I got into work today to find a medium-sized box with a FedEx sticker on it on my desk.
Opening it produced two bottles of low-medium quality Italian wine (red and white) and a “Happy Thanksgiving” card from one of the publishers I buy online media from. (They resell DrKoop.com, among others, for those wondering)
It’s time for Christmas in Online Media Buyers World! This means a dozen-odd gift baskets filled with stale biscotti and processed cheese spreads. This means low-grade wine and tchotckes. This means baskets of baked goods where the shipping cost is more than the value.
I really wonder how wrong it would be to just ask all my publishers to donate the financial equivalent of the gift basket and shipping to SecondHarvest.org? Because I certainly intend to just hand out any gift basket contents to the hungry down in Santa Monica this year, and a $3-with-shipping package of crackers would do much more good as $3 worth of bread.
Oh well. Let the ridiculousness of the Bribe Season begin! I have almost two million dollars in budget to throw around in the next six months, and many people will probably think that the way to a piece of that is through themed gift packs. Last year, at least one vendor got smart and just sent me $50 at Amazon.com. I can hope, dammit. I can hope.
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