Today the account rep and the regional sales manager for $NEW_MANAGED_SECURITY_PROVIDER stopped off at my office to give me a bottle of Tanqueray No. TEN gin as a Christmas present and "thank you" for letting them take on our account's business. This is pretty standard fare in the world of higher-end (read: expensive as fuck) vendor-customer relationships, where the sales budget gives back approximately 1/10,000th of a percent of the earnings from that customer by giving a moderately flashy or expensive gift to each of the various managers, directors and staffers who are involved in the daily handling of the account. But it sort of made me pause because earlier this week my coworker Marlok (who doesn't have a LiveJournal and really should fix that at some point) surprised me with a Christmas gift that consisted of a bottle of Bombay Sapphire gin and a limited-edition holiday martini glass. I've been collecting these little Bombay creations as the years go past and I hadn't picked up the gift pack for this year, so I was suitably impressed with the choice and the gift as a whole. But with Bombay and Tanqueray as holiday gifts from friends and vendors I cannot help but sense a theme beginning to develop here.
Let it be known that I, for one, welcome my liver-destroying alcoholism-enabling holiday gifts!
Oh every hour
