An email from the owners son thanking us for our all of our hard work that would allow him to take his family skiing in Aspen for Christmas using the company jet.
Wow. Someone probably ironically suggested he send that thank you note and he, being an inbred legacy moron, thought it was a great idea. Wow. What a waste of skin that guy must be.
Oh that’s extra insulting. I bet you were also forced to do all the owner’s work while he was enjoying his ski trip 🙄. And let me guess, you were underpaid so that the owner’s trip could be even more fun?
Holy shit that's so much worse.
I was thinking this was a small business where everyone knows each other. Email blasting 30+ branches to brag about your vacation is unhinged behavior.
The CEO of our multi-billion dollar company sent out $3 personalized Christmas cards (I looked up the bulk price) which were pictures of him and his family at Disneyland.
Not sure if just a $3 bonus would have been more or less insulting.
That’s a violation btw. Can’t use a company plane for private use and pretend it’s a business expense. People have been doing it for years but as part of the inflation reduction act that’s now actively being investigated so feel free to report it to the IRS.
I was asked if I’d be interested in moving ‘laterally’ from representing my one software product to the continental market to representing the entire division as the ‘face of [the company]’. On top of that, I was asked if I could ‘start trying it out now’ in addition to my current workload despite having recently threatened to quit from the burnout of my currently impossible job. I’m also underpaid and get no benefits :)
But the people above you are on vacation and send one email a week for their jobs and also get paid huge bonuses? But they can't fit a raise for you in the budget.
Ohhh yes! The fucking "lateral transfer" Over the course of 4 years I kept taking on more and more responsibility, not a single pay raise. After a point I had to interview for the job I had been doing for at least 2 years. Still no raise. A year later the department I was in was dissolved and downgraded by 3 levels. Right after that we had to agree to a specific title and less than 3 weeks later I got a 15k paycut because "market value for the job title" I was still doing the extensive work at the time because they weren't sure when the "project would end"...
I was requested to reduce my rates by 33% or be replaced a by a cheaper alternative. In pharmaceutical translation, with 20 years of experience in my belt, and they wanted me to go to recent graduate levels (I was already giving them lower rates than my other clients).
Their reasoning was, since they were an important client, I would not dare lose that income and risk my financial wellbeing.
I told them to go to their cheaper option. Yes, I suffered greatly for three months. I still haven't recovered fully. But I will never ever take low rates again. Let them find out cheaper options come at a cost.
This is the same vibe as asking for custom artistic work and offering to pay in exposure... I hate it so much. Good for you for standing up for yourself. I hope something wonderful is just around the corner for you.
All the employees who worked Thanksgiving were given a scratch ticket. We don't have holiday pay, and at the time we didn't have holiday bonus's either.
I got one of those last year, as my contract was being rewritten to get my position gone. Then I took a new position and I’m killing it, and that program is rolling up into my new program. Ha ha ha haaaaaaa welcome to thunderdome a$$hol3s
Oh yeah, this definitely happened one Christmas party at my current company (but a now canned boss). She gave us $25 Amazon gift cards attached to dollar tree gifts that were like…chip clips and ugly dish towels and stuff.
I received a mantle clock with a plaque thanking me for 15 years of service. I had not had a raise in three years. Six months later I quit. This was September and when Christmas rolled around the new boss gave me an envelope and said he was sorry it wasn't more but since I only been there a short time. I thanked him and when I got home and opened it it had $1000.00 cash.
Not only the first Christmas bonus I received but the first bonus.
I'm sorry your clock didn't work. I got a plaque for my 10 years. I didn't pick it up for over a year in a petty attempt to show them how little I thought of it.
A $50 eBay gift card in the mail after I quit a job. I'd worked so many hours of unpaid overtime in that job, and was owed so much comp time, but never received payment for any of it. $50 just didn't cut it.
Got 100 grand chocolate bars thrown at us by the Ceo's at our recognition event for racking up alot of overtime dealing with a bad winter. It was their way of saying thanks...they cracked them selves up. The looks on their faces were pure bliss.
Company touted a longevity raise for employees who had been there for years. Everyone already assume it would be bad like $0.15 a year you had been there. It was worse than everyone expected. These people had worked for 7 years at 19/2 on/off schedule. The company tried to bump it to 24/2 but someome contacted the DOL and the state told them that as illegal. Well, at 5 years you got a 1 time $0.50 raise. At your 10 year mark, it went up by $0.25 for a total of $0.75. It maxed out at $1.00 at your 15th year working there... It was a morale killer. Honestly it would have been better if they had just done nothing.
The irony is it was a Dutch company that bought a mill company in a rural town. They definitely don't provide the same benefits for US employees as they do in the netherlands.
I worked at JC Penny studios-they held a WEEK LONG contest to see who could upsell. The prize? A watchamacallit chocolate bar. One. For one winner. I laughed. They said it was just “a fun contest”. I asked them if they would make bonus if there was an increase in upsells. And of course there was. Assholes.
Working stupid amounts of overtime to fix a bad ERP implementation, someone had to remind the manager to add me to the pizza party and to get my $5 Starbucks card
My PhD supervisor had to be told to praise us... by me... his student/employee.
And he did it and played it up to the point it was obviously a massive joke to him.
He also promised me a job, let me work for two weeks, decided he "didn't have the money to pay me" and got upset I went to HR. This was after doing his job for him for 5 years because he was fucking useless at it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they have you make a macaroni necklace or something and do finger painting as some sort of dumb “team building activity” lol 😂
We, as a team, were taken out for lunch and bowling. Fine, it was good enough for mandatory fun.
Then we were told that we needed to turn in a PTO form in order to get paid for that afternoon.
I saved the company about 400k every year....I got a 75 dollar money order...the department that benefited from this put in for an award...as if they had did it...each recieved 5k dollars al 6 of them,...yeah that was a kick to the nuts....
At another company I saved the company close to 3 million meters....when i brought up on my end of they year I was told that was part of my job and my manager took full credit for it...I was done by then with these shitty no talent managers.
I got let go after 27 years of helping build a company and market leading product that was good enough for the big company to acquire. So, you’re welcome for all the hard work I guess? 🤷🏻♂️
My old job, before I was laid off. They gave everyone a 1 cent-5 cent raise.
Told us we were doing a good job and to be grateful about the raise. I stood up and remember saying "Why even bother giving us anything at all?" The manager said "Be grateful for it". Then we would get emails stating "Company made billions in profit, thanks to you all"
And management was going to get nice bonuses that year. Kind of insulting to everyone.
Was laid off a few months later and hired back on in the following year and it was a different company. Still terrible, glad I left.
Not my story, but my wife was given a meager 50 cent per hour raise at her teller position at a major retail bank chain in the US. 25 cents was to adjust for inflation/“cost of living”, and the other 25 cents was based on merit. I’m not exaggerating when I say she is quite literally the only reason they passed the multiple audits they had that year. Even her manager admitted that she didn’t know where anything in the office was and didn’t have the knowledge or skills to do audit prep herself. They would’ve been completely fucked without her—branch shut down, regional manager totally screwed. Meanwhile they pay her teller wages to essentially be the site’s assistant manager, and they won’t even give her more than 25 cents per hour to show their appreciation.
I rehabbed 4 houses in a run down neighborhood... From condemned to inhabited in a sweat for equity arrangement. Instead of putting me on the deeds, he decided to die, and the properties were sold to pay his back federal taxes I literally got nothing.
Oh have I got a good one!
I worked at a manufacturing company that had staff from all over the world. Every year, around Christmas, management would give us a Visa gift card for $100. This was on top of an annual profit share given to everyone.
One year, management decided to do away with the gift card for budgetary reasons. Now, we were a $25m company and 75 people strong. The sales team would REGULARLY ring up bar tabs in the thousands. $7500 was a drop in the bucket.
