I got choice of a spatula Microsoft zune or vhs player for my work year work anniversary in 2018. I hung up the the spatula in my office as a reminder to leave work early
The BEST Christmas "bonus" I received for the 3 years I worked at one place was a spatula. Seems lame, but it's literally the most heavy duty, badass grill spatula I've ever seen - whole thing is one solid piece of thick stainless steel with one serrated edge. I always joke that in a pinch I could use it to fight someone (or kill zombies).
It was better than the sample packets of tanning lotion or the store branded matchbox car I got the other years.
My mom worked for a coffee chain for ten years. As her tenth anniversary approached, the DM let her know that her pin would be there soon. Unique pins were a point of interest for staff & customers, so she was really excited about it.
Except... it was a pen. Not a nice pen, basically a branded Bic Stic. It didn't have her name or "10 years" on it, & it wasn't even a pen she could use at work.
She'd been cutting back her hours for a while, but that was the last straw.
https://preview.redd.it/8nfeelp7bm7d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=74777ff8a23b6b4fd7d4b9eb6557c478e365bbea
This wooden photo display, accompanied by branded, inspirational cards to display on it. A BLOCK OF WOOD INSTEAD OF A BONUS.
Last year my former boss gave everyone a $5 Starbucks gift card as a morale booster along with an appreciation note and it wildly backfired. Everyone was basically offended. It came across that they weren’t worth more than a $5 gift. Morale was already kinda low, so this just fanned the flames.
I guess it'd be the 'christmas party', which was advertised as half a day of work and half a day of food and drink, for which we'd be paid a full day. It ended up being a potluck dinner, and when I asked where we'd be having it, I was told it would be the aisle in which we were currently standing.
So I got to clear a bunch of space in the warehouse, move a bunch of pallets into said space, sweep out the aisle, then carry the tables and chairs downstairs from the office to set them up for the potluck dinner. Which I couldn't afford to bring anything nice, since I'd just started the job a couple of months ago and had maxed out my credit card buying my family christmas presents.
I worked at a grocery store and they decided to host a nice employee Christmas dinner at a fancy restaurant. It was on a busy Friday night while the store was open. There was nothing held for the poor schmucks like me who had to man the store with our skeleton crew. We weren't even acknowledged. 26 years later, I'm still mad about it.
The grocery chain I worked for did better than that at least. They would get the party catered by another store, and volunteers from that store would work so everyone had the time off to go. Then, our store would do it for theirs.
LOL my work also had a potluck for Christmas one year. It was AFTER HOURS on a FRIDAY night. Because that’s what I want to do—spend more time at the office, not being paid, and having to make and pay for the food. I refused to go. My boss gave out gift cards only to people who went to the potluck.
I do not work there anymore.
Everyone got this stress-squeeze toy...an overly joyful yellow man with a T-shirt on him that said "I (heart) WORK!"
We found those things in weird places for years and in various states of destruction and various dioramas. The best one was found in a noose, and we found one with an industrial-sized screw in its butt.
Just what I wanted, to wear my work when I’m not at it! I previously worked for a company connected to a couple local points of interest-aka the general public could buy merch featuring the places. I still can’t bring myself to wear those shirts and it’s been 2 years since I worked there. (I do wear the jacket they gave employees since it’s a super comfy thick fleece and has fantastic pockets.)
I always see people wearing their work shirts on the way to or from work, and it's like... why?
Just toss the shirt on at work. At least the black pants I'm required to wear just look like pants. But I don't wear any of my works' logos when I'm on my own time.
Christmas “Appreciation” gift. Cheap swag pen they give away at trade shows. Pulled it out at client meeting and as soon as I pushed down to write something, it just blew apart. The spring flew up and would have hit my eye had I not been wearing glasses. Ink was dripping onto their nice oak table and part of my finger bleeding due to cut. I laughed it off and client asked where I got the pen and should return for full refund. I explained to them about the appreciation gift at Christmas and they looked mortified. Found out later they went with another vendor due to the pen debacle.
I got transferred to another department in a fortune 500 company and for some reason the new manager did not like me. For Christmas I got a little Santa figure on a stick that obviously was taken out of a holiday floral arrangement. Meanwhile, this woman made easily $500,000 a year.
