The Gentle Reminder Has Five Drafts: Chasing a Trip Deposit

It is the second week of October and I am on draft four of a message. The message is four lines long. The message says, in essence, "hello, the autumn trip money, could you?" and I have been writing it since 21:12.

Eleven families have not paid the deposit. Fourteen have. The coach company wants a final number by Friday, and I want to remain a person who gets waved at in the playground.

Draft one, in which I am a bailiff

"Dear all. This is a REMINDER that payment was due on the 3rd."

I read it back. It has the warmth of a parking ticket. Somewhere in the capital letters you can hear a clipboard. I deleted it with the particular speed of a woman who has been sent a message like this herself, and still remembers where she was standing.

Draft two, in which I am a saint

"No worries at all if now is tricky!! Totally understand!! Whenever you can!!!"

This one fails the other way. If I send this, I will be collecting the money in March, and the coach company will have found other children to drive. Three exclamation marks per sentence is not a deadline. It is a hug with a spreadsheet hidden in it.

Draft three, in which I consult the group chat

I asked, very casually, what the chat thought of a "gentle reminder".

• Gentle reminder is what the bank sends before they stop being gentle
• Just name the amount x
• Mine already paid, I'm sure of it
• Paid what?

I now have four opinions and the last one is, annoyingly, the most useful. Nobody remembers what the money is for. This is not a payment problem. It is a sentence problem.

A brief word about the shoe

At this point I went to the hall for a breather and found, under the coats, one lone school shoe, size 13, with "PROPERTY OF THE READING CORNER" written on the tongue in marker. Nobody has reminded that shoe to go home since September. It sits there, with no deadline and no capital letters, and it is the calmest object in the building. I have no point here. I stood and looked at it for a while, which was the most restful ninety seconds of my week.

Right. Back to the fund.

Draft four, which was a haiku

Autumn trip money / eleven kind hearts still to go / coach wants a number

I would like to tell you it worked. I sent it to myself and read it aloud to the kettle. The kettle did not pay.

What actually worked, reluctantly

Draft five was boring, and that is the whole secret:

• One sentence on what the money is for and by when.
• The exact amount, written as a number and not as a vibe.
• How to pay, in the same message, so nobody has to scroll up through sixty-one messages.
• One line that says it is fine to pay in two goes, because it is, and because everyone is thinking it.
• No names. Sent to the whole group, never to the eleven. Nobody should ever learn from a chat that they are on a list.

No apology, no capitals, no exclamation marks, and no "just" before the word "reminder", which turns out to be the most passive-aggressive word in English after "per my last email".

(Yes, we built ClassKasa partly so this stops being a writing exercise: one link, everyone sees what they owe, the list of who has paid sits where only the treasurer can read it, and the FAQ explains the rest. Premium is per class, not per parent (pricing), so split across 25 families it is about 24 cents each a month. The longer method is in our guide to running a class fund online. That is the entire commercial break.)

Anyway.

At 22:03 I sent draft five. At 22:04 a dad I have never met replied with a thumbs-up and the word "done". At 22:06 he replied again to say that he had, in fact, paid in September.

He had. I checked. Bless him.