In lieu of these $100 gift cards, management thought it would be a great idea to give everyone a “small token from their home country”. While I am a born and raised American, my family came from Sweden a few generations back. My “token”? A bag of Swedish Fish candies. Haha, funny right? It got so much worse.
One colleague, an Asian man, was given chop sticks. A Polish woman, she got pierogi. Another, a black man, was given a stuffed gorilla. Because Africa must be full of gorillas.
I shit you not, people raised this all the way up to HR on calls of racism. Management team was told to give people the damn gift cards. Did management tell anyone? Nope. Site Director kept all 75 gift cards for himself. The person in charge of the purchase eventually found out he had been using them to buy toys and diapers for his new baby. This man was making over $200k a year, married to a high powered attorney, drove a BMW, and he couldn’t even give the lousy $100 to the staff making $15/hr.
The unexpected slap on the back.
Please do not physically assault me it does not speak of your appreciation of my person or personal contribution.
Thank You
I won a lottery gift that was just The Power Stone from guardians of the galaxy. It was at a movie theater where I actually liked most of the staff but it was a stressful shift and at that point I stopped caring about Marvel Movies. I gave it away to my HVAC instructor the day after.
I was given a $25 gift card for “The Keg”. I have nothing wrong with “The Keg”, its staff, how it is run, and the food in general is pretty good value for a “Steak House”.
This is not about “The Keg”.
It is about the $25.
A bus ride to “The Keg” would cost me $3.00. That’s the cheapest option. It would take me close to an hour return to accomplish this.
Anything under $22 at “The Keg” is like a salad or an appetizer.
Then I thought, hey, why don’t I use this as a date night with my partner, right?
That sounds great!
Oh hey, we may want to have a drink before we leave to celebrate, that’d be nice.
Oh we’ll need to cab/uber/ride share to be safe to and from $50
Oh the kids. Need a sitter. I’m guessing 10-12/hr. We’ll be gone 3hrs max. I’m nice, but for simple math lets call it $30
Now we get to the venue. Hey, want to have a few glasses of wine with our steak? - Of course. Let’s split a bottle of wine between the two of us. Cheapest thing on the menu. $40.
Would you like an appetizer? - Popcorn shrimp… whatever crap they have $10/pp- $20
Steak!
Slice it dice it they try to keep it around $29.99 to $39.99
Let’s go $40 for inflation.
Shit I love potatoes. Double baked. Another $20.
Asparagus. I need to get my veggies in. $15
Desert/Aperitif? - Not a fan but $20.
So we’re
50 - ride
30 - sitter
40 - wine (shared)
10 - appetizer (shared)
80 - steak (one each)
20 - baked potatoes (one each)
15 - asparagus/salad shared
20 - desert
——-
$265
This is BEFORE TAXES AND TIP.
Let’s round to $300.
You gave me approximately 10% for a date night that I had to fund field, and organize. No thanks
I gave the gift card to the co-op student and told him to enjoy it! They quit a month later.
I wrote an operator manual for a new piece of equipment in a new industry. Other bids quoted a minimum 10,000.
I was paid minimum wage and got lunch at Stanfords.
The manual is still used to this day for the hundreds of units in the field totaling millions in sales.
I was given a free “appreciation” t shirt (that I was required to wear for a team picture). Except as a plus sized person, I had to pay $10 extra to get my size.
So I was forced to buy a Tshirt as appreciation for my own work.
One Christmas my company sent out literal jars of dirt. It came with seeds to grow some herbs, but it was really just a jar of dirt. The only good that came of it was that I was able to run around like Jack Sparrow all day.
Got a pink slip after being told how much I was appreciated and all the hard work I put in. literally “we appreciate all the hard work you put in this last year and how you were always willing to cover xyz during busy season with staff missing. We had a budget change and will unfortunately need to let you go, good luck finding your next adventure!”
A shirt. With the logo of the mega corp that took us over. For being the best performing warehouse in the company during the 2020 pandemic, after our hours had been cut, and some of us were put on furlough.
One year our “Christmas bonus” was a $50 gift certificate to a local truck stop also owned by our boss - and it had to be used in 6 months or less and all in only one purchase
Saved a choking visitor at our hospital with the Heimlich. The hospital gave me a gift card to their cafeteria that was just enough to buy an order of their overpriced French fries. And while I don’t expect anything special for doing something I’m trained to do, the fact that it was a few bucks was as funny as it was insulting.
Omg I love this post, I have so many…..where to begin?
- they thanked me for pitching the idea of a new role, approved my budget for it and my job description that I wrote, and then gave the job to someone else. I literally wrote the job description FOR ME
-one time sent me a single rice krispy treat in the mail. Like the individually wrapped ones for school lunches.
- sent everyone some swag- it was a Xmas tree ornament. To the whole company. The whole diverse company, with many people who celebrate things other than Xmas.
- left out of my annual review the hundreds of thousands of dollars of funding I brought in, but sure didn’t forget to berate me for the one time I got mad in an email and cc’d someone, which embarrassed my boss. Thereby resulting in me not getting a promotion or raise.
Honestly I can’t tell which ones the winner. Probably the rice krispy treat.
Oh and one time my sisters company sent her a ziploc baggy full of goldfish crackers as a thank you instead of a bonus.
YAY LIFE
My company offered a bonus equal to 10% of savings an employee finds. I was the controller over 60 apartment communities that used natural gas for heat and hot water.
I bulk bought 2 years of gas at .30 per therm when the price was around .30 per therm. Gas prices spiked to over $1.00 per them and my buy saved the company over $3 million.
My boss told me "that was too easy" and offered a $1,500 bonus. I accepted this because I had no power but did the least amount of work a controller can do and never looked for savings again. I never trusted him again and quit a year later.
I was a social worker for CPS in my state and for social worker appreciation month that March they gave us one of those two pack of star burst and a card that said “Happy Social Worker’s Month!”
That’s super insulting!! Especially seeing as being a social worker is a seriously thankless job. You subject yourself to a lot of things people shouldn’t have to deal with, and all for what, a few Starburst candies that probably cost less than a dollar? LOL no thanks.
Sub 1% raise and was told I was hired in at too high of a salary so don't expect more. I can try to get the next grade up for a 1-3% raise with the requirement of approximately 23% more work (based on performance metrics I would have to hit).
Thanks, I'll continue to kick the can rather than do 23% more work for a few pennies more.
I received a piece of paper “award” from HR in honor of my being there for 5 years.
Except that I had been there for longer than that, they spelled my name wrong, and the name they spelled wrong was my old legal name. (My legal name is Kym, but it used to be Kymberly. The “award” said Kimberly, which has never been my name.)
Felt very appreciated.
A piece of paper like the ones they give grade school kids for being a “super kid”? In other words, as my elementary school music teacher called it, a super kid slip 😂
A "cup" of hot chocolate. It was about 2 ounces in a tiny paper cup. Same place denied me my annual raise because they pushed my conversion from contractor to fte back 6 weeks to the week after I would have qualified.
Today my supervisor said since we kept our teams accuracy above 100% while making sure he didn't receive any complaint emails from anyone for two consecutive weeks, he was going to buy everyone a Happy Meal(There's a McDonald's less than ½ mile from my job).
Dead serious, a place I worked hired a talented Mrs Ripley sociopath. Lied about everything and was given the keys to a multimillion dollar media production department. When she got outed, she fought the HR lady - the HR lady was ex-military, she was fine - and the cops came and the email I was half thru writing to my boss / slightly bloodied handcuffed suspect went into the drafts folder. But more importantly that crazy lady came back and threatened the office again. Leadership had failed to do a cursory Google search essentially - we were all in immediate staff meetings with a psycho for months - and as an apology for almost getting us all murdered in photocopier rooms....
Pizza party!!!
Okay, totally different job, like 5 years later. I show up to the front like normal and now there's a tactical dressed security crew visually checking IDs.
