Some years back, a successful New York PR executive told me a story about a meeting he had with a recent college graduate who was looking to get into the business. The executive – a friend of mine - spent close to an hour with the kid, sharing valuable tips and insights into the business, and was happy to do so. The kid was smart and eager and seemed to have promise.
What happened next? I can’t tell you, because my friend didn’t do anything further to help the young man. He explained why.
“He never sent me a thank-you note,” my friend said. “I gave him an hour of my time and what I thought was important inside intel into the business, and he never even wrote a note. Yes, he said thank you when our meeting was over. He might’ve even sent me an email, I don’t remember. But he never took the time to sit down and write me a thank-you note, and that to me says a lot. In fact, it told me everything I needed to know about him.”
My friend, by his own admission, is not entirely rational on the subject of thank-you notes. It has been an informal litmus test he has used for years to help him judge someone’s character. You can certainly argue that my friend’s assessment was harsh, and the failure to send a thank-you note is not a capital crime. But he stands by his opinion that it was reflective of a deeper character flaw.
Entitlement? Lack of social grace? Call it what you will, my friend says, “but it’s not the right way to treat people.”
OK, I want to pause here to say that the purpose of this post is not to guilt-trip you if you don’t happen to be a regular thank-you note sender. That would be the proverbial pot calling the kettle black, because I have been deficient in this area myself, for years. If someone had me over for a lovely dinner or weekend, or sent me a special gift, I’d tell myself that I must send a thank-you note, and then I would rarely follow through. I am actually quite ashamed about this, because it’s not a hard task to complete and I agree very much with my PR friend: it’s not the way I want to treat people.
I don’t have any data on how few thank-you cards Hallmark sells these days, but my strong hunch is that it’s a whole lot fewer than it was, say, 20 or 30 years ago. Let’s face it: it is so much easier and faster (and cheaper) to shoot someone an email or text than to buy a card, write a note, affix a stamp and stick it in the mail. But isn’t that the point . . . that the modest effort required to send a note does more to express one’s genuine appreciation than a text message that takes 10 seconds to write?
I think so. I’ve tried to raise my thank-you note game in the last year or two. I have a reader of one of my books to thank. The reader reached out to me – yes, with a handwritten note – telling me how much he enjoyed a book I wrote about the 1969 Mets called They Said It Couldn’t Be Done. He said it was the best book he’d read on the subject and went on to say that it helped provide a bit of respite for him because he was still grieving the loss of his son two years ago. I was deeply touched that he would share this with me, so I wrote back to thank him and included a signed copy of the book with a personal inscription.
It took all of five minutes to write my note, and another 10 to go the post office with the book. I don’t deserve a medal for doing that, but it felt good. It felt as though I was, in a small way, honoring this man and his grief by making the effort. As for all of the unsent thank yous that I intended to write but didn’t, well, I am trying not to beat myself up about it, and to just resolve to be better about writing them going forward.
After our daughter, Samantha, returned home to Sleepy Hollow from Paris in August with the Olympic gold medal she’d won with the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team, Mayor Martin Rutyna and his staff organized a “Sam Coffey Day” celebration that included a key to the village, various official proclamations, a banner over the firehouse and hundreds of little kids, mostly in their soccer uniforms. It was a festive and thoughtful occasion that took a good amount of lifting to organize. I was going to thank the mayor via email, but I remembered my reader, and my commitment to do better. I wrote the mayor a thank-you note. When I was done, I wrote another one – this time to Brian Doyle, owner of a nearby pub called J.P. Doyle’s, who hosted and catered a wonderful post-event gathering
Sam Coffey Day in Sleepy Hollow, NY last month
Again, two notes of thanks do not make me a candidate for sainthood. It was hardly a Herculean undertaking. But these men did something very nice for us, and the simple act of acknowledging that felt as if I were completing a circle.
“Appreciation can change a day, even change a life,” wrote Margaret Cousins, an Irish social activist and suffragette. “Your willingness to put it into words is all that is necessary.”
Love this one, Wayne. Despite Mr. Palmer's utterly unncessary quip about your handwriting which though not wrong in any way needn't have been written down (in a text!) and I trust did not wound.
I have thank you notes from parents of children I taught in a special drawer. I saved them for those times I needed a boost. They are always a sweet reminder of gratitude received.