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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

#141

Post by corodra »

eli wrote: post #130
corodra wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't know 50 Shades of Grey was erotica until the movie trailers started hitting TV. Most guys had no clue about the book other than thinking it was a straight forward romance book. I could make the same claims against other people about how they can't tell the difference between spam and real emails or ad results and real results. I know because I'm consistently around it and I HAVE to know. It takes a level of…

A “straight forward romance book” would still be inappropriate

Really? I gifted romance books before to women. Not publicly, since I've never been in a situation to do so. They've all been happy about it since I always get them something random that they would never pick. Or is it that people really don't gift books? I remember the original book cover to 50 Shades was like a tie or something. It actually looked like a "tasteful" book if you didn't know better. Literally, I would have picked that up for my mom in a similar situation, if she didn't own it already...

I'm really thinking you're pushing a bias on the situation. Someone did something potentially nice, but in a lazy ass way. Like getting flowers for someone who is allergic to flowers. The laziness really bit them in the ass. It'd be the same if I told someone I liked horror and they got me Twilight because they heard it was about vampires and werewolves.

That's a situation where you laugh your ass off about it and crack a joke.

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

#142

Post by duxup »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #109
StavrosK wrote: post #34

We need to find a name for a gesture so small in its generosity that it ends up being offensive. No bonus would have left me disappointed, but a $50 bonus would have made me angry. Like when Delta gave a food voucher to make up for a 5-hour delay on a 30-minute file. The voucher was for $3. Fuck Delta.

At a former place I worked (a university), there was no annual cost-of-living increase to your salary. Instead, any increases were performance based. If you scored the _highest_ level on your performance review, the level that required approval from several levels of HR to ensure that not too many people got it... you might get a 1.25% salary increase. If you scored "satisfactory" you might get a 0.75% increase. Even…

I remember a study that noted that random awards not given to everyone were seen to have more morale boosts than rewards that people thought were small that were given to be everyone.

But yeah it amazes me people can't figure out the tiny reward is wonky.

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

#143

Post by AstralStorm »

oh_sigh wrote: post #104
kyllo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only about one-quarter of Indians eat beef, so it's not at all safe to assume that any random group of Indians you encounter will be majority beef-eaters.

Well then they can get the pork chop

That reduces it to just over half Indians, the other is vegetarian.

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

#144

Post by duxup »

punk-coder wrote: post #58
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…

My ex worked at Home Depot corporate office, and their Christmas bonus was Home Depot gift cards.

If it is sizable.... might be nice.

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

#145

Post by bastawhiz »

oh_sigh wrote: post #104
kyllo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only about one-quarter of Indians eat beef, so it's not at all safe to assume that any random group of Indians you encounter will be majority beef-eaters.

Well then they can get the pork chop

Then maybe they should have used the extra five brain cycles to decide to offer a pork chop dinner instead.

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

#146

Post by rsweeney21 »

fatnoah wrote: post #132

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 fixing…

Most of the developers at my company (www.facetdev.com) are contract, but for the few full-timers we still have, we used to ask the team to work long hours out of the goodness of their hearts if a project needed it.

That seemed wrong, so I implemented a bonus plan where you get paid 60% of everything you bill over your weekly goals and made working extra hours optional. I love writing those bonus checks!

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

#147

Post by crooked-v »

Qub3d wrote: post #8

Could have been worse. There was a time when corporations would literally pay to produce entire broadway productions about their companies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_musical

The documentary Bathtubs Over Broadway suggests that those productions got positive reponses from employees, but that probably had to do with good production values (some of the shows cost more than actual Broadway runs) and it being an expenses-paid day trip for everybody.

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

#149

Post by Thiez »

ravroid wrote: post #52
jchw wrote: post #12

A certain startup I worked at, the CEO would give out... gift cards. Occasionally, usually after someone was severely overworked. And I’m pretty certain he got them for free/cheap in the first place. Of course, the real red flag was starting at $10/hr 1099’d (almost definitely illegally) and being told it’s more than most people start at. For software engineering. After a good interview. I was astounded and perplexed…

When I first started out as a software dev for an agency, I was offered $9/hr. I took it because it was more than the minimum wage I was making at my restaurant job. After a few months they rewarded me for my hard work by giving me a raise of $1. At the time I was grateful but now I realize what an insult that was.

A wage increase of over 10% every few months doesn't sound so bad. I don't suppose it was a regular thing?

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

#150

Post by thomascgalvin »

lostphilosopher wrote: post #42

Not a counter point to this article, but a counter point to the efficacy of monetary rewards. > "Study showed that monetary incentives are great for routine, mechanical work. But how does it play when talking about cognitive, advanced tasks? Not well at all." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgKKPQiRRag Counter-counter point: If anyone ever points you to this for evidence _you_ shouldn't get a bonus/monetary reward sy…

I'm completely uninterested in bonuses, because they're a one-time thing.

A merit increase at the end of the year stays with you for the rest of your career. A $1,000 bonus is gone as soon as it's spent.

I've seen some organizations that use bonuses to cover over the fact that people aren't getting raises, and I would expect people who do cognitive tasks to be better able to run the math on why that's bad.

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