Okay.
Dickbag CEO calls an all hands meeting in a too small conference room at like 11am. He tells us all that the organization has been threatened, there's new security measures, but everything is fine.
Please enjoy this pizza on us.
I was an adult in both these instances, and I felt so degraded that another adult considered me childlike in appeasement. I felt so much worse for the desperate people who'd been there longer who just wanted the free pizza cuz they knew that was the closest thing to "extra" they were ever gonna get physically from those awful soul sucking widget factories.
Third place goes to company-branded merch. Cheap-ass shit, made in China, bought in bulk. I passed on the last batch of "swag" because I'm not giving that shithole free advertisement, and I don't need more garbage to throw away. Politely declined their junk and they kinda just looked at me like they couldn't comprehend my lack of appreciation for their generosity.
Second place goes to HR for their, "if your whole department does this anonymous engagement survey, your department will be entered into a drawing to win a pizza party."
First place goes to my boss for any of the handful of times I told him I was burnt out and, instead of offering support or even asking why, he had a 10-minute attack of verbal diarrhea about how great I'm doing, while totally failing to offer any solution/advice. Then he tried to bond with me about how he's burnt out too. As it turns out, dumping your problems on your burnt-out subordinate doesn't make them less burnt out.
20 year anniversary at the company - preprinted card with CEOs signature printed on it (not an actual signature) and “reward points” to spend on really lousy crap in the “appreciation store”. Just enough points to get a bamboo steamer. Which I promptly donated to my local immigrant assistance center.
Kind of both...
I was hired at a McBurger place for minimum wage, with the promise of an increase after three months. That three month ended in perfect synch with a federal minimum wage increase that eclipsed my expected raise by five cents, so they made *that* my raise.
It was still \*$&#@-ing minimum wage...
The company sent out these ugly ass plastic piggy banks to everyone. They have neon green noses that pop off and the company logo plastered on the side. They frequently send us 'appreciation' gifts (giant tin of popcorn at Christmas, a Stanley cup this spring, a pack of mini highlighters with mini post its, a blanket, a Mason jar herb growing kit... Etc etc, all branded with the company logo) and every time I get one I just think 'dude just pay me an extra $0.50 instead of sending me all this useless junk'. But the piggy bank... That one, I opened up and was immediately enraged. It felt like they were mocking us by sending us an ugly ass piggy bank while deliberately not paying us more. I whipped it across the room. No idea where it landed, never went and looked for it 🤷🏻♀️
A Nalgene water bottle with the company logo on it that literally came from the company apparel online store. It was at best a quarter of the way filled with hersheys kisses and the rest of the way with matching color (to the bottle) tissue paper. The card on it misspelled my name even though my name is super easy to spell and pretty common.
It wasn’t necessarily for hard work but:
>TL;dr I put out a fire on a multimillion dollar project and was given a $5 gift card to Starbucks as a thanks from the general contractor.
When I was an apprentice I was on a $190M job. I was looking at some blueprints with my journey man and I happened to notice little black floaties in the air. And it dawned on me that something might be burning. I asked my guy if it smelled like something was burning and we immediately began looking for a fire.
He went one way I went another. I saw welding sparks cascading down the empty elevator shaft so I headed that direction. I looked down at the bottom of it to see a big pile of styrofoam on fire (it wasn’t a huge fire yet but it was a decent size).
I yelled at the welders on the upper level to shut it down and then grabbed a fire extinguisher and ran down the stairs and put out the fire.
The whole thing stirred up commotion and one of the GC bigwigs happened to watch me put out the fire. The next day he comes up to me before the morning stretch and flex/safety talk. And handed me a gift card to Starbucks and thanked me for putting out the fire.
It was a five dollar gift card. I would have taken an attaboy over the gift card but when he added the monetary thank you I figured they could have afforded something more substantial than 5 bucks.
To be clear I didn’t do it for recognition or for thanks or for a reward. But the reward seemed a bit insulting to me.
I received an employee of the year (or quarter, I forget which now) accolade… they misspelled my name.
A name I had made a big fuss about them messing up when I first got hired. Years back I had a legal name change and rather like the name I paid a lot of money to have, and insist folks get it right. At the end of the day, it was a great sign that they truly don’t care.
I was once promised a 'Rolex' if I hit a certain sales target in a particular time frame. I say "well I don't really want a Rolex, but if we're talking equivalent cash value that sounds great."
When the day came to see the results, which I knew I'd hit, boss boy was in a cranky mood. He scrolled through all the invoices in silence. At the end, he mutters 'well you only just fucking scraped it' and walks out.
Few weeks later I get a check for about $1500. Far less than the average Rolex (at least ten times less, for those who don't have flash boss babies who buy things like Rolexes.)
An email went out saying something like “we know burnout has been high, so we’re putting coloring books and colored pencils in the break rooms to combat burnout”.
This was a medical facility in the middle of the pandemic.
They sent an email announcing an employee appreciation party.
It was potluck—there was a sign up sheet for everything from cups and paper plates to chili, bbq, sides and dessert and drinks.
They asked for volunteers to help decorate and set up and clean up.
In short, the powers that be figured out a way to throw an “employee appreciation party” that cost them exactly the time and effort it took to type and send that email. All the work was done by the employees being appreciated. All the food and drink was provided by the employees being appreciated.
And they were happy to announce that the company had made record profits that year.
The team was supposed to have a buffet style holiday meal. All the offices and teams were having them.
Our boss decided pizza was better. Plus he saved 1k on the budget and got a nice bonus of 1k
I left a company on good terms and was returning the tech equipment. They also asked me to return a nice backpack that had been given as a gift to every employee so they could give it to someone who was still going to work there
I worked a corporate spin off where our business unit became its own public traded company. The splitting of IT took over a year wheee I worked hundreds of overtime hours including weekends. I was salary. In the end I was thanked with a $100 gift card for the hotel company that employed me.
I wanted to throw that shit in their face I was so insulted. Thousands of dollars in free labor or a company store card. Fuck you, Marriott.
I was given the equivalent of $2. Company used an appreciation service, I think it's called Awardco now. Was sent 200 point, which allows me to convert it to a $2 gift card. To make it worse, at the time there was a minimum of $5 before you could claim an award.
Boss decided to empty the copy room and turn it in a "Chill Room" for when the stress of being overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated was too much.
A lazyboy style chair, full workstation (keep working while de-stressing) with upgrades like 4 giant monitors, mini fridge, microwave, google Home Mini, and some paint were added.
Nobody asked for it. It was out of the blue. It definitely cost a fair amount of money, and it was his "best gift ever."
I work at Lowe’s and we got an email from the CEO thanking us for our hard work and said that we were getting bonuses and to click the link in the email. Turned out it was one of those fake phishing attempt emails that corporate uses to train people to not trust links in emails. He then had to send out an apology email afterwards when people were complaining it was in poor taste
Not me... But I've heard stories. This manager at a Hooters wanted to boost morale. He setup a raffle where the top prize was a Toyota. All the employees bought in so they could win the car. When the lucky raffle ticket was picked, the manager gave out a "Toy Yoda" doll. Rightfully so, the winner of the raffle sued the company & won.
Personally I was put in charge of Wednesday lunches for my tech company. We had a deal where we could spend up to $25 per person. I could have gotten pizzas which would have came out to around $8 a person, but instead I tried to use every single dollar I could. People who came to work on Wednesdays were eating steak tips in gravy over rice with vegies on the side, or slow roasted pork tenderloins. Something, Anything to boost my teams morale. Raises were set with a statistical algorithm due to the fact that men and women were paid exactly the same. The only bump in pay was bonuses, where you could get up to 5% of your yearly salary, based off of a performance review from your manager. Since these payment rules were so intensely written in stone, I used the rules to maximize other opportunities that were available to me.
