Goodbye gift for Jill Pantozzi (EDIT: http://media.giphy.com/media/y6hoIEgCKi5Ta/giphy.gif )

Hi all,

In case you haven't heard, The Mary Sue's Editor in Chief, Jill Pantozzi, is leaving the site Friday, July 3rd. Some of us on this forum have been sending private messages trying to organize a "thank you for being the best ever" gift to be sent to the TMS office. We'd been planning to set up a crowdsourcing page to have a [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] arrive by Friday. However, we just heard from Senior Editor Dan Van Winkle that this week Jill is only going to be in the office on Monday--TOMORROW!

So here's the question: do we want to continue with the planned bear, even though it will arrive late? Dan said he will make sure Jill gets it. Or do we want to use 1800Flowers.com to deliver a bouquet tomorrow so she has a special thank-you gift on her last day at the office?

Either way, the crowdsourcing sites we've investigated will take too long. The most efficient way seems to be if people send $5-$10 to a single person via PayPal, and that person places the order. No, it's not ideal. But it seems to be the easiest way to raise the funds that won't take two weeks minimum.

Please reply ASAP! If we're going with the flowers the order needs to be placed within the next 12 hours!

ETA: Jill does not have any flower allergies that Dan is aware of.

I have to pass,I'm already stretched thin for the last two days of the month.
If it doesn't work out for monday and you decide to give it more time,let me know and I'll be in.

I'm in for flowers, can send 20 dollars, just let me know where! Bear would be great if we get enough money together. Can send more after payday on Tuesday.

Sorry been MIA, lot of real crap going on here lately.

I can kick for the Batman Bear.

OK, so if we're doing flowers I've decided on these: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

If you want to contribute, you can send any amount to my PayPal account:
[edited out]

If anyone sends something I'll place the order around 5:00 AM Eastern. It should arrive at their office that day.

EDIT! Corrected the email address!

SECOND EDIT! It seems to need my real name and country, which totally ruins my ninja persona. Remind me to edit this out later, but...
Edit the third
::hours later::
Well... **makes sure ninja mask is tightly secure again** So *that's* what public nudity feels like. I vote next time we have the brain in the jar or the little bug (wait, is he even on this forum?) make the payment, since their names are already common knowledge.

I'm sorry WCN, but I keep timing out trying to connect to your paypal.

Kris Smith wrote:I'm sorry WCN, but I keep timing out trying to connect to your paypal.

E-mail typo fixed above! c:

OK, the flowers have been ordered! Here's a screenshot of the confirmation page:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

We had $80 donated (or promised to be donated--you know who you are!) for flowers, so I went with the medium basket instead of the small and threw in the balloon and chocolate because who doesn't love chocolate?!? The card reads thusly:

To Queen Pantozzi, First of Her Name, Mother of Cats and Wielder of the Trollslaying Ban-hammer, thank you for being the best Editor in Chief on the Internet. With love, The Mary Sue comment community

(Look, I'd just read Locuas' awesome comic from the last night: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] That imagery was fresh in my head...)

Yay! Got the money sent this morning

Thanks for doing this.

That card is perfection, lol. Thanks for organizing this!

That's fab, thanks for doing this! We will keep your ninja secret identity.

Also, which will come as a surprise to no one, I totally want that bear...

YOU GUYYYYYYYYYYYS ;^;

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

small hurricane on my face DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT

This was shiny. Thank you so much for organizing this, Ninja! That card is perfect and YOU ARE ALL PERFECT and TMS IS PERFECT and FEELINGS.

D'awww[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] This is too cute. Thank you, Ninja, for doing this!

Sorry I couldn't contribute any money, but those are lovely flowers!

Eeee! So nice. I couldn't contribute either, not really making my own money right now

OK, now that my secret identity has been restored and the fear of GamerGaters doxxing me turned out to be baseless, here's a note Carolyn Cox sent this morning:

They just came in Thank you so much everyone, that was incredibly thoughtful and I can tell it meant a LOT to her.

