This is the second article in the three part series Bad Economy!, an in-depth exposé on how the recession is impacting the business world.
—————————-
The Ghost of Christmas Present never saw the layoffs coming.
In a conference call with investors on Tuesday, the Christmas Spirit announced plans to lay off the Ghost of Christmas Present along with his entire Department of Concurrent Events. This restructuring will result in the reduction of the Holiday Spirit’s staff of iconic Christmas apparitions from three to two.
Despite being able to provide instantaneous hi-def visualizations of events happening simultaneously anywhere around the world, the Ghost of Christmas Present’s capabilities have been largely superseded by the rise of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, making his offerings redundant and too expensive to maintain.
Spirit reminded investors on the call that he will still retain the services of the Ghosts of Christmas Future and Past, along with their entire staffs. He announced that that the remaining departments will continue to provide a valuable function in the Christmas Spirit’s operations by continuing to leverage the blissful memories of Christmases of long ago as well as demonstrate the pain and despair that will occur if the target doesn’t reform his ways.
“Nostalgia and dread have always been what ends up redeeming the scrooges anyway,” Spirit said on the call.
These organizational changes were necessary to reduce costs and recover from three straight holiday seasons of stagnant growth in Spirit’s mission to restore hope to humanity and bring together estranged family members.
The Christmas Spirit expects to reduce operating expenses by 22 percent and is confident he will still be able to meet his business objectives of turning grouches, grinches and scrooges into tolerable human beings.
The life-like imagery and special effects produced by the three Ghosts have always looked impressive but was expensive, forcing Spirit to do a full cost benefits analysis for each department. Unfortunately for the Ghost of Christmas Present, Spirit’s review made the outcome all too clear.
The Christmas Spirit’s analysis confirmed his suspicions that the Ghost of Christmas Present was too expensive to keep on the payroll and was not nearly as effective as Past and Future in making holiday grouches reconsider their anti-social ways.
“With mixed emotions, we regret to announce that the Ghost of Christmas Present will be seeking opportunities outside the company,” said Spirit, reading from a press release. “He built a strong foundation in allowing us to see how our target accounts were ruining the lives of their family or demoralizing their employees.”
Spirit says that if his account managers need to know what was going on in some house across town,”now, we can just check their Facebook status updates or read their tweets.”
The Spirit of Christmas says it simply does not make sense to carry the expense of a six-figure executive salary when these capabilities can be provided at little to no cost. He then demonstrated on the webcast what social network applications can do by revealing a Twitter post about one of his targeted accounts.
Spirit claimed that historically this type of information would cost 20 manhours to research and produce and then would require the Ghost of Christmas Present, as the department director, to deliver the shocking revelation to the targeted account.
“Now we just get this little gem to go viral and the grinch in question is shamed into changing his ways,” Spirit said. “It really is a beautiful thing.”
Additionally, a Facebook status update can reveal how holiday-impaired grouches can negatively affect the quality of life of their employees during the Christmas season. He showed this screenshot as evidence.
Spirit said that prior to the announcement, the Ghosts had visited him in his bedroom, each over the course of three nights to plead their case.
“The Ghost of Christmas Present really disappointed me and didn’t show me very much,” Spirit said. “All I saw were other people sleeping. Although I now have an interesting story about our IT director to tell at this year’s holiday party.”
Spirit revealed that the Ghost of Christmas Past showed him as a young upstart corporate accounts director and how much joy he experienced in restoring hope and faith in Christmas, saying “I was reminded of how much I love what we do, how we make a difference in people’s lives, and how hot that one girl from accounting was.”
“Christmas Future had a great presentation,” Spirit explained to the investors and reporters on the call. “Once he showed me that the decision to drop Christmas Present and make some changes in our overseas tax liabilities will give us double digit growth over the next five years,. . .well that sealed it.”
The Ghost of Christmas Present was understandably distraught with the news that his lifelong career had recently come to an end, saying “I only wish I had seen this coming.”
Because his only skill set is quickly being replaced by technology across the industry, the Ghost of Christmas Present is worried about what will come next, especially considering that his former colleague Christmas Future kept giving him knowing glances of pity as he left the building.
When reached for comment, the Ghost of Christmas Present still maintained that his services are invaluable, saying that he had some juicy information about what Spirit’s wife was up to right now.
“You won’t get that on a ‘what are you doing now’ status update,” Present said.
————————————-
Be sure to check out part one of the Bad Economy! series , Local pet supply store Pet-o-Philia goes out of business
JB Goodbody frequently has thoughts in his head that makes him smile. Were they made public at the moment they poofed into existence, without some form of structured outlet such as satire, these thoughts would cause significant distress among his friends, family and coworkers. This is why he is here. 
This was a great read, very creative and witty.
Thanks. Economic stories about fabled Christmas icons are hard to come by.