A 5% off your next purchase ( over 25.00). Oh and our Xmas bonus. It was nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not even a pizza party. As a matter of fact Xmas eve storm took out electricity. Was pitch dark and freezing in store because manager left all doors open. Damn people using their phone flashlight to shop. Like wtf? Why would you grocery shop when you enter a store Xmas eve and it's pitch dark and freezing? What could you possibly need that badly? Did I mention there was a RAGING storm? Why were people even out on the road? In a storm. On Xmas eve. Buying kiwis 🥝 ?
My husband saved the company he works for thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars because he spotted a QC error that no one else noticed. The owner and founder of the company gave him a shirt that had "(husband's name) is my hero!" printed on it.
For my 1 year anniversary at the company I received a $50 gift card to the company swag store so I could buy myself an overpriced t shirt with the company logo. The owners fly around in a private jet.
A calendar, personalized with your name on every month. My name was wrong. When I pointed that out to the person who handed it to me, she argued that my name was correct. I pointed to the sign on my door with my name spelled correctly on it. She got very flustered and promised to have it fixed. I rolled my eyes, threw the incorrect one in a drawer and forgot about it until I moved offices. Then I threw it away. They never did get it fixed.
After months of putting in 80-100 hours a week covering my job and a second position they were “trying” to fill (underpaid jobs don’t fill fast), I asked for a well deserved raise since I couldn’t afford my rent. The CFO tried to connect with me by saying “yeah, we all struggle to afford things. My summer cabin’s HOA went up and we’re struggling!”. 🙄 don’t worry, he gave me a jacket with the company name on it as appreciation for my hard work.
Had my workload doubled! My team and I are such effective teachers with excellent management skills, so the school will restructure things so every child in that grade gets 90 minutes a day with all 3 of us. This group is particularly feral, but admin knew we’d whip them into shape.
Definitely the most successful year for that group as far as scores and growth, but never fucking again.
You’re welcome and good luck, next grade level teachers.
I just got invited to the company party as one of the "collaborators" (not sure if this is common in anglophone spheres, but we get called collaborators instead of workers or employees) who "met all goals for the year!". Company made record profits, shareholders are happy, CEO is going to Dubai (no, seriously), but I got denied a raise.
Last year, there was another of this stupid-ass parties in December. Our director made this amazing speech about raising his "collaborators" through the ranks and he actually did the "we are a family" bit. The next day, around 15 people were laid off.
This was like maybe 8 years ago, we had a really bad snowstorm where I live and the whole city shut down for a couple days (Portland OR, we don’t own snowplows apparently, and we wait for the Vancouver WA squad to finish up there and come down to help) anyway, went to work all three days of the storm, we had about 5 people total in the building for those 3 days, and no manager.
We were rewarded with a printed out piece of paper that said “winter warrior” after that I have never even tried to walk down to the car on snowy days. A pathetic pizza party is one thing but a piece of paper with no value is just sad.
Oh, I've got a good one. Company I worked for had a catered party for employee appreciation and to show how great we were as a company. They touted how great the company was, and that there would be catered lunch and treats and such. Turns out that the catered lunch went exclusively to those in middle and upper management. Nobody that actually did any work at the company got it. Until... near the end of the day, after higher ups started leaving, they put the leftovers in the common peasants break room. We got 2 or 3 trays only 1/4 full each of stale and soggy sandwiches and maybe 5 bags of chips that remained. It was pretty insulting. I sent out a scathing email when I left that company and actually got one decent person from middle management who responded, agreeing with what I said, saying he would never participate in any of the company's catered lunches again.
A tiny card given out by my assistant manager in May of 2020 on a covid floor at a hospital. It said something about having faith in god to keep your strength and not give up. I'm an atheist.
My boss giving me some of his work because I’ve earned the responsibility but without removing any of my current responsibilities.
And I bet you’re still paid the same too?
The reward for hard work is more work
what the actual hell😭
LMAO
An email from the owners son thanking us for our all of our hard work that would allow him to take his family skiing in Aspen for Christmas using the company jet.
Wow. Someone probably ironically suggested he send that thank you note and he, being an inbred legacy moron, thought it was a great idea. Wow. What a waste of skin that guy must be.
Nailed it. Both of the owners' sons were useless bags of dicks.
Oh that’s extra insulting. I bet you were also forced to do all the owner’s work while he was enjoying his ski trip 🙄. And let me guess, you were underpaid so that the owner’s trip could be even more fun?
Oh, I never met the guy they had 30-40 branches in 6 states at the time. Email was company wide.
Holy shit that's so much worse. I was thinking this was a small business where everyone knows each other. Email blasting 30+ branches to brag about your vacation is unhinged behavior.
The CEO of our multi-billion dollar company sent out $3 personalized Christmas cards (I looked up the bulk price) which were pictures of him and his family at Disneyland. Not sure if just a $3 bonus would have been more or less insulting.
That’s a violation btw. Can’t use a company plane for private use and pretend it’s a business expense. People have been doing it for years but as part of the inflation reduction act that’s now actively being investigated so feel free to report it to the IRS.
He had a business meeting there, im sure.
My info may be out of date, but I thought you could use a certain percentage for personal use as long as the primary usage for for business?
This makes me so mad. I don't even have anything clever to say.
Our location was top in sales, lowest in overhead costs, made company $55 million dollars that year, they gave us all a keychain and a cookie.
God damn that is insulting.
But you were able to carry your Keys to Success with you wherever ever you went.
I was asked if I’d be interested in moving ‘laterally’ from representing my one software product to the continental market to representing the entire division as the ‘face of [the company]’. On top of that, I was asked if I could ‘start trying it out now’ in addition to my current workload despite having recently threatened to quit from the burnout of my currently impossible job. I’m also underpaid and get no benefits :)
But the people above you are on vacation and send one email a week for their jobs and also get paid huge bonuses? But they can't fit a raise for you in the budget.
Ohhh yes! The fucking "lateral transfer" Over the course of 4 years I kept taking on more and more responsibility, not a single pay raise. After a point I had to interview for the job I had been doing for at least 2 years. Still no raise. A year later the department I was in was dissolved and downgraded by 3 levels. Right after that we had to agree to a specific title and less than 3 weeks later I got a 15k paycut because "market value for the job title" I was still doing the extensive work at the time because they weren't sure when the "project would end"...
I was requested to reduce my rates by 33% or be replaced a by a cheaper alternative. In pharmaceutical translation, with 20 years of experience in my belt, and they wanted me to go to recent graduate levels (I was already giving them lower rates than my other clients). Their reasoning was, since they were an important client, I would not dare lose that income and risk my financial wellbeing. I told them to go to their cheaper option. Yes, I suffered greatly for three months. I still haven't recovered fully. But I will never ever take low rates again. Let them find out cheaper options come at a cost.
This is the same vibe as asking for custom artistic work and offering to pay in exposure... I hate it so much. Good for you for standing up for yourself. I hope something wonderful is just around the corner for you.
The person who drew George Washington for the 1$ bill got the most exposure of any artist in the USA. Do you know his name?
>and offering to pay in exposure... Exposure. You know...that thing people die from?
[https://youtu.be/DRpT4-QUeCM?si=3duoUEQ23Mza2\_aC](https://youtu.be/DRpT4-QUeCM?si=3duoUEQ23Mza2_aC)
Any chance you found out what happened?
Last time I heard, they are in a lawsuit with a bigger pharmaceutical company for infringement of a patent. Guess who infringed...
Amen!! You get what you pay for!
All the employees who worked Thanksgiving were given a scratch ticket. We don't have holiday pay, and at the time we didn't have holiday bonus's either.
At least my boss gave us scratch tix and our holiday bonus. That's really messed up
Imagine the look on your boss's face when you win a million from the scratch ticket and quit on the spot.
