I spent 2 weeks basically carrying our team building a proof of concept for a $10 million contract, working 60+ hours a week, and got a $25 gift card for applebees.
Plus, of course, the payment for the overtime hours, I guess?
The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced
111–120 of 348 posts
Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced
#112I once worked for a very high profile entertainment company. Every year, the CEO would give a "company gift" that was usually somewhat underwhelming. A blanket with the company logo. A workout bag with the company logo. An umbrella, with the company logo. Clearly someone was shopping out of the "stuff we can get our logo on" catalog. The year after I left a new CEO was hired (who, arguably had more experience in this particular industry) and they promptly said "oh hell no" to that practice, and gave everybody new iPhones and iPads. Dang.... figures it happen just after I left...
Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced
#113My employer, a US DoD component, had a program called “On The Spot” awards. The idea was that if you had done something outstanding, your first line supervisor could authorize an immediate bonus of up to $1000. Being the DoD, it couldn’t be that simple. They decided that actually the bonuses had to be approved by your second, third, and fourth line supervisors. And also by the program manager at the sponsoring agency…
Ouch. A slap in the face to you and they might as well have burnt that $150 (Likely $300 dollars before taxes) since it had the total opposite effect.
> Likely $300 dollars before taxes
The net bonus was probably $150 before tax; it's a rare employer that pays the tax for you.
Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced
#114Earlier 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.
I don't know if you read it but the book is really soft on the erotic part.
Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced
#115I worked on a team of three people in the early 2000s to develop one of the first web based automotive insurance underwriting applications for an insurance broker. It was a low volume program and as such they hired a single marketing representative to cover the entire state of Pennsylvania. He worked on commission and was expected to make in the high five figures.
It ended up being wildly more successful than anticipated and pulled in double digit millions the first year. The marketing representative's commission ended up being middle six figures as a result.
He sent us a case of Tastykake snack cakes as thanks. That was all we got in the way of thanks from the company.
Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced
#116Considering 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 think often there just truly isn't the money because the company is dying. It can take a long time for a company to die, and people will put up with a lot in the process.
Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced
#117Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced
#118My younger sister received an award for being a promising new grad or something in her first year at one of the Big 4 accounting companies. Her prize? A public ceremony where a senior manager handed her a copy of 50 Shades of Grey.......
... had they read the book? Or just heard it was popular? I'm trying to mentally justify how this isn't the craziest, stupidest idea ever.
Read books? No proper adult does that. We just put them on the shelves.
Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced
#119Well 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.
I'd prefer that. We're big enough that there are nice promotions every week upgrading marketing/sales and M&A people into upper management. The last (last as in terminal, final) time I privately asked about promotion pathways all it got me was the manager's ridicule in a later engrg department meeting.
Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced
#120Could 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
Remember "The Internship"?