Please read this post before continuing:
santa story
Please don't take what I'm going say the wrong way. I am very happy for these people and hope that this idea continues to work for them. I have criticisms that I'm going to voice, and they're going to be harsh. But I think I need to speak clearly about my feelings in order that people can post back
criticisms of the way I think so I can LEARN from their success story.
Make no mistake - I am posting this so that I can change my way of thinking. The criticisms below are a reflection of my thought processes as I read the santa story, and I realise that I need to change these perspectives if any of my own ideas are going to be successful.
OK, here goes:
I think this is the stupidest idea I've heard of. I have no clue how this concept even stayed in anyone's brain longer than 10 seconds before being discarded.
WHO THE HELL pays ten dollars for someone else to print off a letter and post it? These customers obviously have access to a computer, so why on Earth would they not just create a letter and post it to themselves, saving themselves 9.20$ which they could then spend on a present for the child??
Further, the letters aren't even very nice. They are tacky and not even particularly aimed at pleasing the children who will receive them. It's more like they're aimed at the grans and grandpas who would be ignorant enough to use this service. It's even more likely that the couple who instigated this idea are quite old, and didn't even think about what the children would like or who would be buying the letters, but instead just used the first images they came across that *they* thought were cute.
Now, printing and posting 100 letters a day for two months isn't my idea of fun; it must be hard work. But they're earning two times my salary (as a European teacher) for what is basically brain-dead, untrained labour for a stupid, badly executed, poorly thought-out idea. Further, they do it in TWO MONTHS and don't have to put up with a fraction of the bulls**t and stress that I face every day!
And yet my thinking must be flawed, because the d**n thing worked.
I discard several ideas a week that are better than this one. However, whenever I start to examine them, they unravel themselves (especially when I start to throw rough figures around). And for all sorts of reasons, what seemed like a good idea initially, then gets dumped.
So I'm looking for advice, criticism, feedback, anecdotes, empathy, experience. Whatever you've got that can help me learn from this story instead of just feeling resentful and confused.
And if Jinglebells reads this: APOLOGIES for my harsh thought processes. It is not my intention demean you at all. In fact I want to learn whatever skills/perspective you have, that allowed you to succeed with this idea where I would have failed.
Cheers.
