Is it better to be a day late with something real, or on time with something rushed?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nA day late, every time, provided you do not spend the message apologising for it. Being late is a small social matter and it is forgotten within the week; sending three generic words on the correct day is what actually registers, because it says the date was in your calendar and she was not. If you have missed it, open with the thing you meant to say and put the apology at the end, in one short clause, rather than making it the whole message. What people remember afterwards is whether anybody wrote something that could only have been written to them. Nobody has ever reread a birthday message and thought about what time it arrived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She is abroad and her day starts hours before mine. When should the message go?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nWork to her clock, not yours. A message that lands in her evening arrives after everyone local has already been in touch, and it becomes the one she replies to while tired and getting ready for bed. Sending it the night before, so that it is waiting when she wakes up, puts you at the front of the queue instead \u2014 and being first is one of the few advantages the distance gives you. If the gap runs the other way and her day begins while you are asleep, write it in advance and schedule it, then say nothing about the time difference in the message itself. Calls are a separate question: ask which part of the day is free rather than guessing at it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The work group chat is already a wall of birthday messages. Do I add one of my own as well?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nAdd to the thread, briefly, so as not to be conspicuously absent, and then send something separate and short directly to her. The group message is a formality and everyone treats it as one; nobody rereads it and nobody is offended by three words in it. The private one is the message that counts, and it can be far more personal precisely because it is not being read by the whole department. Keep the two different \u2014 do not paste the same line into both, because she will see it twice and the second copy cancels out the first. If the friendship is genuinely outside work, do not mention work in the private message at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We talk every day anyway. What makes a birthday message different from an ordinary one?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nIt says the thing the daily conversation never gets round to. When you are in constant contact the running commentary crowds out everything general \u2014 you discuss what happened this morning, not what she is like. So a birthday message from a friend you speak to every day should be the one message of the year that steps back and says it plainly: what she is good at, what she has got through lately, why the daily nonsense is worth having. It will feel oddly formal to write and that is exactly the point. Send it separately from whatever else you are discussing that day, and do not attach it to the end of a conversation about something else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A voice note, a card in the post or a message \u2014 which is worth the effort, and for which friend?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe post is worth it for the friend you rarely see, because a card is evidence that you did something on a day that was not convenient, and it sits on her mantelpiece for a fortnight afterwards saying so. A voice note suits the friend abroad and the friend you have known longest: tone carries everything writing cannot, and she can play it more than once. Writing is the right choice for work, where a voice note is awkward to listen to at a desk and impossible to answer in an open-plan room. The rule worth following is to match the effort to what the friendship runs on rather than to how fond of her you are. Daily contact is served perfectly well by a good message; two lunches a year is not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two friends, two birthdays, and the same message will not do for both. The one you have known since school needs nothing explained to her at all; the one you sit opposite four days a week needs the whole thing dialled down, because whatever you write may well be read over her shoulder by somebody […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":600,"featured_media":4084,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2425],"tags":[],"moimportance":[],"motype":[],"moformat":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4083","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-greetings"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/manchestername.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/manchestername.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/manchestername.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manchestername.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/600"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manchestername.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4083"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/manchestername.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4087,"href":"https:\/\/manchestername.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4083\/revisions\/4087"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manchestername.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/manchestername.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manchestername.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manchestername.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4083"},{"taxonomy":"moimportance","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manchestername.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/moimportance?post=4083"},{"taxonomy":"motype","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manchestername.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/motype?post=4083"},{"taxonomy":"moformat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manchestername.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/moformat?post=4083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}