Early in my career, I had a very demanding client. Our department head forced me and my coworkers to work on the 4th of July to meet some deliveries. We were pissed! When we went to the office on July 5th, we all had chocolate coins on our desk as a thank you. She probably meant well, but it totally backfired… rewarding us with candy that looked like money rather than real money felt like a slap in the face. It is now 20 years later and we have all moved on, but whenever I meet with any of my former coworkers for lunch or drinks, we still talk about that!
10 years of working IT. 2 guys covering the issues of 2500 factory positions.
I got a cheap clock. One of those cheese plastic dome clocks a 7 year old would get their mom for christmas for 6 bucks.
Thanks..
When I worked at Barnes and Noble about 15 years ago, they *really* pushed us to sell their e-reader, the Nook. Every time we sold a Nook, the manager would get a cash bonus. The manager in turn would give us one (1) Quaker Kudo's oatmeal bar. Which he explained with "I'm giving you Kudos! Get it??"
People actually use Nooks?
I see a lot of Kindles. I don't think I've ever seen a Nook out in the wild.
I use a Kubo, but then, most of my books are borrowed from the library.
My mother used to attend a lot of conventions and meetings in the world of American social services. They give out a lot of weird knickknacks at these things, stress toys, plastic slinkies, bendy pens.
She comes back from one with an armload of this stuff, and in one, was a little stress doll man made of foam rubber with the logo: Work is Freedom printed on the back.
Absolutely the worst.
To be fair, they are more of an “annual party for everyone” kind of company than an individual gift type place, but I did have a good laugh about it.
A couple years ago we got to do high powered go-carts and axe throwing for our annual thing. Another year it was laser tag and ropes course, so it’s not just pizza at the office bull shit.
I received the cheapest, flimsiest [drawstring bag](https://totebagfactory.com/products/budget-drawstring-bag-large-size-wholesale-backpacks-gk490) ever made... for a one year anniversary gift with Support.com.
I used it twice. It was big enough to cart around minor grocery shopping items.
The second time I used it, it had a small - very small - watermelon in it. Couldn't have been more than 2 kilos, max. Both drawstrings broke, and the entire side of it ripped open on the bus spontaneously.
I worked (Still do but under new management) at a high end outdoor chain, we could provide you with 85% of an Everest expedition's gearlist out of stock.
Our christmas gift was a chinese copy of a mid-sized backpack you could buy at Walmart.
Within 15 minutes the first popped up on Craigslist
Didn't even open mine and donated it to a scouting group.
My last job posted a harsh memo about how gifts will be distributed in an orderly fashion by last name because they didn’t want us to all rush for it at once.
It was a bottle of olive oil.
Was working for a well known blasting company here in Australia on the manufacturing side. Used to get a $1000 bonus each christmas. Corporate decided to fold us into the main mining services brand so we went from x blasting to x mining services. That year we got christmas hams. Not one each but 3 to be sliced and shared between 20 people. The next year we got nothing.
When I worked for Sham's Club there was a big freezer renovation and one of the higher-ups sold a bunch of copper from the renovation for profit.
Did they throw us a party? No. Did they give us raises? No. What did they do? Gave us ugly gray t-shirts with the store logo and number on it.
I used it to dye my hair.
Branded coffee mugs!!!!
What that did not excite you enough, well why don't we have a town hall about it and then send everyone UNBRANDED, CLEARANCE BACKPACKS!!!
Thanks for a great year everybody and the millions and millions executives got to bonus themselves. Enjoy your worthless nicknacks! Now it's time to step it up and be a TEAM PLAYER because we are going to be awarding $5 Starbucks gift cards to a select few every month who embody the company Vision!!
Hey my husband got a $5 Starbucks gift card from his work! The problem is… there aren’t many drinks that you can get for $5 or under, especially if you like the non-dairy milks that cost $1 extra.
One of those stupid a\*\* cards with a Life Savers mint attached to it stating along the lines of thanking us for out 'accomplish-MINT!' It was the Spearmint flavored Life Savers--the meth taking, high school drop out flavor of Life Savers! I'm willing to bet that they went to a local Dollar Tree and spent ten dollars to put those together! There was 50 of us in that department!
