World Peace and a Pony, Part 2.

Friday, December 5, 2008. North Pole.

Nick Claus loads the gifts into his bag, double checking his Excel Spreadsheet (he's moved into the 21st century) to make sure the kids got what they wanted. He gets down to Smith, Bobby; Townsborough, USA, and notices he hasn't checked anything off, even though Bobby made it to the nice_2008.xml list in the 67th nice percentile. All he has is a note he wrote down.

Find acceptable substitute, include "world_peace.doc". Dictated but not read.

"Still haven't found a decent substitute? What is this, the Happy-Feel-Good organization? How old's this kid, twelve? Give him an ant farm, or a nerf gun, or a chemistry set, or a pony for all I care, and let's get on with this!" Nick was getting a bit too stressed for his own good, especially sense the layoffs. The economy had been pretty rough on North Pole operations. "Well, what are we waiting for?"

"Excuse me, Mr. Claus, but may I have a word?"

Nick's Director of Public Relations, Jeannine Kirkland, called him into her office, and pulled up some charts.

"I was talking to Bill from finance and we decided that we ought to show you this." Jeannine pulled up a series of charts. "This graph right here shows the trends of all classes of gifts asked for in the past fifty years, by percentage. As you can see, in the past ten years, the demand for violent video games has increased by over 9000%, while the demand for more conventional toys has dropped nearly 75%. Now, as you know, we generally don't get parental consent for the violent video games for about one half of those requests. But I'm getting a bit off point.

"Last year, we tried something: we only filled one in four requests for approved rated 'M' games, and only one in three rated 'T' games, and if you'll look at this year's numbers, there is a 10% decrease in demand for those games. Meanwhile, if you'll see the next graph..."

"What's your point? I'm very busy and as you know I have very little time for these reports as it is."

"Well hold on just a moment, Mr. Claus, I was just getting there. Now if you see this graph, in the past five years alone, requests for world peace have grown exponentially. In western Europe, there are ten times more request for peace. In eastern Europe, fifteen times more. And in North America, the demand has seen a twenty-five-fold increase."

"Well, great. So children see the evils of war, but they want shoot-em-up video games in unprecedented numbers. I don't see the point. This is a business, and if we don't meet consumer demands, then we will go bankrupt. Our investments are tight as they are! So what is your point?"

"Well, we took a hit last year for the video game stunt, so I don't think that we'll try that again. But if there was some way for us to bring peace? I mean, video games get all of the advertisements, peace is just spread by word of mouth. So if we made it possible to give peace for Christmas, then-"

"Well, we have that letter, what else do we need?"

"Sir, have you ever read that letter? It's the flimsiest, most disconnected, out of touch response out of all of our letters!"

"Well, most of those kids don't know any better, right?"

"Have you read any of those letters?"

"Of course!"

Jeannine looked at him quizzically.

"Well, I mean, with all of the stuff I have to do, I guess sometimes I'll skim..."

"Mr. Claus, you don't read those letters. Either someone else skims them and gives you the highlights, or you search for keywords in the emails. Nick, these kids really think you can do this for them! And you can't just use one generic letter for all of them. All of the letters are so unique."

"I'll tell you what. I'll read of those letters over the next few days and if I think it needs a special response, I'll write one. Could you get me a copy of the form letter, too? Just for comparison?"

"Sure thing. I think we ought to really try to reach out to those kids. They're the ones who want their gifts the most."

"All right. Well, I'm gonna get going, those reindeer aren't going to feed themselves."

"Have a good weekend, Nick."

"You too, Jeannine."

And Nick 'Santa' Claus, CEO of Merry Christmas Ltd, grabbed a stack of letters off of his desk, and left the office to go home for the weekend.