Hallmark Rolls Out New Line of Layoff Greeting Cards

From the archive: first published September 28, 2011.

Friend lose a job? Hallmark wants to help. With US unemployment hovering around the 9 percent mark, the nation's biggest greeting-card maker has rolled out eight cards designed to cheer up the jobless — a new "Job Loss" line filed under its "encouragement" category.

In the business of selling sentiments, there's a card for everything. Cards with sound, sympathy cards, cards for losing a tooth. Now, cards for losing a job: messages of support and encouragement mixed with a little recession humour. "It's hard to know what to say at a sensitive time like this. How about, 'I'm buying!'" reads one, illustrated with a cartoon line-up outside an unemployment office. Another: "Don't think of it as losing your job. Think of it as a timeout between stupid bosses." And a third: "One day, you'll look back on all this with the wisdom that distance bestows, and you'll say: Wow, that sucked."

Derek McCracken, creative director at Hallmark, told NPR the point was to remind people that "a job loss is temporary and that it doesn't define the person." A company spokesman told AFP that Hallmark didn't expect the line to be a top seller — "We know these job-loss captions are not going to be the strongest (sales) performers" — but that they met "a relevant and niche consumer need," with customers calling in to ask for exactly this.

Reaction, as you might expect, is mixed. Employment-agency workers called the cards a welcome gesture — "Getting a card like that and somebody caring is fabulous," said one Indiana counsellor. Others say a newly laid-off person doesn't need a reminder — just a healthy sense of humour. Perhaps that's a sign of the times.

Editor's note: this article was expanded during our editorial review with verified details from September 2011 reporting.