Write about a "thank you" letter that you didn't mean a word of.

Well, it's not that I didn't mean a word of it. It's just that it felt forced and contrived, and probably read that way as well.

The university library where I work is named after a well known journalist and newspaper executive in the Atlanta area. He graduated from the university, was a member of the Board of Trustees, and a generous benefactor. There's even a room in the library set up to replicate his office, sometimes referred to as "the shrine" by the more saracastic employees. When he died in 1999, his widow picked up where he left off in his role of benefactor. We soon got word of an endowed fund which provided generous donations for unprecedented quantities of new books for several years to come. When the widow's next birthday rolled around, all of us employees were instructed to write her a thank you letter.

Say what? OK, I felt like a grade school girl again being forced by my parents to write a thank you note for a Christmas or birthday gift. Mind you, I'm not anti-thank you by any means. The gratitude expressed in a thank you tells us that we are valued and shows us that we're not being taken for granted. When I write a thank you note, it ensures that I actively appreciate a kindness done on my behalf. Who could argue with that? I religiously wrote my thank yous as a child, and as an adult I did my parental duty by impressing their importance upon my daughters and making sure they wrote them as well. But to me, a thank you is a personal acknowledgment of gratitude. I've never had to write a thank you note before for something that didn't benefit me directly. Does a thank you lose all meaning when it's written out of duty and obligation, rather than inspired by genuine, spontaneous appreciation? I think so. And in this case, it also seemed like a rather transparent vehicle designed to say, "Keep those funds coming!"

Well, I wrote the obligatory thank you letter and hopefully managed to make it sound halfway believable. I put in a little bit of personal information about myself; told about my job in the library and how long I had been employed there. It wasn't a huge deal in the scheme of life, but being required to write that note did make me feel childlike and led around by the nose. It was definitely one of the most unusual requests I've ever received from an employer.