetings are regulated. The company pays for everything, and the employee gets a standard package for their event: get well, birth, death, or marriage. Official birthday celebrations are not allowed. It’s lovely, since the busybody’s need to “do something” is taken care of, it’s perfectly fair, since everyone gets the same thing, and no one gets pestered for money or to sign cards. I heartily approve of this practice, because without it, someone would whip out that damned Excel spreadsheet.
Oh for crying-out loud. Just sign the damn thing and get on with life. Grow up. Sheesh.
The whole group card thing needs to be abolished in the office. If one is in true despair, and I care about said person, leave it up to me to get my own fucking card to send to them. And I agree with the OP, if you don’t know the person, or if you do know them and they’re an asshole, I see no reason what so ever to sign the card. It doesn’t mean that you don’t want them to get better or wish them ill. It sends the message if anything, that if they weren’t such a stuck up asshole, that yes, I may have signed your card. If I did not, and you knew that I did not, maybe there’s something about you that needs to change.
We have a few people retiring at the end of the month here. Two of them are raging pricks, and one I truly admire. Guess which ones are getting the heart-felt email from me…
I used to sign just my name on cards like that. Then people started making remarks like “How come you always just sign your name? That’s all you ever do.”
I didn’t mind signing cards for people I didn’t particularly care about. When cow-orkers criticized me for not adding a witty or empathetic remark, though, that was it. After that, whenever a card appeared on my desk, I just passed it down to the next cube, without a witty saying OR a signature.
You know, if I were in the situation that I needed someone’s sympathy / well wishes / whatever, I don’t think I’d particularly care whether or not if all of them were legitimate or if they’d bowed to peer pressure, etc. I’m even more certain that I’d simply appreciate the support and not worry if everyone was even sniggering behind my back at being such a clueless naive dolt for believing anyone liked me in the first place.
So, I always as sincerely as possible and appreciate whatever comes my way.
~Signed faithfool
My signature isn’t even close to legible, so if I had a jerky cow-orker like the OP, I could very quickly scribble some insult on the card and no one would be the wiser. Just think of the possibilities!
“Don’t get well”
“You suck”
“Die shitting”
and so many more, could all be written to look like “Brpphiahoheonp”, which, for all they know, is your signature. They get the card signed, you get the satisfaction of telling them off. Win-win.
Compromise suggestion: Brutal honesty, then your initials.
Example:
"If I had a button that I could push that would end you, and caused no repercussions, and if I didn’t push it I’d never have to see you or deal with your shit anymore, I suppose I probably wouldn’t make a tremendous effort to push that button.
Hmm?
First of all I doubt there is anyway she would have found out that if I had not signed it was because I didn’t want to. To be quite honest she will probably be surprised I did sign it as we have an unspoken dislike for each other. I avoided her like the plague when she was in the office.
As I stated in my OP, there were a lack of signatures. For a department of thirty or more people, there was about ten signatures.
My point was that I was cornered and it pissed me off which sparked the rant.
The plain fact is that “one” person wanted to send her a card and that is fine, do so. I also don’t mind soliciting others to sign as well. Send out your email and get the added signatures, but don’t corner people that did not sign.
I mean why send out the fucking email then. She should have just walked the card around the whole department corning people right off the bat. Why give them the option to begin with.
And I am not a troll. If you had at least attempted a search of my other posts you would see that I try to contribute on a regular basis on a variety of subjects.
She is a miserable shit. She used to work in the office on a regular basis. Due to a divorce and some financial issues she had to move three hours away to live with her mother. She was able to keep her job and work from home. A lot of people were pissed. I for one could care less as it got her the fuck out my face everyday.
She is a know it all. She blurts into the middle of others conversations with her own better, worse, louder, faster story. She also has hypochondriac tendencies which again has her blurting into others conversations.
Do you want to hear about the time she jumped over the counter at McDonalds when she was a manager and fought off a knife wielding crazy man?, or the time she was abducted as a child?, or the time her mother was abducted as a child? or the time her brother drove on to Hopkins International Airport’s runway because he fell asleep at the wheel? There are many others but I won’t bore you with the other 100 wonderful tales.
I won’t even go into the fifty or so medical problems she claims to have that we also got to hear about every fucking day.
I don’t want to hear that some of the things she has said may be true. If you spent on hour with this person and you have a grain of intellegence you can tell she is a fabricating idiot. I had to endure thirteen years of hearing these same stories over and over. I dreaded a new person as we got to hear them all over again for weeks.
Exactly. I don’t wish her harm, I just don’t give a shit.
This is what they usually do, whether it birthday, get well, baby showers or what not.
They place the card in folder and pass it around. In that way you have the option to sign or not sign and then pass it on.
This is not what happened in this case. I was, and others were, cornered into signing.
The same thing has happened with donations. They send a damn email asking people to contribute and then when they do not get enough responses to fund their idea they corner people in their offices and cubes.
I think that makes them more of a shitty person than me for not signing a dumb card or grabbing my pocket book.
It is sort of like posting. If you create a thread and it flops, it flops. Don’t keep bumping the fucker to get someone to feel sorry for you and reply.
We’ve got a rash of departures (people quitting or retiring) and we get the frequent “Come sign the picture (standard going-away gift) and contribute to a gift” emails. There are around 500 people here, plus contractors. Most of those leaving are barely more than names to me - some are names I don’t recall ever seeing before. Needless to say, I have no desire to sign their pictures/cards/whatevers. I venture to say that many of them don’t know who I am, so it’s not like my name and/or pithy comment is missed.
But at least, the most we get is a follow-up reminder email. No one comes cube-to-cube to enforce compliance. I’ve had cards in folders come across my desk that left unsigned for any number of reasons. Frankly, if these things disappeared forever, I’d not miss them. It’s a workplace, not a social club. I don’t hate my coworkers, but I don’t see them outside of the office, nor do I wish to.
So anyway, I can’t say that I disagree with the OP.
I get the ‘departure’ card. I even get the b’day card issue. This, however, is a get well wish after back surgery. It’s an opportunity to demonstrate that even if you don’t like/get along with a particular coworker, you also don’t wish them ill. A demonstration of humanity, empathy, you know, the good things that humans can be.
or not, as the case may be.
When my son first developed diabetes and was in the hospital, the office signed a card for us. I was very touched.
However, I did not search the card to see who signed and who didn’t. If it had only been from a few friends, it would still have been touching. If I had seen lots of names of people I did not know or, for some reason, knew had some animosity towards me, it would have reduced the overall sentiment for me.
Sign or don’t sign, but compulsory signing is in my opinion not a great indicator of empathy (since it lacks feeling, right) or good. It may, however, be a sign of humanity.
I always just sign the crappy message already printed on the card.
You could write something like “You mean as much to me as ever” or " I can’t express how much we miss you", both of which would be true. One time I signed a retirement book of someone that was notoriously having an affair with his secretary with this line: "hope you enjoy many happy years of retirement with your wife ".
Apparently you are the reincarnation of Mother Teresa. I work with a couple folks I dislike (some I very strongly dislike to the tune of utter loathing, and it is reciprocal, I’m sure), and I not only “renounce any trace of concern for their well-being”, I am relieved when they’re out sick because I don’t have to put up with them. The sicker they are, the longer they’re out, the better for me. And I know I’m not alone in this sentiment.
Dismissing someone’s human worth?!? Dude, she didn’t want to sign a friggin’ card. She didn’t sign a petition to have her put to death. I think you’ve lost perspective here.