TV
by Meg Favreau—Age 23—Philadelphia, PA
About a month after I started working at the TV shopping channel, my boss and I met for a brainstorming meeting to come up with more special promotions for the upcoming holidays. I noticed that between the Christmas rush and celebrating the company’s birthday, we didn’t do anything for Thanksgiving on air.
“The idea,” I told my boss, “Is called ‘What I’m Thankful For.’ For the week of Thanksgiving, hosts will pick favorite products and talk about why they are so thankful for them. For example, one might say ‘I’m thankful for this concealer; I wouldn’t look awake without it.’” I thought the idea was tacky and terrible, but that’s also what the place was to me: a shopping machine that pandered to people who could often barely afford the products.
“I love it,” said my boss.
She made me set up a meeting with three Very Important People in the company. It took about a month to get everyone together, and by that time Hurricane Katrina had hit. My voice wavered as I gave them my pitch, and when I finished, they all stared at me for a moment, until one woman said:
“Don’t you think, with the current national climate, it’s tacky and offensive to say we’re thankful for products when we should be thankful for things that really matter, like family?”
I wanted to say yes. I wanted so badly tell her that I agreed with her, then to smack her in the face and run out of the building, giving a big middle finger to the whole TV shopping industry on the way out. Instead, I stammered the reply, “Well, people say the same thing about Christmas, and look at everything we do for that.” The comment fell on deaf ears. I left the meeting ashamed that they thought I was really buying into the idea.
Several months later, I ran into the same woman in the hallway. “Aren’t you the girl who had the ‘What I’m Thankful For’ idea?” she asked. I looked at the floor and nodded; this was not a conversation I wanted to have. “I just wanted to tell you,” she said, “That was the theme of Shop Magazine’s November issue. And when I saw it, I thought ‘That girl was on to something.’”
It didn’t make me feel any better.
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