Cards for the Unemployed Catching On
You’ve been fired. Given the old heave-ho. In the mail a couple days later, among the bills and shut-off notices, you find a greeting card.
On the front is a picture of a man being booted out of an airplane. The card reads: “Certain situations require us to become inventive very quickly.”
You open the card. The man has removed his pants and is using them to parachute gently to Earth, alongside the punch line: “I know you’ll land on your feet.”
You laugh, long and hard, maybe for the first time in days.
That’s the idea behind “Greetings for the Unemployed,” a new line of greeting cards produced with the recession in mind.
“People don’t know what to say to people who have been laid off,” said Tsgoyna Tanzman, the cards’ originator. “There is no accepted etiquette. We thought that these cards might give people a little respite from the dreariness of not having a job.”
Tanzman came up with the idea when her husband was out of work for six months beginning in March, 1990. To help lift his spirits, she began leaving little notes that let him know she loved him--whatever.
“The bad news is that you’ve been fired,” one said. “The good news is that I didn’t marry you for the money.”
After talking it over with friends, Tanzman realized she had hit on something. She hooked up with Kevin Mulcahy, a lawyer and illustrator who had recently quit his job at a New York law firm because he suspected he would be let go.
Dubbing their enterprise “Pink Slip Productions,” the two created 13 different cards, some funny, some touching, all aimed at the recently unemployed.
One card shows a corporate executive opening a box containing a hot-pink ladies’ slip. It reads: “I know you’ll slip into something better soon.”
Another reads: “First, it was your hair. Then, it was your job. Isn’t it good to know you’ve still got me?”
The cards seem to have caught on. The first time around, Tanzman and Mulcahy printed 800 of each. Most of the first batch are gone and some of the cards are now into their third printing.
The cards retail for $1.25 and are available in a handful of stores in Manhattan. In addition, Tanzman and Mulcahy have put together a mail-order catalogue.
“I don’t think the popularity of the cards is an accident,” Tanzman said. “You read every day about more people being fired. Yet you don’t want to send friends a condolence card. These cards fill a void.”
Tanzman and Mulcahy said they don’t know how long they will stay in the card-making business. Both have other jobs, Tanzman as a speech pathologist and Mulcahy as a business communications consultant and writer. Mulcahy said the two are considering selling the line of cards.
In the meantime, Tanzman said she likes to think she has done something to bring smiles to a few victims of the recession.
“Being fired is a situation that is very difficult to bear,” she said. “Our cards, in a small way, help make that situation a little more bearable.”
