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The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced

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Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced

#131

Post by 4ntonius8lock »

I once worked for a company that was on the verge of bankruptcy.

The owner (main shareholder) of the company decided that what the company needed was a new CEO to turn the ship around.

At the time, the company was so broke that we were getting less than the needed amount of office supplies. At the end of each month, basics were missing. So us, the employees, were bringing in our own toilet paper, coffee, cleaning materials, etc.

The new CEO came in at the end of the month when everything was missing. He felt were were 'gloomy'. So he went out and bought us all balloons and something else I forgot by now.

But the feeling of going to my desk to pick up toilet paper that I had to bring in while carrying a 'free balloon' with some 'motivating' words is something that I will carry forever. It was part of my motivation to spent 8 years self employed.

Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced

#132

Post by fatnoah »

Oh, man, don't get me started. Two short ones: I did a stint in professional services and billed for 2600 hours @ $250/hr for a total of $650k. Essentially worked 12+ hour days for a year, and got a bonus of $1000 before taxes. I quit within a month.

Next up was an appreciation gesture where we were thanked for all of our extra hard work with a pack of "Extra" gum and a delivery of baked potatoes (with all the fixings, at least). Unfortunately, the potatoes didn't arrive until about 2pm and no announcement was made. There was just a couple tins in the corner of the kitchen.

Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced

#133

Post by maxxxxx »

bluedino wrote: post #73
radcon wrote: post #40

I worked for a company that was always handing out cheap tokens of their "appreciation" (we all knew they didn't appreciate the employees but I guess they figured pretending might reduce turnover). Sometimes it was a free pretzel or water ice, other times it was a Thank You email that sounded like it was written by some cheap marketing AI. You could also get a "Shout Out" in the monthly newsletter that nobody read, b…

Here's my story: A place I worked at one time had the vending machines removed. The owner's neice was overweight and died of cancer and had other health issues, so he didn't want any of the rest of us making poor deciisions and ending up like her So they took the vending machines out. Great, now we need to go to the gas station a block down the road to get a candy bar, chips, or afternoon soda. One particularly hot d…

There was a story about Steve Jobs seeing an overweight engineer in the hallway eating a donut. He glared at him and next day there were no donuts in the Apple cafeteria. I don't remember where I read this.

Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced

#134

Post by mieseratte »

wyldfire wrote: post #67
howard941 wrote: post #2

Well at least they tried. I'm in a Fortune 500 with no IC/TC promotion path that spams the entire company with promotion announcements that land like insults every week.

It's way better than the secret promotions that happened where I used to work (a fortune 500 company). The levels were spaced much farther apart than FAANG and when someone did get promoted you'd only find out if they decided to make a change to their email signature.

Reminds of a job where they would wait until the last day to announce someone was quitting. Management required the resigning employee to keep quiet. So hand-over then became a mad-dash for all involved.

Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced

#135

Post by esoterica »

bobochan wrote: post #72
Someone1234 wrote: post #47

Considering how expensive staff are, I've never understood the culture surrounding penny pinching the stuff that would keep them happy/improve moral/improve retention. Forget the moral arguments for a second, even in purely financial terms it would likely pay for itself in recruitment savings alone, let alone brain drain/efficiency, training costs, and so on. Even a "cheap" employee in a white collar job, is likely c…

I work in the US and since the Great Recession the swag that we used to get around the office (e.g. t-shirts, ice cream days) have really dried up. Spending on buildings, on the other hand, has increased rapidly. Last year I went to a meeting in France that was held in a rather old building in Grenoble. It was a day long meeting so they brought in a boxed lunch for everyone. Shocking. There was some sushi, chicken in…

Catered lunches are a very common perk in the US too.

Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced

#137

Post by eli »

Veen wrote: post #99
eli wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is very common for abusive people to exploit this attitude and commit acts that are clearly over the line but have some barely plausible innocent explanation. Gaslighting the victim is, perhaps, another intentional part of the abuse. You'd have to work pretty hard to convince me that gifting a young woman a sexually explicit novel is not malicious.

It was also a book that was enormously popular among women. At that time, if you were to randomly choose a book from the best-seller list, there’s a good chance you’d land on Shades of Grey.

Lots of popular things would be inappropriate gifts in a work setting. This is the "barely plausible" innocent explanation I was talking about.

Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced

#138

Post by protomyth »

eli wrote: post #65
protomyth wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are putting a bit too much thought into the decision making. I figure someone walked into the book store and picked the book from the first bestseller display. Never attribute to malice or ignorance what can adequately explained by lazy.

It is very common for abusive people to exploit this attitude and commit acts that are clearly over the line but have some barely plausible innocent explanation. Gaslighting the victim is, perhaps, another intentional part of the abuse. You'd have to work pretty hard to convince me that gifting a young woman a sexually explicit novel is not malicious.

Thinking about it, I would bet money that the book buying was staffed out. As many have pointed out, prior to the movie, it would take someone who cares to figure it out beyond its on the best seller list.

Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced

#140

Post by cheeze »

duxup wrote: post #5

At a company I worked at it was bonus time. Bonuses had been a point of contention forever as the company always bugled the metrics and despite a lot of talk bonuses were hard to account for. So anyway they announce a "Christmas Bonus": $50.... I mean I'll take $50 but it felt like such an empty gesture. Just a few years earlier I had gotten $150 bonus while working at a pizza joint. The HR person who sent out the su…

Apparently they had never seen Christmas Vacation?
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