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Employee gift ideas that make people feel bad

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Re: Employee gift ideas that make people feel bad

#141

Post by seb1204 »

jerlam wrote: post #49

Not just employee gifts, but nearly all gifts are valued less by the receiver than the giver. A gift represents a decision made on behalf of the receiver by the giver. In very few situations would the receiver make the same decision as the giver with the same resources. It's assumed that the receiver will use the same resources in an optimal manner, so gift-giving is a net negative. In some circumstances, gifts are v…

I agree with this. I have started the following a number of times. I would really appreciate if I get gifted something most of people find mundane e.g. socks. Unless I need special socks for something specific I really care very little. So if someone uses his time to save me from doing quality sock shopping I value this a lot and would be happy about the gift. I don't like cheap and wear once socks though.

Re: Employee gift ideas that make people feel bad

#142

Post by taffronaut »

DocTomoe wrote: post #87
EdwardDiego wrote: post #42

A company I know gave all their employees company branded beach towels, sunscreen, water bottles, and bucket hats for Christmas when it was making record profits. Being in the southern hemisphere, beach paraphernalia is seasonally appropriate, but I suspect they would've preferred just being given their share of the money that was spent on company branded products. Or, you know, a bonus because, well, record profits.…

Often, this is a side-effect of tax code weirdness. In my legislative framework, branded stuff is considered "advertisement", which can be given out with any amount of value to employees. Non-branded stuff - or money - would be taxable income. With a tax rate of up to 48%, that's a difference, and paperwork for the employee. So I have a very nice thermos with my employer's logo on it, and I am quite happy about it.

Unfortunately a lot of custom branded swag is sold B2B by companies who have not much idea about quality and are just branding so-so unbranded junk. Conversely I was happy to receive an iFixit pro toolkit with our company logo embroidered on the outer instead of the iFixit logo.

Re: Employee gift ideas that make people feel bad

#143

Post by account42 »

ehnto wrote: post #118
nomilk wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First time encountering a 406: Not acceptable.

I had a giggle. It seems we have disappointed the server. It's kindof ambiguous as a response too, I wonder what they intend it to mean.

It's suppposed to mean that the server doesn't support any of the formats the client specified in the Accept* headers. At least for the main Accept header, browsers typically include */* and even if they don't the server is better off just pushing whatever so yeah, would be interesting to know why they chose to return that particular error here.

Re: Employee gift ideas that make people feel bad

#144

Post by josh_fyi »

seb1204 wrote: post #141
jerlam wrote: post #49

Not just employee gifts, but nearly all gifts are valued less by the receiver than the giver. A gift represents a decision made on behalf of the receiver by the giver. In very few situations would the receiver make the same decision as the giver with the same resources. It's assumed that the receiver will use the same resources in an optimal manner, so gift-giving is a net negative. In some circumstances, gifts are v…

I agree with this. I have started the following a number of times. I would really appreciate if I get gifted something most of people find mundane e.g. socks. Unless I need special socks for something specific I really care very little. So if someone uses his time to save me from doing quality sock shopping I value this a lot and would be happy about the gift. I don't like cheap and wear once socks though.

My feet are very large (available only at specialty retailers), so a sock gift risks being useless.

Re: Employee gift ideas that make people feel bad

#145

Post by lukego »

piva00 wrote: post #120
roel_v wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So do I (well, from my father's bees, that is...). But it illustrates exactly what the OP is talking about - this honey comes at low cost or free to us, but for the receiver it represents a much higher value. (prices around here for local, pure honey are 7 or 8 euros per 450 grams / about a pound). My kids sell my parents' honey for 5 euros and people are grateful for those low prices even, and treat it like we're do…

I gift people some sourdough bread I make. The price of a loaf of bread is ridiculously cheap, much cheaper than my time would cost if I factored it in and my breads aren't perfectly baked every single time like a bakery with professionals can do. Still, people appreciate it a lot, much more than if I purchased a better-looking loaf of bread from a professional baker for 2-3€. I don't think it's necessarily tied to t…

I used to do this but reciprocality meant that everyone started giving me back baked goods in return, usually really sweet stuff that I don't want in my diet.

I enjoy baking sourdough loaves to return favors though e.g. if s neighbour takes care of my lawn while I'm away. That's fun and keeps the books balanced.

Re: Employee gift ideas that make people feel bad

#146

Post by 6stringmerc »

bayindirh wrote: post #77
jerlam wrote: post #49

Not just employee gifts, but nearly all gifts are valued less by the receiver than the giver. A gift represents a decision made on behalf of the receiver by the giver. In very few situations would the receiver make the same decision as the giver with the same resources. It's assumed that the receiver will use the same resources in an optimal manner, so gift-giving is a net negative. In some circumstances, gifts are v…

This is a very simplistic and very narrow perspective about gifting when looked from this side. I don't consider gifts as the items solely. The person who brought the gift spent some time pondering what would I like, gave his/her best shot. Spent time and funds to acquire this and gave it to me. Yes, it might not be the exact item I'd get; yes, it might not be crazy expensive (or just flat out cheap and simple). But…

And yet, for years I’ve decided to make personal gifts or draw cards. Instead of earning money like everybody else I practiced arts and crafts and now I can draw, paint, sculpt, and do some other stuff that makes people smile.

Buying something is transactional, but making something takes effort. My $1.30 cents of clay to make each knock-off baby Yoda figure one year was a huge hit compared to the $300-400 for some other themed item on Etsy.

Gifts from an employer are kind of blah to me as well. You’re spending money you could have given me but think you know better, because it’s tax deductible.

Re: Employee gift ideas that make people feel bad

#148

Post by account42 »

murphyslab wrote: post #71
thrtythreeforty wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite so generous. 10% off any items shipped and sold by Amazon. Up to $100 per year. To be honest I think I would prefer a complementary Prime subscription.

You'd think that Amazon would do that (and apparently they do not) just so their employees would be more familiar with the products and able to offer better suggestions on improvements. Guess I now know why the Prime Video interface is so terrible!

As a customer I don't want Amazon employees to have free Prime membership so that hopefully at least some of them get annoying by the constant Prime-pushing that they make normal users go trough.

Re: Employee gift ideas that make people feel bad

#149

Post by account42 »

mcv wrote: post #124
magic_hamster wrote: post #59

I understand the server is having difficulties, but this is the first time I see "406 - not acceptable" in the wild. I expected it to throw a 500 error or just timeout.

Maybe it didn't go down because it maintains a hard limit on how many requests it considers acceptable? Any request beyond that number is not a bad request per se, but still unacceptable to the server. That's the best logic I can discern here. I honestly have no idea.

That would not be a proper use of the 406 code, which is specifically about the Accept* headers that the client sent.

My guess would be that whatever abstraction they used ended up with no content produced (because of timeout or whatever) so the framework could not satisfy any of the content types that the client accepts. Still another error would be better but I can see how it could happen.

Re: Employee gift ideas that make people feel bad

#150

Post by h1fra »

It's funny how different industry can be, in tech most people love receiving swag it even becomes their entire wardrobe ahah

I mostly don't care about gifts but there is one that had me burst laughing; Company wanted to celebrate "employee appreciation day" or something like that. We received a big announcement from the CEO with... a 10$ gift card. It's coming from a good sentiment but is my work only appreciated to only 10$ ?? ahah I can keep my head around it, how can anybody thought it was a good idea, feels so cheap and even unnecessary as we were paid decently. It was definitely net negative for the company but still makes me laugh.

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