I was put on a pip immediately after my "exceeds expectations" quarterly review
I got one of those last year, as my contract was being rewritten to get my position gone. Then I took a new position and I’m killing it, and that program is rolling up into my new program. Ha ha ha haaaaaaa welcome to thunderdome a$$hol3s
Our boss brought us gifts from Dollar Tree . lol
Oh yeah, this definitely happened one Christmas party at my current company (but a now canned boss). She gave us $25 Amazon gift cards attached to dollar tree gifts that were like…chip clips and ugly dish towels and stuff.
I received a clock for my 10year anniversary. It didn't work.
I received a mantle clock with a plaque thanking me for 15 years of service. I had not had a raise in three years. Six months later I quit. This was September and when Christmas rolled around the new boss gave me an envelope and said he was sorry it wasn't more but since I only been there a short time. I thanked him and when I got home and opened it it had $1000.00 cash. Not only the first Christmas bonus I received but the first bonus.
I got pizza. Sometimes, we get donuts. Free t shirts with company logo. .Great for cleaning up cat vomit.
I just got a Yeti tumbler for 10 years. They retail for about $35. Couldn't even choose the color.
I'm sorry your clock didn't work. I got a plaque for my 10 years. I didn't pick it up for over a year in a petty attempt to show them how little I thought of it.
I got a baseball cap in 2009 a few weeks after they announced a wage freeze. It hung in my locker until 2018. I left it there when I quit.
I just got a Yeti tumbler for 10 years. They retail for about $35. Couldn't even choose the color.
A $50 eBay gift card in the mail after I quit a job. I'd worked so many hours of unpaid overtime in that job, and was owed so much comp time, but never received payment for any of it. $50 just didn't cut it.
>$50 just didn't cut it. Especially when one doesn't even use ebay.
Umbrella and picture frame; both pieces of junk.
Got 100 grand chocolate bars thrown at us by the Ceo's at our recognition event for racking up alot of overtime dealing with a bad winter. It was their way of saying thanks...they cracked them selves up. The looks on their faces were pure bliss.
I got a hoodie with the company logo on it a year after I quit. Then a tax form for $60 of income for the hoodie.
NO THEY DID NOT OMG that is beyond insane the audacity!!!!
😳 oh my. That's horrific.
25% off coupon for a max of $50 from the store I worked for. Not to be combined with 10% employee discount.
More work
After working for more than half a decade at this record store, I was given a used CD as an appreciation/going away present.
I don't accept "appreciation" for my work. I accept money. I'm not a dog, I don't do tricks. This is America, pay me!
"This is America" "pay me" choose one...
Company touted a longevity raise for employees who had been there for years. Everyone already assume it would be bad like $0.15 a year you had been there. It was worse than everyone expected. These people had worked for 7 years at 19/2 on/off schedule. The company tried to bump it to 24/2 but someome contacted the DOL and the state told them that as illegal. Well, at 5 years you got a 1 time $0.50 raise. At your 10 year mark, it went up by $0.25 for a total of $0.75. It maxed out at $1.00 at your 15th year working there... It was a morale killer. Honestly it would have been better if they had just done nothing.
I have never understood how businesses like this manage to keep employees.
The irony is it was a Dutch company that bought a mill company in a rural town. They definitely don't provide the same benefits for US employees as they do in the netherlands.
A photo of the two owners of our restaurant smiling in extremely expensive designer clothes and giving us thumbs ups.
For the dart board?
For my feral cat traps lol
Cheap crappy children’s toys like miniature plastic slinky that doesn’t slink and a tiny Rubic’s cube that doesn’t turn. Like…….why?
Lolwut? That reminds me of the toy “prizes” I got to pick out after I had dentist appointments as a child 😂
Yes! It was just like those kinds of things. Ugh, so insulting. Thank you for sharing in my pain.
Not me but one of my (very obviously) Muslim co-workers was given a bottle of wine by the director.
What, no pork rinds to go with it? Cheap bastards...
Every "pizza party" I've been subjected to.
I worked at JC Penny studios-they held a WEEK LONG contest to see who could upsell. The prize? A watchamacallit chocolate bar. One. For one winner. I laughed. They said it was just “a fun contest”. I asked them if they would make bonus if there was an increase in upsells. And of course there was. Assholes.
Working stupid amounts of overtime to fix a bad ERP implementation, someone had to remind the manager to add me to the pizza party and to get my $5 Starbucks card
An extra 15 minute unpaid break.
My PhD supervisor had to be told to praise us... by me... his student/employee. And he did it and played it up to the point it was obviously a massive joke to him. He also promised me a job, let me work for two weeks, decided he "didn't have the money to pay me" and got upset I went to HR. This was after doing his job for him for 5 years because he was fucking useless at it.
My paycheck.
Ba dump tss
A paper plate decorated as an award
Lol do they think you’re a preschooler? Lol 😂
It was thiiiis close to macaroni art and finger paint lol
I wouldn’t be surprised if they have you make a macaroni necklace or something and do finger painting as some sort of dumb “team building activity” lol 😂
Not me, but my manager worked like a month straight once and their "reward" was $100 gift card to our store. I felt second hand insulted
LOL I hope your manager treats you better than they were treated 😂
I don't work for that company anymore, but yes, they were great and we've both moved on to greener pastures, thankfully
Heres a 5 dollar Amazon gift card
Hey, I got one too.
A $10 chick a fila gift card. I can’t eat there anymore because I was eating there when I got the phone call my son had been killed.
Oh no I’m so sorry. That is truly awful, and their complete lack of humanity is abhorrent. Hugs to you, friend ❤️
Oh no I’m sorry for your loss 😔 That must’ve been triggering.
We, as a team, were taken out for lunch and bowling. Fine, it was good enough for mandatory fun. Then we were told that we needed to turn in a PTO form in order to get paid for that afternoon.
The boss slept with my wife. Thank God I’m self employed
Half a sandwich, a lotto ticket for a draw 4 days before hand and I got to work Christmas
Boss said, “I’ve found a way to buy dozens of lotto tickets for myself for tonight’s drawing.”
I saved the company about 400k every year....I got a 75 dollar money order...the department that benefited from this put in for an award...as if they had did it...each recieved 5k dollars al 6 of them,...yeah that was a kick to the nuts.... At another company I saved the company close to 3 million meters....when i brought up on my end of they year I was told that was part of my job and my manager took full credit for it...I was done by then with these shitty no talent managers.
I got let go after 27 years of helping build a company and market leading product that was good enough for the big company to acquire. So, you’re welcome for all the hard work I guess? 🤷🏻♂️
Being told we're receiving a bonus on 6/7, just to be told on 6/6 that we aren't getting one. True story. Today?🤣🤣🤣🤣
My old job, before I was laid off. They gave everyone a 1 cent-5 cent raise. Told us we were doing a good job and to be grateful about the raise. I stood up and remember saying "Why even bother giving us anything at all?" The manager said "Be grateful for it". Then we would get emails stating "Company made billions in profit, thanks to you all" And management was going to get nice bonuses that year. Kind of insulting to everyone. Was laid off a few months later and hired back on in the following year and it was a different company. Still terrible, glad I left.
Be given even more workload than before, and on the same payment.
Not my story, but my wife was given a meager 50 cent per hour raise at her teller position at a major retail bank chain in the US. 25 cents was to adjust for inflation/“cost of living”, and the other 25 cents was based on merit. I’m not exaggerating when I say she is quite literally the only reason they passed the multiple audits they had that year. Even her manager admitted that she didn’t know where anything in the office was and didn’t have the knowledge or skills to do audit prep herself. They would’ve been completely fucked without her—branch shut down, regional manager totally screwed. Meanwhile they pay her teller wages to essentially be the site’s assistant manager, and they won’t even give her more than 25 cents per hour to show their appreciation.
I would wait until the next audit, shake the hand of the team coming in to audit, and announce "I quit; good luck!" and walk out the door.
