Are thank-you notes passe in the e-mail age?
Jen Burke Anderson, Special to The Chronicle Sunday, June 28, 2009 URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/06/28/LVRE186L53.DTL Your mom told you to do it. “What Color Is Your Parachute?” told you to do it. Every etiquette columnist who ever cocked a pinkie on a teacup and every job-search expert worth her salt told you to do it. For centuries, it’s been the common assumption that a handwritten thank-you note – after meeting your paramour’s parents, after crashing at your friend’s cabin in Tahoe and especially after a job interview – is never a mistake. Could it be one now? In the past year I’ve written my customary longhand thank-you notes to clients, agencies I’ve worked with and the leaders of a high-powered professional retreat I attended. None has acknowledged my notes; yet in times past, it seems they would have at least thrown a conversational nod at my personalized gesture of appreciation. Are they just too busy to notice? Or, in the age of texting, Twitter a
