This envelope does not contain your bonus

How nice to come home from a holiday week away to discover a thin envelope from the Company has been delivered to your mailbox. Not to your mail slot, where nothing is ever delivered, and which you can not often find because it is always being re-alphabetized, but to your mailbox at home. Stamp and all.

And you think, "what do you know, there is a bonus check after all."

No there isn't. There is a letter from Mr Lowell thanking you for your year of service and warning you of the s***storm to come.

I shall paraphrase:

Happy whatever you celebrate. American society has confused me into not knowing whether I am supposed to/allowed to acknowledge it. I could just say Happy New Year, but you might think me a Godless Capitalist, so ... enjoy whatever it is you did with all the PTO we made you take.

Hoo boy, are we gonna shake up the apple cart in 2008! I don't want to ruin your turkey dinner, or give the market anything to talk about, so that's all I'll say. I could just say Thanks and Happy New Year, but you might think you are being ambushed if I don't at least hint at it, so.... don't order new business cards.

Might as well buy into it, because we are going to flog this horse hard -- the one I won't say anything more about. I could just say the best is yet to come in the New Year, but you might think I am not open to dialogue, so... talk to your manager about it, and hope that her manager talked to her.

We are burning the whole house down, because frankly it is a rat trap and we have run out of nails. We will talk about this rebuild a lot -- more than you would have thought us capable of. You can expect focus groups, and committees, and task forces, and every other clusterbleep you have come to love about us. I could just say this house has no resale value, but you might think me disrespectful of the founding fathers, so... buy your swag on closeout.

Look at it this way, you are the Titanic survivors. Poor Rose, holding onto Jack till her voice and her hands gave out, but she lives to an extraordinary old age and gets to keep the jewelry. Let us sail into fresh waters, full steam ahead.

On behalf of the upper levels of the ranking executive tier of senior vice presidents, let me ask you to kindly stop shaking the envelope.