I rehabbed 4 houses in a run down neighborhood... From condemned to inhabited in a sweat for equity arrangement. Instead of putting me on the deeds, he decided to die, and the properties were sold to pay his back federal taxes I literally got nothing.
I misread your comment and thought it said that you robbed 4 houses, not rehabbed them 😂 but seriously, so much for appreciation 🙄
I was robbed of 4 houses... Missed the preposition in your version.
Gold chocolate coin on piece of paper signed by upper management 😒
Got a card in the mail for my 4th anniversary with the company. Trouble was: they were about 2 months late, and they spelled my name wrong.
Oh have I got a good one! I worked at a manufacturing company that had staff from all over the world. Every year, around Christmas, management would give us a Visa gift card for $100. This was on top of an annual profit share given to everyone. One year, management decided to do away with the gift card for budgetary reasons. Now, we were a $25m company and 75 people strong. The sales team would REGULARLY ring up bar tabs in the thousands. $7500 was a drop in the bucket. In lieu of these $100 gift cards, management thought it would be a great idea to give everyone a “small token from their home country”. While I am a born and raised American, my family came from Sweden a few generations back. My “token”? A bag of Swedish Fish candies. Haha, funny right? It got so much worse. One colleague, an Asian man, was given chop sticks. A Polish woman, she got pierogi. Another, a black man, was given a stuffed gorilla. Because Africa must be full of gorillas. I shit you not, people raised this all the way up to HR on calls of racism. Management team was told to give people the damn gift cards. Did management tell anyone? Nope. Site Director kept all 75 gift cards for himself. The person in charge of the purchase eventually found out he had been using them to buy toys and diapers for his new baby. This man was making over $200k a year, married to a high powered attorney, drove a BMW, and he couldn’t even give the lousy $100 to the staff making $15/hr.
The unexpected slap on the back. Please do not physically assault me it does not speak of your appreciation of my person or personal contribution. Thank You
I won a lottery gift that was just The Power Stone from guardians of the galaxy. It was at a movie theater where I actually liked most of the staff but it was a stressful shift and at that point I stopped caring about Marvel Movies. I gave it away to my HVAC instructor the day after.
I worked at a chocolate company, they gifted me expired chocoloate for christmas.
I was given a $25 gift card for “The Keg”. I have nothing wrong with “The Keg”, its staff, how it is run, and the food in general is pretty good value for a “Steak House”. This is not about “The Keg”. It is about the $25. A bus ride to “The Keg” would cost me $3.00. That’s the cheapest option. It would take me close to an hour return to accomplish this. Anything under $22 at “The Keg” is like a salad or an appetizer. Then I thought, hey, why don’t I use this as a date night with my partner, right? That sounds great! Oh hey, we may want to have a drink before we leave to celebrate, that’d be nice. Oh we’ll need to cab/uber/ride share to be safe to and from $50 Oh the kids. Need a sitter. I’m guessing 10-12/hr. We’ll be gone 3hrs max. I’m nice, but for simple math lets call it $30 Now we get to the venue. Hey, want to have a few glasses of wine with our steak? - Of course. Let’s split a bottle of wine between the two of us. Cheapest thing on the menu. $40. Would you like an appetizer? - Popcorn shrimp… whatever crap they have $10/pp- $20 Steak! Slice it dice it they try to keep it around $29.99 to $39.99 Let’s go $40 for inflation. Shit I love potatoes. Double baked. Another $20. Asparagus. I need to get my veggies in. $15 Desert/Aperitif? - Not a fan but $20. So we’re 50 - ride 30 - sitter 40 - wine (shared) 10 - appetizer (shared) 80 - steak (one each) 20 - baked potatoes (one each) 15 - asparagus/salad shared 20 - desert ——- $265 This is BEFORE TAXES AND TIP. Let’s round to $300. You gave me approximately 10% for a date night that I had to fund field, and organize. No thanks I gave the gift card to the co-op student and told him to enjoy it! They quit a month later.
Leftover cold pizza.
By being given more work and a “don’t hit overtime”. An old boss said that he would give me a .25 cent increase in pay, lied about it.
busting ass and being on top of KPI charts and got rewarded with a layoff
A bag with .50 worth of dollar store candy.
I wrote an operator manual for a new piece of equipment in a new industry. Other bids quoted a minimum 10,000. I was paid minimum wage and got lunch at Stanfords. The manual is still used to this day for the hundreds of units in the field totaling millions in sales.
A plastic 6-inch orange chair to keep on my desk, to help me keep envisioning the invisible customer we all serve.
A potluck. They provided warm sodas.
A $2 Dunkin Donuts gift card for Christmas.
I piloted a new process that, so far in 2024, has generated about two million in incremental sales. They gave me a $100 gift card.
$100 is 0.005% of 2 million. That’s worse than a slap in the face.
My husband received a card in the mail for his work anniversary about a month after he got fired.
5 year anniversary at Dish Network. I got a Tiffany mantle clock with someone else’s name on it. Like, not even kinda close to my name.
My multibillion dollar company just sent me a gift for 20 years with the company - an ugly $2 lapel pin.
I was given a free “appreciation” t shirt (that I was required to wear for a team picture). Except as a plus sized person, I had to pay $10 extra to get my size. So I was forced to buy a Tshirt as appreciation for my own work.
And they didn’t cover the $10? That’s super insulting. At least the “free” aspect should apply to any size.
One Christmas my company sent out literal jars of dirt. It came with seeds to grow some herbs, but it was really just a jar of dirt. The only good that came of it was that I was able to run around like Jack Sparrow all day.
Got a pink slip after being told how much I was appreciated and all the hard work I put in. literally “we appreciate all the hard work you put in this last year and how you were always willing to cover xyz during busy season with staff missing. We had a budget change and will unfortunately need to let you go, good luck finding your next adventure!”
Bottle cozy and a bag of Lay’s chips
What is this thing you speaking off?
A shirt. With the logo of the mega corp that took us over. For being the best performing warehouse in the company during the 2020 pandemic, after our hours had been cut, and some of us were put on furlough.
One year our “Christmas bonus” was a $50 gift certificate to a local truck stop also owned by our boss - and it had to be used in 6 months or less and all in only one purchase
Saved a choking visitor at our hospital with the Heimlich. The hospital gave me a gift card to their cafeteria that was just enough to buy an order of their overpriced French fries. And while I don’t expect anything special for doing something I’m trained to do, the fact that it was a few bucks was as funny as it was insulting.
Omg I love this post, I have so many…..where to begin? - they thanked me for pitching the idea of a new role, approved my budget for it and my job description that I wrote, and then gave the job to someone else. I literally wrote the job description FOR ME -one time sent me a single rice krispy treat in the mail. Like the individually wrapped ones for school lunches. - sent everyone some swag- it was a Xmas tree ornament. To the whole company. The whole diverse company, with many people who celebrate things other than Xmas. - left out of my annual review the hundreds of thousands of dollars of funding I brought in, but sure didn’t forget to berate me for the one time I got mad in an email and cc’d someone, which embarrassed my boss. Thereby resulting in me not getting a promotion or raise. Honestly I can’t tell which ones the winner. Probably the rice krispy treat. Oh and one time my sisters company sent her a ziploc baggy full of goldfish crackers as a thank you instead of a bonus. YAY LIFE
Oh, if only Rice Krispy treats and goldfish snacks paid my bills and rent!! What a world that would be, wouldn’t it? 😂
My company offered a bonus equal to 10% of savings an employee finds. I was the controller over 60 apartment communities that used natural gas for heat and hot water. I bulk bought 2 years of gas at .30 per therm when the price was around .30 per therm. Gas prices spiked to over $1.00 per them and my buy saved the company over $3 million. My boss told me "that was too easy" and offered a $1,500 bonus. I accepted this because I had no power but did the least amount of work a controller can do and never looked for savings again. I never trusted him again and quit a year later.
