Here’s an old post I wrote, and a fitting Favorite Friday for tomorrow… the original link is here (great comments), but I wanted to put the entire letter in this post:
Dear Employee # 3352899238,
What a terrific year we’ve had at Acme Widget Company! The team has really pulled together and we expect it to be the best year yet! Here are some of our accomplishments:
- We successfully installed our new accounting system – thanks to IT, Finance and Accounting, who worked extra overtime for six months to make this a seamless transition! You will each receive an extra turkey with your customary Christmas ham.
- We finally updated our Policy and Procedure manual – this significant overhaul brings us up to date and current with industry standards, and compliant with federal regulations. Not the most exciting accomplishment of the year, but we recognize the thousands of hours that went into this project, and we wish to express a hearty “thank you” to all of our administrative team who greatly contributed (sorry, no extra turkey for you since this did not have an impact on our profit).
- We closed deals with four new customers, which guarantees next year’s revenue and profit growth to exceed 60% of our targets – thank you to our sales team who went above and beyond (and sorry to Joe, who’s wife left him due to the strenuous work conditions)
- We maintained 94% customer retention, in spite of The Great Product Glitch last spring – our customer service team really saved our hides after we realized problems with some vendors. Their quick thinking and excellent response to customer issues kept us out of legal hot water and helped us keep almost all of our contracts intact – we’ll have an end-of-year party in the cafeteria just for you next Thursday (it’s potluck).
- We finally established our offshore office, and will begin operations on January 1 – this will result in saving millions of dollars, again, contributing to a very strong 2009!
We want to express our heartfelt gratitude to you as we realize you made a significant impact during 2008.
Unfortunately, due to circumstances that we cannot control, and our new strategy to move professional positions to lower-wage countries, we are terminating your position. This is not a reflection on your performance and we hope that in the future you would consider re-employment with Acme – after all, we are a family company, and you are part of our family!
Happy new year!
Sincerely,
Your management team, where “open door” is our #1 policy!
P.S. We will be unavailable through January 7th, as we will be in Hawaii for our Executive Retreat (luckily we get to take our families with us this year!). Happy New Year!
Happy Holidays!
O my gosh, that was hysterical!