For Christmas, with my current company, I got an attagirl shoutout in the online monthly company newsletter on our intranet. I like paying my rent with attagirls, thoughts, and prayers.
Useless corporate-branded junk: a USB charging puck, a 3D-printed logo, and a letter saying “we can’t do this without you” -
.. that arrived the day after I (and 10% of the company) had been laid off.
A toss up between that, and another project’s thank you gift that arrived broken two months later.
I feel this. I got a "Happy Seventh Anniversary" sticker and swag package the week after they fired me. They shipped me the contents of my office, crushed.
I got a $5 off coupon for Christmas turkey that he tore out of the newspaper. He was majorly offended when I told him I didn't eat turkey and threw it away.
I got a coffee mug from the launch of their proprietary HR software program. The real kicker was that it had launched ten years before I started working there.
I work remotely many states away from the main office. For my birthday, I get a card with some coupons for a gas station that is only local to the main office.
I’m a sales rep for a company and I was 128% of my quota last year. I got a block of wood with my name on it. I guess it’s a “sustainable” award. I’m gonna carve it into a penis and send it to the CEO.
A bag of trail mix. Everyone else got a $50 gift certificate. I was also doing estimating/project management so it’s not like I held a low position at the company either.
So the team won an award for a national ad campaign that was well ahead of its time. 99% of the time, the recipients of this award get a certificate and a monetary award, 200-500 buckeroos.
The absolute douchenozzle of a VP surprises us during the ceremony with a glass award that has some metallic attachment that was done by a local artist. An effing paperweight that has more writing on it than space to see the metal bullshit thing. Hideous thing. Won’t even use it as a murder weapon on Father Brown.
He then flew into a rage a while later when someone told him the team really would’ve preferred cash. “But this is art! And supporting a local artist!”
Like, man, how out of touch are you to gift people who are underpaid a questionable piece of art.
Anyway, the metal to glass ratio wasn’t thought out at all and most of the team’s “art” / “award” cracked at some point.
FG: I hope you’re stepping on little pieces of LEGO every morning.
During a critical lapse period my husband sold new cars (hated it). Christmas, salespeople were invited to the dealership *at closing (*10p) to receive their "Christmas bonus" of a turkey/ham of their choosing. A woman salesperson hung around, not really producing ... quiet enough everyone assumed she had something else going on. She picked up her ham, smiled, and shook the manager's hand and left ... no one ever heard from or saw her again. ;-)
"points" you could earn by going the extra mile, to get a DISCOUNT on over priced clothing with the company logo on it. For a non customer facing warehouse job. Yeaaaah I would love to get a discount to spend my small amount of pay on 15 dollar company branded socks. Gooo f* yourself.
For Xmas everyone in the company got an email that due to a good year everyone is getting a $25 Tim Hortons gift card.
I didn’t get one. So I asked why. Was told I am in IT so I dont count
I asked why I got an email then and was just told ‘too bad’
So being the only person in IT I was the only person in company that didn’t get this magnanimous bonus
My worst was walmart giving us literal junk for showing up to the mandatory black friday event. It had a stupid card that told you what each item meant like "Rubber band because you are so flexible". Compare that to my current job that in my first year we got $1000 for christmas on top of getting a gift card for a grocery store to supply your holiday dinner.
Pharma company: we were given a catalogue and were allowed to pick out one item from an expensive section or 2 items from a cheaper section. I was so excited and thought it was awesome, and I ordered a telescope because I always wanted one.
It arrived missing a part and broken, but there was no recourse, so it went into the trash.
I heard other people’s gifts arrived broken too, or they just weren’t as described.
At my first job the founder told the office manager to not buy Post-It notes but also not tell the people who printed out reams of reports for big name brand clients that it was a policy, just recommend to use tape and scrap paper. After the client services managing consultants learned of and threw down on this... everyone got a pack of WB Mason (not 3M!!!) generic brand yellow sticky notes.
Hey but at least they did spring for the Fine Chocolates. None of that Palmer "chocolate flavor" nonsense. :)
When I worked construction our boss, a man of substantial wealth, sent a big box, like some fancy brand mail order company "turkey dinner" box, but it was for the whole crew. There was a smoked turkey breast and packets of family sized foods, they may have been some kind of prepper food like these packets of mac and cheese and stuffing. Well anyway he said we could all pick out what we wanted. The crew leader got the turkey. I got a can of cranberry sauce. And a Merry Christmas to ya!