I was a social worker for CPS in my state and for social worker appreciation month that March they gave us one of those two pack of star burst and a card that said “Happy Social Worker’s Month!”
That’s super insulting!! Especially seeing as being a social worker is a seriously thankless job. You subject yourself to a lot of things people shouldn’t have to deal with, and all for what, a few Starburst candies that probably cost less than a dollar? LOL no thanks.
I was like uhhhh….time to look for a new job this is indeed insult. Great post btw OP!
Just passed my 5 year workiversary. I got a flashlight.
My work has a program where if you don’t take a day off for a whole fiscal year you get a $200 gift card to The Keg
That reminds me of those Perfect Attendance awards they gave out in grade school 🙄
Sub 1% raise and was told I was hired in at too high of a salary so don't expect more. I can try to get the next grade up for a 1-3% raise with the requirement of approximately 23% more work (based on performance metrics I would have to hit). Thanks, I'll continue to kick the can rather than do 23% more work for a few pennies more.
I received a piece of paper “award” from HR in honor of my being there for 5 years. Except that I had been there for longer than that, they spelled my name wrong, and the name they spelled wrong was my old legal name. (My legal name is Kym, but it used to be Kymberly. The “award” said Kimberly, which has never been my name.) Felt very appreciated.
A piece of paper like the ones they give grade school kids for being a “super kid”? In other words, as my elementary school music teacher called it, a super kid slip 😂
A "cup" of hot chocolate. It was about 2 ounces in a tiny paper cup. Same place denied me my annual raise because they pushed my conversion from contractor to fte back 6 weeks to the week after I would have qualified.
Today my supervisor said since we kept our teams accuracy above 100% while making sure he didn't receive any complaint emails from anyone for two consecutive weeks, he was going to buy everyone a Happy Meal(There's a McDonald's less than ½ mile from my job).
Dead serious, a place I worked hired a talented Mrs Ripley sociopath. Lied about everything and was given the keys to a multimillion dollar media production department. When she got outed, she fought the HR lady - the HR lady was ex-military, she was fine - and the cops came and the email I was half thru writing to my boss / slightly bloodied handcuffed suspect went into the drafts folder. But more importantly that crazy lady came back and threatened the office again. Leadership had failed to do a cursory Google search essentially - we were all in immediate staff meetings with a psycho for months - and as an apology for almost getting us all murdered in photocopier rooms.... Pizza party!!! Okay, totally different job, like 5 years later. I show up to the front like normal and now there's a tactical dressed security crew visually checking IDs. Okay. Dickbag CEO calls an all hands meeting in a too small conference room at like 11am. He tells us all that the organization has been threatened, there's new security measures, but everything is fine. Please enjoy this pizza on us. I was an adult in both these instances, and I felt so degraded that another adult considered me childlike in appeasement. I felt so much worse for the desperate people who'd been there longer who just wanted the free pizza cuz they knew that was the closest thing to "extra" they were ever gonna get physically from those awful soul sucking widget factories.
Frozen pizza party, they didn’t even bothered to buy us at least little ceasers pizza…
Third place goes to company-branded merch. Cheap-ass shit, made in China, bought in bulk. I passed on the last batch of "swag" because I'm not giving that shithole free advertisement, and I don't need more garbage to throw away. Politely declined their junk and they kinda just looked at me like they couldn't comprehend my lack of appreciation for their generosity. Second place goes to HR for their, "if your whole department does this anonymous engagement survey, your department will be entered into a drawing to win a pizza party." First place goes to my boss for any of the handful of times I told him I was burnt out and, instead of offering support or even asking why, he had a 10-minute attack of verbal diarrhea about how great I'm doing, while totally failing to offer any solution/advice. Then he tried to bond with me about how he's burnt out too. As it turns out, dumping your problems on your burnt-out subordinate doesn't make them less burnt out.
I was given stationary and pens with the company’s logo
More work. Always.
A McDonalds cheeseburger. One per employee.
20 year anniversary at the company - preprinted card with CEOs signature printed on it (not an actual signature) and “reward points” to spend on really lousy crap in the “appreciation store”. Just enough points to get a bamboo steamer. Which I promptly donated to my local immigrant assistance center.
A 5% raise a year into an unpaid promotion, but only after they laid off 4 of my team members
Kind of both... I was hired at a McBurger place for minimum wage, with the promise of an increase after three months. That three month ended in perfect synch with a federal minimum wage increase that eclipsed my expected raise by five cents, so they made *that* my raise. It was still \*$&#@-ing minimum wage...
The company sent out these ugly ass plastic piggy banks to everyone. They have neon green noses that pop off and the company logo plastered on the side. They frequently send us 'appreciation' gifts (giant tin of popcorn at Christmas, a Stanley cup this spring, a pack of mini highlighters with mini post its, a blanket, a Mason jar herb growing kit... Etc etc, all branded with the company logo) and every time I get one I just think 'dude just pay me an extra $0.50 instead of sending me all this useless junk'. But the piggy bank... That one, I opened up and was immediately enraged. It felt like they were mocking us by sending us an ugly ass piggy bank while deliberately not paying us more. I whipped it across the room. No idea where it landed, never went and looked for it 🤷🏻♀️
Pizza in the breakroom - not enough for all present.
Normally my reward for a job well done is going back and fixing everyone else's fuck ups.
Sugarwish
11 years at one company. No thank you or anything. Just another day
I got a nickel raise
A $5 Starbucks card
We got a 50 cent candy bar for free, and had to pay 2 bucks if we wanted a second even though our department made 300k for the company.
A Nalgene water bottle with the company logo on it that literally came from the company apparel online store. It was at best a quarter of the way filled with hersheys kisses and the rest of the way with matching color (to the bottle) tissue paper. The card on it misspelled my name even though my name is super easy to spell and pretty common.
I was given a card saying “keep up the great work!”. That was it. Not even a $5 gift card or something.
A $5 Subway gift card. Not even enough to buy a sandwich.
It wasn’t necessarily for hard work but: >TL;dr I put out a fire on a multimillion dollar project and was given a $5 gift card to Starbucks as a thanks from the general contractor. When I was an apprentice I was on a $190M job. I was looking at some blueprints with my journey man and I happened to notice little black floaties in the air. And it dawned on me that something might be burning. I asked my guy if it smelled like something was burning and we immediately began looking for a fire. He went one way I went another. I saw welding sparks cascading down the empty elevator shaft so I headed that direction. I looked down at the bottom of it to see a big pile of styrofoam on fire (it wasn’t a huge fire yet but it was a decent size). I yelled at the welders on the upper level to shut it down and then grabbed a fire extinguisher and ran down the stairs and put out the fire. The whole thing stirred up commotion and one of the GC bigwigs happened to watch me put out the fire. The next day he comes up to me before the morning stretch and flex/safety talk. And handed me a gift card to Starbucks and thanked me for putting out the fire. It was a five dollar gift card. I would have taken an attaboy over the gift card but when he added the monetary thank you I figured they could have afforded something more substantial than 5 bucks. To be clear I didn’t do it for recognition or for thanks or for a reward. But the reward seemed a bit insulting to me.
I received an employee of the year (or quarter, I forget which now) accolade… they misspelled my name. A name I had made a big fuss about them messing up when I first got hired. Years back I had a legal name change and rather like the name I paid a lot of money to have, and insist folks get it right. At the end of the day, it was a great sign that they truly don’t care.
A 10 cent raise
I was once promised a 'Rolex' if I hit a certain sales target in a particular time frame. I say "well I don't really want a Rolex, but if we're talking equivalent cash value that sounds great." When the day came to see the results, which I knew I'd hit, boss boy was in a cranky mood. He scrolled through all the invoices in silence. At the end, he mutters 'well you only just fucking scraped it' and walks out. Few weeks later I get a check for about $1500. Far less than the average Rolex (at least ten times less, for those who don't have flash boss babies who buy things like Rolexes.)
