Thank-you note never came for our $500 gift

My niece recently got married. They’re starting a new home, so I sent them a cheque for $500. I never heard a word, either acknowledging the gift or thanking me for it. I contacted my stepsister (the girl’s mother) to ask whether they’d received it, and she said “Yes, but they didn’t know how to contact you.” Nonsense. An acquaintance I hadn’t seen for years just found me on Facebook and, more to the point, our name, address and phone number were on the cheque! I’m so angry and insulted; I want nothing more to do with her. But thank-you notes are so, you know, old-fashioned. How can I deal with this without spewing venom?

There are two things to remember before you blow a gasket.

First, it’s not so much that thankyou notes are out of style; it’s more that the acceptable time lapse between the gift and the response has expanded. Considerably. Wedding couples routinely send notes a year or more after the nuptials, and even normal expressions of gratitude can come months after the gift.

It’s tiresome to blame millennials for everything, but they really do have a different sense of time than the generation that preceded them; they don’t understand that us old codgers might not be on the green side of the grass by the time they get around to being in touch. In any event, give it a bit longer before you flip out; we recently got a thank-you for a wedding gift delivered almost two years ago, so there’s hope.

The more important thing to remember is that this is 100 per cent about your niece, and zero per cent about you. You did nothing wrong. The failure to be in touch does not mean your niece doesn’t like you, or doesn’t appreciate the gift. It simply means she’s rude.

How do I know? Simple. Decent people who receive gifts, whether or not they like the gift or are fond of the giver, know enough to say thank you. It’s not complicated.

In my clergy days, I received some strange “offerings;” I also received nice gifts from people whom I didn’t like, who didn’t like me, but were trying to curry favour. But I always knew enough to express appreciation because, well, that’s what decent people do — and back then, I was kind of decent most of the time.

So there’s no point being angry or hurt; this isn’t about you. If the gift had come from Justin Trudeau or Donald Duck, there still would have been no acknowledgment. Rude people don’t give a rat’s rump about who gives them what; they only care about the stuff they get.

So what you need to decide now is whether you care enough about your niece to use this as a teachable moment.

If yes, contact her, ask whether she got the cheque (of course she did; she cashed it!), then tell her, straight up, that you were disappointed she didn’t take the time to say thanks. Don’t waste subtlety. Just put it out there, clear and without emotional baggage. If she learns something, you’ll have given a gift worth more than the hundred five-spots.

And if you don’t actually care enough to take that step, you just wasted 500 bucks. Send your questions to star.ethics@yahoo.ca