So are people actually interested in getting the Batman bear as well? If the answer is yes Dan said we can send it to TMS and they'll make sure she gets it. It's your choice, people!

I'm all for the Batman bear.

I wish I could have contributed to this. I hate being in a financially tenuous position.

Katherinethegrape wrote:I wish I could have contributed to this. I hate being in a financially tenuous position.

The thing is, you did contribute! Everyone did, even if they could not do so with cash.

I can spare a few dollars more for the bear, just let us know how much we need to PP to you, Ninja

OK, two things:

1) NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO FEEL BAD ABOUT NOT BEING ABLE TO CONTRIBUTE! STOP IT RIGHT NOW! Not everyone can afford to spend money on something as frivolous as a gift for someone you've never met in real life, and there's NOTHING wrong with that. Besides, we already had more than enough for the flowers--hence the balloon and chocolates.

2) To me, getting the bear now feels like overkill. We already sent her something for her last day at the office. That said, if people still want to order the Batman bear I am willing to organize it.

There's no way to guarantee it will get to her by Friday since we can only ship it to TMS and they'll be the ones sending it to Jill, so there's no need to use overnight to two-day shipping. That will reduce the cost to around $30. If people seriously want to do this, you can send a PayPal payment to:
[edited out]
(Yes, I made sure the address is correct this time.)

WheelchairNinja wrote:NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO FEEL BAD ABOUT NOT BEING ABLE TO CONTRIBUTE! STOP IT RIGHT NOW!

I second this motion wholeheartedly.

Also, I think the bear might kind of be overkill. I was just thinking today about how kind of sad I was to not have been part of something like this for the others who have left (if this happened without me my whole point is negated but I don't think it did so plowing on), particularly Susana who actually, like, FOUNDED the site. Like, I love Jill as much as the rest of you but I don't want Sam, Victoria, Alanna, Jamie (that's me in the way-back machine, was she before your time?) or any of the others who've left to feel bad about us doting Jill with gifts, you know? Does that make sense? It was pretty clear that she was genuinely moved by the flowers, I think we did well.

Now, having said all that, if everyone else wants to send the bear I'll totally throw in because I'm privileged enough to have some disposable income. I leave it to the Treehouse to decide.

GeorgeT wrote:I second this motion wholeheartedly.

Thirded!

GeorgeT wrote:Also, I think the bear might kind of be overkill.

Considering the things you speak of here, yes, it is probably enough to have sent the lovely flowers.

I think flowers+chocolate+balloons is probably enough! Everyone makes really good points about this.

Also, finally gave up on PayPal customer support & just made a new account, so please let me know if you've gotten Zee Funds! c:

WE ALL CONTRIBUTED! BECAUSE LOVE! I FEEL GOD IN THIS CHILI'S TONIGHT!

DID YOU SEE THAT? GUYS I THINK WE JUST WON COMMENTS OF THE WEEK FOR ALL TIME!

OK, I'm editing out my email address and gonna try to change the thread title/color since people seem to agree that we're not sending the bear. It's adorably perfect, and in an ideal world we'd have been able to get it there for her last day (OK, in an ideal world she wouldn't be leaving us... ), but there just wasn't enough time. I'm very glad we were able to get the flowers to her, though. Say what you will about Dan, but him checking his work email on a Sunday is what made that possible.

About not doing anything for the other now-former editors: I'd have LOVED to do something similar for founder Susana, but should point out that before the Treehouse was built there wasn't an easy way for us to contact each other without them seeing. The only other person who's left since then was Sam, and I'm pretty sure she's from Canada and didn't work at the TMS office. Plus, to my knowledge, Jill's departure is the only one we've learned about beforehand.

WheelchairNinja wrote:DID YOU SEE THAT? GUYS I THINK WE JUST WON COMMENTS OF THE WEEK FOR ALL TIME!

Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

WheelchairNinja wrote:About not doing anything for the other now-former editors:

Agree with all this, I didn't mean to imply otherwise if I did. One of the things I always hated about disqus is the lack of ability to pm folks, I'm glad we have this now (thanks aesta!) so we can do things like this.