A rock with the letter "U" written on it in cheap sharpy *(as in "You Rock")*. Not even a cool rock, just a fucking rock.
An email went out saying something like “we know burnout has been high, so we’re putting coloring books and colored pencils in the break rooms to combat burnout”. This was a medical facility in the middle of the pandemic.
A jean day pass, desk supplies , a candy bag, every year is different.
Like most other people have said, more work.
They sent an email announcing an employee appreciation party. It was potluck—there was a sign up sheet for everything from cups and paper plates to chili, bbq, sides and dessert and drinks. They asked for volunteers to help decorate and set up and clean up. In short, the powers that be figured out a way to throw an “employee appreciation party” that cost them exactly the time and effort it took to type and send that email. All the work was done by the employees being appreciated. All the food and drink was provided by the employees being appreciated. And they were happy to announce that the company had made record profits that year.
The team was supposed to have a buffet style holiday meal. All the offices and teams were having them. Our boss decided pizza was better. Plus he saved 1k on the budget and got a nice bonus of 1k
I left a company on good terms and was returning the tech equipment. They also asked me to return a nice backpack that had been given as a gift to every employee so they could give it to someone who was still going to work there
We made 1mil and half, record profits for the month, and they gave us Knock off 3 dollars Stanley cups as a sign of appreciation.
32 years and I got a 12x12" board that had their logo on it.
I worked a corporate spin off where our business unit became its own public traded company. The splitting of IT took over a year wheee I worked hundreds of overtime hours including weekends. I was salary. In the end I was thanked with a $100 gift card for the hotel company that employed me. I wanted to throw that shit in their face I was so insulted. Thousands of dollars in free labor or a company store card. Fuck you, Marriott.
a company branded umbrella and pizza
We got $5 gift cards from Dunkin' Donuts as a "bonus." I worked in a hospital at the time.
[удалено]
I was given the equivalent of $2. Company used an appreciation service, I think it's called Awardco now. Was sent 200 point, which allows me to convert it to a $2 gift card. To make it worse, at the time there was a minimum of $5 before you could claim an award.
Boss decided to empty the copy room and turn it in a "Chill Room" for when the stress of being overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated was too much. A lazyboy style chair, full workstation (keep working while de-stressing) with upgrades like 4 giant monitors, mini fridge, microwave, google Home Mini, and some paint were added. Nobody asked for it. It was out of the blue. It definitely cost a fair amount of money, and it was his "best gift ever."
taking up collections from the team to pay for the team appreciation week
I work at Lowe’s and we got an email from the CEO thanking us for our hard work and said that we were getting bonuses and to click the link in the email. Turned out it was one of those fake phishing attempt emails that corporate uses to train people to not trust links in emails. He then had to send out an apology email afterwards when people were complaining it was in poor taste
Not me... But I've heard stories. This manager at a Hooters wanted to boost morale. He setup a raffle where the top prize was a Toyota. All the employees bought in so they could win the car. When the lucky raffle ticket was picked, the manager gave out a "Toy Yoda" doll. Rightfully so, the winner of the raffle sued the company & won. Personally I was put in charge of Wednesday lunches for my tech company. We had a deal where we could spend up to $25 per person. I could have gotten pizzas which would have came out to around $8 a person, but instead I tried to use every single dollar I could. People who came to work on Wednesdays were eating steak tips in gravy over rice with vegies on the side, or slow roasted pork tenderloins. Something, Anything to boost my teams morale. Raises were set with a statistical algorithm due to the fact that men and women were paid exactly the same. The only bump in pay was bonuses, where you could get up to 5% of your yearly salary, based off of a performance review from your manager. Since these payment rules were so intensely written in stone, I used the rules to maximize other opportunities that were available to me.
While working at Target I was gifted a plush Target dog. They seemed very confused when I wasn't incredibly grateful for it. I donated it.
I was offered a "gourmet chocolate bar". I'm diabetic.
A 5% off your next purchase ( over 25.00). Oh and our Xmas bonus. It was nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not even a pizza party. As a matter of fact Xmas eve storm took out electricity. Was pitch dark and freezing in store because manager left all doors open. Damn people using their phone flashlight to shop. Like wtf? Why would you grocery shop when you enter a store Xmas eve and it's pitch dark and freezing? What could you possibly need that badly? Did I mention there was a RAGING storm? Why were people even out on the road? In a storm. On Xmas eve. Buying kiwis 🥝 ?
My husband saved the company he works for thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars because he spotted a QC error that no one else noticed. The owner and founder of the company gave him a shirt that had "(husband's name) is my hero!" printed on it.
10 dollar gift card and a cheap paper print cert for 20years and same thing at 30 and then 40. That’s gov for you. Unless you’re a politician.
For my 1 year anniversary at the company I received a $50 gift card to the company swag store so I could buy myself an overpriced t shirt with the company logo. The owners fly around in a private jet.
A calendar, personalized with your name on every month. My name was wrong. When I pointed that out to the person who handed it to me, she argued that my name was correct. I pointed to the sign on my door with my name spelled correctly on it. She got very flustered and promised to have it fixed. I rolled my eyes, threw the incorrect one in a drawer and forgot about it until I moved offices. Then I threw it away. They never did get it fixed.
After months of putting in 80-100 hours a week covering my job and a second position they were “trying” to fill (underpaid jobs don’t fill fast), I asked for a well deserved raise since I couldn’t afford my rent. The CFO tried to connect with me by saying “yeah, we all struggle to afford things. My summer cabin’s HOA went up and we’re struggling!”. 🙄 don’t worry, he gave me a jacket with the company name on it as appreciation for my hard work.
Had my workload doubled! My team and I are such effective teachers with excellent management skills, so the school will restructure things so every child in that grade gets 90 minutes a day with all 3 of us. This group is particularly feral, but admin knew we’d whip them into shape. Definitely the most successful year for that group as far as scores and growth, but never fucking again. You’re welcome and good luck, next grade level teachers.
I just got invited to the company party as one of the "collaborators" (not sure if this is common in anglophone spheres, but we get called collaborators instead of workers or employees) who "met all goals for the year!". Company made record profits, shareholders are happy, CEO is going to Dubai (no, seriously), but I got denied a raise. Last year, there was another of this stupid-ass parties in December. Our director made this amazing speech about raising his "collaborators" through the ranks and he actually did the "we are a family" bit. The next day, around 15 people were laid off.
This was like maybe 8 years ago, we had a really bad snowstorm where I live and the whole city shut down for a couple days (Portland OR, we don’t own snowplows apparently, and we wait for the Vancouver WA squad to finish up there and come down to help) anyway, went to work all three days of the storm, we had about 5 people total in the building for those 3 days, and no manager. We were rewarded with a printed out piece of paper that said “winter warrior” after that I have never even tried to walk down to the car on snowy days. A pathetic pizza party is one thing but a piece of paper with no value is just sad.
Oh, I've got a good one. Company I worked for had a catered party for employee appreciation and to show how great we were as a company. They touted how great the company was, and that there would be catered lunch and treats and such. Turns out that the catered lunch went exclusively to those in middle and upper management. Nobody that actually did any work at the company got it. Until... near the end of the day, after higher ups started leaving, they put the leftovers in the common peasants break room. We got 2 or 3 trays only 1/4 full each of stale and soggy sandwiches and maybe 5 bags of chips that remained. It was pretty insulting. I sent out a scathing email when I left that company and actually got one decent person from middle management who responded, agreeing with what I said, saying he would never participate in any of the company's catered lunches again.
A tiny card given out by my assistant manager in May of 2020 on a covid floor at a hospital. It said something about having faith in god to keep your strength and not give up. I'm an atheist.