Thursday, November 22, 2007 Seares: That gag on ‘Merry Christmas’ By Pachico A. Seares News Sense
MOST common and enduring ban on government employees during Christmas is that prohibiting visits to business shops, stores, offices, or facilities.
Authors of that policy fear gift-soliciting by individuals or teams that inspect private establishments in the guise of enforcing the law.
I don't know how much the ban has worked. It doesn't require shrewdness to subvert the rule by simply phone texting or calling. Gifts can change hands by courier: the solicitor's or the giver's.
That's why people may take a dim view of the Bureau of Immigration (BI) order for its employees not to say "Merry Christmas" to departing and arriving plane passengers at airports.
The prohibition rests on the same fear that bans Christmas visits to private firms. BI employees might use, or be misunderstood as using, "Merry Christmas" to ask for gifts.
Signals
Did BI officials consider though that, Christmas or no Christmas, a bureau employee can relay to the traveler a request or demand for a "gift" without anyone else hearing or seeing it?
There are kinds of signals that work, from the careful whisper to speedy-hand motion or coded words.
There was this government official who perfected the art of speaking low, as if he were in a monks' monastery. Another bureaucrat could flash figures with a quick hand, seen only by the person a breath away.
Graft can be transacted even without saying "Merry Christmas." And the smiling that BI wants its employees to do instead? A smile can speak volumes, which may include "Pinaskohan, Sir!"
And what if the BI employee merely says "Happy New Year!"
