One place I worked had layoffs and project cancellations, so morale was way down. As a tone deaf move one day, we got an email saying as a treat because we appreciate you all being here despite how shitty everything is, you can purchase yourself a coffee and expense it (max of $10). That turned into more jokes than anything. Morale was horrible and they thought making people feel good was letting them buy coffee, whi…
See also: the stereotypical pizza party.
Severance (AppleTV+) does a fantastic job mocking these morale boosters.
In my first real office job, where everyone was paid a pittance, the employer offered free bagels on Friday mornings. They were shit bagels, and cold, but the employees got to work early on bagel day and they stood in line to get one. They all seemed to love it as much as I hated it.
I'm going to guess everyone was a lot older than you and already knew their finances quite well - so one free meal a week added up to something for them.
Actually they were all young like me but it is fair to say that I was unable to recognize the benefit of a free meal because I was an entitled prick as well as a former New Yorker who knew from bagels.
It is common in India to gift gold and silver. They can be sold(most jewelers will take it for cash value) and it is something that would go up in value. This year, cryptocurrency and NFTs are also making news as Diwali gifts. Cryptocurrencies and NFTs shall be taxable in the hands of the recipient under Section 56 (2) of the Income-tax Act, 1961 if total value exceeds Rs.50,000 for the year.
If someone gifts me bitcoin, sure! However getting an NFT would be an insult no?
You will still be taxed. How does that make you feel?
So I had a buddy, he was a junior-ish very talented dev in this big retailer where I was working as well. This retailer obv had massive campaigns for black friday, but also obv very shitty and inflexible systems. This buddy of mine found that the black friday promotions pricings import failed 5 min before midnight. Meaning that not only would there be no black friday pricing, there would be no pricing at all on the s…
That wasn't necessarily the company being cheap. If it was heroics, it could be someone else took credit, or that someone else wanted to keep the mistake quiet, and so the thanks came out of some accounting bucket for tiny rewards. Personally, that might've been a time I'd look and whether it was time for a promotion, even though I think rewarding heroics is tricky for engineering culture (better to celebrate work th…
The company was cheap beyond belief. This gift card was just stupid.
The real problem obviously was that the company was so shittily run that heroics were needed to save the day. Also my buddy was junior enough to care and do it.
It's pretty sickening to see that people in this thread seem to focus on the moral hazard of thanking via a monetary means, where will this stop? One should not get paid? Not the management that led to this and also to the top level post of totally inept token gifts.
One place I worked had layoffs and project cancellations, so morale was way down. As a tone deaf move one day, we got an email saying as a treat because we appreciate you all being here despite how shitty everything is, you can purchase yourself a coffee and expense it (max of $10). That turned into more jokes than anything. Morale was horrible and they thought making people feel good was letting them buy coffee, whi…
Lol, as revenge I would have gone to the fanciest roaster in town and bought their $10 250g of coffee beans
It's as the article says, a pittance. If you go above and beyond by some amount, you want to see that rewarded proportionally. Yeah, it's > $0 … but was it commensurate with the effort?
I remember a manager once giving me $100 to "have a nice dinner with my spouse" after working over the weekend. It was a nice gesture. Showed awareness of the sacrifice, even if it was expected. Not full retribution, but we were all chasing the startup dream, or perhaps a bigger bonus later. There's some value in small short-term rewards, to show appreciation.
That's a 20× difference though. $5 barely buys the coffee that one probably had to drink to work the late hours/weekend or whatever, let alone would it make up for the time. (And, again, $100 might be enough, or it might not. Depends on the effort the person put up. If I had to spend all weekend on something … probably not, since my own employer pays me at a higher rate than that; i.e., I sacrificed a weekend for lower wage?)
>that form allowed the company to then tax me on that ‘gift’ as income, Wrong. There is no "form" needed for taxation, it is required by the IRS (in U.S.) and the company does not "tax" anyone. Employer gifts (other than de minimis amounts) are taxable compensation. (see IRS Publication 15-B for details). A good employer will "gross up" cash gifts to cover the taxes.
But surely the embroidering of a company logo on it vastly reduces the value of the item, and this must be accounted for. If I have a new Cotopaxi or Arc'teryx item I can sell it on Facebook Marketplace for 90% of its MSRP. But if it has a fucking TurboTax Information Security Team logo on it I doubt I could get 25%. So I hope this is accounted for in the taxation.
I used to work for a company that was for some reason doing both software and embroidery on clothing.
They gave me once a nice winter jacket... but not with their logo embroidered on it but my nickname.
Needless to say, I'll keep it for a loooong while.
> A good gift gives employees a renewed fervor to work harder, helps them feel more motivated, and makes them feel more valued by their employers. Does it? I’ve never experienced this. A company is not a person. A good gift or a bad gift makes me feel the company made a business decision that affected me, just like any other business decision that affected me.
I really can’t imagine a gift that would motivate me as an employee. There are things i might appreciate, but the only “gift” I would find motivational would be a raise.
I worked at a place that when the company did really well you get a bonus of two weeks paycheck. It some times could happen twice a year and nobody had to ask for it you will receive the news through a “thank you” email.
Once when I was a kid, too young to have any sense, I wanted to make some money shovelling snow. I didn't realize yet that you need to make an sgreement with your customer before doing the work. This was a small town in upstate new york so even the strangers were not really strangers. As a kid you don't really see any adult as being all that different from your parents or teachers. So dippy me just starts shovelling…
The dad solution is to be passive aggressive and trying to humiliate store owner who did not had interest in you shoveling his place regularly?
Did you miss the part where we're talking about a 7 or 8 year old dipshit kid and an adult?
That store owner absolutely deserved to be humiliated. It doesn't matter the tiniest little bit about the kid didn't make an agreement first. I suppose you will now call the unsolicited shovelling vandalism and the store owner actually should have called the cops?
Do you not have any sense of perspective or context?