Why flag this? It's 100% true. My last place gave us cheap baseball caps and light jackets with the company logo. I would never wear either of those unless it was on the clock and a required part of something like staffing a booth representing the company at a convention or something. And they weren't even good quality compny advertizing, they were junk.
Imagine giving your kids a presentvfor their birthday, and it's a pencil holder with your name on it. You don't give "worlds best dad" mugs to your kids.
A place before that, we had company xmas dinners, but the compny was smaller and the dinners were always at some actually very nice local place, no junky chains, and we got plain bonuses, and for my 10 year anniversary they gave me a nice Tag Heuyer watch.
The watch was only about $1,200 or so in value so it wasn't exactly a lot of money spread over 10 years, and something like a watch is easy to not be appreciated because people have different styles and might not like what you buy. But it was pretty neutral style and I'll tell you, it did NOT make me feel unappreciated. I never bothered wearing a watch before that, so I wasn't even a watch wearer, and it turns out that the self-winding feature of mine never seemed to work (even while being active and shaking it) and I can't be assed to bother winding it so it's never actually tellng the right time or date, and I can afford way more expensive watches in whatever exact style I want if I actually wanted a fancy status watch, but I've worn that thing every day since 2010 just as jewelry. It only means anything to me and my wife, but it made me feel very appreciated.