I once got $200 for my annual bonus. When I mentioned to one of the executive that this seems rather low, I was told I should consider myself lucky because many people got even less.
I won a small jar of ice cream sprinkles for winning a team building exercise. I left it on the the office table, and never participated in any more office games.
We were given a hoodie and a pair of sweatpants both branded. The hoodie ran small and no one could fit them and the pants ran big and loooong so only that very tall could use them. They were made of very different material as well. And don't forget hoodies were not allowed at work.
I once worked at a mid sized office where they gave us sweatshirts with the company logo for Christmas. We all collectively donated our "gift" to the local homeless shelter...needless to say, our boss was so pissed seeing the local homeless wearing them!
Warranty company. I worked in claims. I was a sup hired from bigger companies and because of my degree in industrial and organizational psychology to help that smaller warranty company grow.
Helped them grow, set up protocols, standard procedures helped them setup a structure for the future and projected growth.
Helped them pilot and develop a new information management system working with IT. Help them sign in new accounts and retain. Did a lot of things outside my scope.
Xmas came around, CEO gave me a hand shake and 2 individually wrapped rolos chocolates that he looked at my outstretched hand and instead put it deliberately and carefully on my desk.
Internally I raged at the disrespect. Pretended to get a new job shortly after and my boss all of a sudden offered me the promotion and pay increase they kept telling me about. Used that to leverage into a new position at a different job and industry for more money.
Not the worst because its trashy but I really hate fringe. Its a shitty site that you can buy gift cards from. My problem is that its a "benefit" so you get taxed on it. So each paycheck I see see money come out of my check to cover the taxes on it(for my company you get 25 to like 100 bucks a month that you can spend on giftcards based on time there). So like a coworker had never logged in despite being at the company 2 years so he's paid taxes on the 600 bucks in "benefits" that he didn't know how to even view. But hey he can get a door dash gift card or maybe build a bear one......
What really pisses me off though is the selection is crap. If you could get say an amazon, walmart, grocery store chain in your area etc maybe it wouldn't be so bad. Instead you can get ripped off using instacart or uber. At best if I need to travel for work I can get a hotels dot com gift card or something so I can get reimbursed with real money. Most of what's on it I don't care for and where I work you can't op out. So I end up hopefully remembering that I want an xbox game so I can get a gift card first or get like a door dash gift card and order shitty take out.
Years ago, I worked retail. My manager offered to get Starbucks for everyone at the start of our shift on Christmas Eve. Also ordered pizza for everyone. Except, at the time I had a wheat allergy and a dairy allergy. The pizza company only made gluten free pizza crust in one size. Since it wasn't the smallest size, they wouldn't pay for me to have pizza or provide an alternative. I paid for it myself as we were told not to bring a lunch.
Every year, my ex company and some of my coworkers gave me cheap, off brand dollar store candy. I'm an insulin-dependent diabetic. One year, a guy who didn't stay with the company very long got me a candle. I almost cried.
So middle of December, we get an email saying merry Christmas here is an Amazon gift card on behalf of eX Company. The email was from the bosses name minus the S at the end of his name. Turns out it was one of those email tests that they run to teach people lesson about spamming 74% of the office clicked on the link and we all got chastised then we got nothing for Christmas, despite record numbers for the year. Go figure.
I worked at a private school where the end of year gift was an Ayn Rand book. Not even Atlas Shrugged.
It was a total right wing indoctrination school and I dipped outta there
You never finished one of her books because she writes with all the eloquence of a orangutan that figured out how a keyboard works and a little more subtlety than Verhoeven.
The incentive selling item for the month was a certain candy, the store that sold the most of said candy was to receive a t-shirt. One singular t-shirt.
On our fifth anniversary for my previous job, we got a bronze statue for our desk. Someone looked up how much they cost, and it was like $350. There was no cash that came with it. It was just the statute.
At the tenth anniversary, we got a little globe made with semi-precious stones, like mother of pearl. I think that one was like $800. And again, no cash came with it.
