I Never Promised You a Goodie Bag by Jennifer Gilbert

Author:Jennifer Gilbert
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2012-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

I Never Promised You a Goodie Bag

We all want a happy ending. If every event is a story, then a goodie bag is like the kiss at the end of the fairy tale. We’re all waiting for it, and when we finally get our prettily wrapped reward, we tear into it like a child at a birthday party.

Inside that goodie bag there might be nothing more than a granola bar and a shampoo sample, but party guests will sharp-elbow their ninety-year-old grandmother out of the way if it looks like there might be a shortage. You think you’ve seen the worst humanity has to offer at a Prada sample sale? Try imagining the last lifeboat on the Titanic. The last helicopter out of Saigon. Now imagine me standing between a horde of upper-crust revelers and the single remaining goodie bag. I swear to you: it will get ugly. Grown women will fight over who got the better shade of lip gloss. Guests will scream at my staff because they want to know why they got the regular goodie bag instead of the VIP goodie bag. They will actually climb over each other to get to those little bags, and then they’ll end up tossing all of it. So many times I have walked out of events to see trash cans full of the books, pens, and picture frames that my staff and I had spent hours stuffing into those shiny bags.

At most events, the bags aren’t put out until the very end of the night, and I have seen guests actually leave a party early just so they can stand on line to wait for their goodie bag. Every time it happens, I’m surprised all over again. Really? I want to say to them. You left the good time in there, just for the promise that there might be something worth having in this little bag?

Once I did an extravagant party for a massively successful biotech company. The invite went out in a black box, and packed inside were hangover cures, party poppers, confetti, all to foreshadow that this would be the event of the year. At the party there were aerial performers and seven-foot-tall ice sculptures that shot vodka into custom-made glasses in the design of the company’s newest prescription launch. For the unveiling of the new drug, the CEO was lowered down among his one thousand guests from a high, darkened ceiling. The whole event was like a circus, a game show, and Mardi Gras rolled into one. Finally, after this incredible star-studded, million-dollar event, a guest came up to me and said, “Where are the goodie bags?” I had to laugh.

Over the last few years I’ve conducted my own secret war against goodie bags. I’ve gently pointed my clients away from the pens and the lip gloss. If they really feel they must give something, then I’ll encourage them at least to make it fun and edible—cookies and milk, or the next day’s New York Times and a bagel.

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