Customer Relations Department
Ye Olde True Love Gift Shoppe
Santa's Grotto, North Pole
Dear Sir,
We regret to inform you that we are unable to meet your order for eight maids a-milking. Domestic service and farming are two areas in which the labour force is shrinking, and unemployment has not yet risen to the levels where getting up at 5am (or thereabouts) to sit in a freezing cold and damp milking parlour, eye to eye with the business-end of a cow seems to be an attractive proposition.
The regulations concerning the transportation of cattle, what with the ravages wreaked by foot and mouth disease, mad cow disease and bovine tuberculosis, mean that delivery of the bovine element of this gift item would be delayed well past the eighth day of Christmas next year.
Once again, sincere apologies for any inconvenience caused.
Mr. E. Guest
3 comments:
Surely, Miss Toe must be well enough to return to work by now? If not, I trust that Human Resources have referred her to occupational health.
Dear Mr Guest;
I am sorry : I had understood that agricultural workers were no longer in short supply, as they are an employment category which the Government is prepared to allow entry to from Eastern Europe.
To be quite honest, I had thought that your problem might be more about maidens than milkers !
Incidentally, I am quite happy to have goats instead of cows; or even asses, which I believe offer the best milk for human purposes.
I hope that this will allow you to resolve the problem; but at the same time I am concerned that you have left it until today to notify me of it - surely it would have been more sensible to have started making fulfilment arrangements as soon as you received my Order ?
Yours &c.
Joe;
Just because you and I (and Miss Toe) think that this is a busy and stressful time of year, that doesn't mean that HR and Occupational Health aren't closed until Monday 4th January !
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