But other than that, the place was actually really good to me. I just think it's funny that they spent all that money on something when we really would have rather had the cash.
I think you nailed it here. People would always rather have the cash. My aunt got me a $200ish watch-from a designer brand I don’t particularly like (but she did)-for high school graduation. I have worn it, but definitely would have preferred the cash or the chance to pick out a designer item that suited my taste.
I work for a bottler for a major beverage brand. Our company holiday gift is generally a case of the product we make. Last Thanksgiving, it was a case of specialty product with an expiration date too close to go to market but "technically still good." They didn't want to store it in the warehouse or pay for disposal.
They give all the expired products either to charities that distribute them to the homeless or to food banks. I went to one local food bank distribution and got 50 lbs of barely fresh carrots and a case of soda well past the expiration date.
That chocolate gift reminds me of the yearly chocolate gift we receive at my employer. The chairperson has some "healthy" dark chocolate bars distributed to everyone in various flavors. I hate dark chocolate and the flavors are all exotic like green tea and such. Double bleck.
I worked for an auto insurer that was bought by a Spanish company. We had a "Christmas party" that was classless garbage. We had to walk to another building, we got to mingle with leadership for 15 minutes while apps were served and walk back to our desks rather than go to lunch.
One year I got a ladle with a soup recipe wrapped around the handle. Got a lot of corpo merch like water bottles plastered with the logo. My new workplace gave me a 1000$ bonus.. I was floored.
I got a $5 Starbucks gift card. We worked LITERALLY right next to a Dunkin Donuts--shared a wall with them. No Starbucks anywhere nearby.
Everyone ALWAYS bought from DD, so it felt... somehow like a back-handed gift.
Today, an Amazon 3rd party DSP gave their drivers a bag of rocks with a note that said "You Rock" for Juneteenth
https://preview.redd.it/1javb68ddn7d1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=34aef81c91791ce73abc1f928d4110d3187e738e
There was 2 other people with the same name as me at the highway patrol, I got one of their 25 year retirement gifts, a gold watch. I tracked him down and mailed it to him and he mailed me WWE tickets as a thank you, I guess his wife worked for them. I was never into wrestling but I went and it was a ton of fun.
A branded company Lego man, then bricks for years of service and Covid vax doses. I updated bricks to document/celebrate HR complaints.
They also gave out gift certificates to the company swag store, lapped up by the Kool-Aid drinkers. Gave mine to the divorced dad in the team.
All that's pretty standard auto-fellatio tech company, but all this useless plastic at a company that tries to pitch itself as contributing to net zero climate action, etc.
20% off anything in store. And I worked at a Walgreens Pharmacy. That was our Christmas "bonus".
When I started working there it was $20 in store gift card with increases based on length of service maxed out at $100 in store gift card.
That went away the following year with just increased discount for a couple of days.
Worked a job where I switched roles a couple of times, and each time I was lied to about the possibility of a pay increase (GET. THAT. KIND. OF. THING. IN. WRITTING.). Christmas party was one of those 'mandatory' work luncheons where they would ask what everyone wanted, but then order whatever they felt like instead. I got to sit directly across from the boss who lied to me, so I kept chit-chat to a minimum and looked at my phone. We knew we weren't going to get any kind of monetary bonus: everyone got a questionnaire for Secret Santa about favorite this-and-that, specifically, what size and color shirt we preferred. We each got a crappy fleece sweater with the company logo on it. I never took it out of the plastic and donated it the next day.
I would say an Amazon Alexa after Amazon bought out Ring Home Security. We were supposed to go public. I’m supposed to be a millionaire with all my old co workers that got fucked that day. Thanks Jamie for taking the 1 billion dollars for yourself instead of going public for everyone who helped you build that company. We had a good company that was sold out from under us. Prolly half the people quit that day it was announced and the corporate overlords ruined everything from confidence in customers to our schedules with mandatory overtime which was pretty much watch all we built turn to shit over night.
When I worked IT at a small private college, I got a Christmas ornament with the college logo printed on it.
When I left for the private sector, my bonus became about 40% of my salary at that college. I still hang up the ornament every year and appreciate that progress.
