Thank You Notes

I work at a little Italian restaurant, and we have a stack of thank you notes ready for each day. We distribute these thank you notes if a customer is celebrating his or her birthday, an anniversary, or another special occasion. Myself and my other hostesses hand write at least ten to fifteen at a time to prepare for the day or the weekends when we are the most busy. I feel that handwriting a thank you note is one of the best things a person can receive. Our thank you notes also are ten dollar gift certificates for when the person comes back to the restaurant to eat again. As a small business, I think it's a nice touch and a good incentive for the customers to return back. Very rarely do people type or even hand write a thank you to a friend or relative anymore. My family has made me write them ever since I can remember. My grandparents are especially adamant about them, but I don't mind putting in the effort. The ones we write at work are only about three sentences long and I only write three or four for my personal notes. I also like being able to pick the stationery I use. I always like getting a thank you or letter from someone instead of only bills and bank statements. It's also a way to show a small token of appreciation for a gift or gesture.I'm very comfortable writing these notes because it's something I have already doing in my personal life for a long time. Although my handwriting isn't the greatest, I still try to take time and do a good job. 

These thank you notes are very different from my academic writing in many ways. My papers I submit to my teachers are not written in only three sentences on a card but formatted on multiples pages and typed on a computer. These cards aren't viewed by my professors who I have at least taken a semester of classes with but by total strangers going out to eat. The thank you-notes I write for my job are all in the same format, however we use different cards or ink depending on the season, so that allows for some creativity. Depending on the prompt for an academic piece of writing, I am able to be a little more creative in the subject but not so much the proper formatting. Some topics I can be even more limited on what I can talk about. For the final product, the expectations for an academic piece are much higher because of making sure there are no grammatical  or formatting errors and making sure I relate back to my main idea(s). While I'm creating these thank you notes, it's a much faster and informal process than writing a paper. I can write any number of these in an hour, while a paper can take weeks to get just right. Also, the format never changes for our thank you notes. I never have the same exact topic or goal in my papers for school.