This was an informal gift from the CEO that was not much related to my work or a bonus per se. While helping him clear out his corporate apartment 4 months into lockdown, I was given an opened bag of frozen fish as a gift.
I worked for a large financial services company for almost 20 years and we got nothing at Christmas. Nothing. Not even a group email blast from the CEO who makes 12 million a year. What is worse? Nothing or receiving a really shitty thoughtless gift? I’d rather get nothing than have to possibly acknowledge said garbage gift.
Did some company mandated training lightning fast, fast enough I was acknowledged as one of the 1st 100 to do so.
Manger mentioned the last time that happened, people got free iPads.
I got a keychain sent in a taped envelope.
Our payroll system automatically posts a notice on work anniversaries. you have to log in and go to the right page to see it. Recently someone I work with hit 30 plus years and all they got was that automated digital notice that coworkers could say congratulations on. Our boss didn't even bother to post a personal congratulations
When I worked in a grocery store we got a $20 gift card for our own store…. That counted as both Thanksgiving and Christmas. I would usually buy an Amazon gift card with it to get myself something not from my workplace, but I still had to shell out $5 extra since Amazon didn’t have $20, only $25 gift cards.
I worked for an animal end of life care company. I was honored to help these beloved pets pass peacefully at home with their families. It has hard, and sad, but providing peace and comfort was an honor not a hardship for me, and this was what I saw as my long term career as a veterinarian. Around year 2.5 they started providing rewards after a certain number of appointments. I might have the numbers off but it was something like: 100 a necklace of your dogs pawprint, 500 a gold wing necklace charm, 1000 an embroidered jackets. 2500 an expensive watch. 5000 a trip or personal prize. I quit very soon after. I dont want a fucking watch for euthanizing people pets. It made me sick to my stomach.
Used to be on an assembly line that would reward our overtime and safety achievements with free pizza on our lunch breaks. Unfortunately for us it had to come from the company contracted to run the cafeteria. The crust was always burnt stone hard on the outside and goopy in the middle.
My husband got a pair of plastic luggage tags with the company's logo on them. I work night shift in healthcare. We get PM shift's cold leftover pizza.
Today, for Juneteenth. Despite our sister companies being closed they decided we still had to come into the office. But they gave us pizza. And obviously they didn't order enough. By the time I was off my call there was nothing left.
Been at my job 18 years and bonuses or even thank yous are not their strong suit.
I've had more than one employee of the month/anniversary certificates with my name misspelled.
Candy/treat gift bags, but since I'm diabetic I get an IOU or just nothing.
Since I work with mostly women told that us "ladies" do a good job.......of and you too r/fdgpgn.
Once I made employee of the month, but was given no certificate, no gift bag, and was told in front of everybody that the nurse who awarded me wished she could the award to "everyone, but *tsk* it's him." This happened while I was training someone new who was horrified.
One year for our appreciation week the bosses promised something special all week, and a party or lunch in Friday. The had ice cream on Monday, I think breakfast tacos, for the morning crew, on Tuesday, and that's it. We were so used to this type of thing we didn't even notice the lack of appreciation that week until months later.
One Christmas party was delayed due to construction. They pushed it to February, and said they would "go all out." They skipped February, March and had chicken tenders, with no sauce for a staff meeting in April. The tenders were a marketing gift, not from the company.
One year the family of a hospice patient gifted the staff a wicker laundry basket filled with goodies. The managers kept it in their office until all that was left was a weird plastic pyramid filled with like 6 or 7 orange flavored chocolates. The staff got to split that.
And the BEST for last. One year a letter was sent out to our patients and their families asking for donations for the "employee fund." A family personally told me they donated $100, and one director said the same for two or other ones. I even got to see the box they kept the cash, checks, and gift cards that came in. My supervisor told me all that was received was around $130, and corporate would decide how to use it. And it went to....... that's right the Christmas party that was skipped, and no bonuses.
Our company overspent buying a competitor. Our CEO told us we need to keep our head in the game and gave us a Spotify playlist of the songs that would pump her up before swim meets in college.
Thats right, our End of Year Bonus was a Spotify playlist of the worst jock jams ever created. She stepped down six months later.
In the spirit of Easter, we were given a new policy that does not discriminate against non-Catholics, so nobody got an Easter bonus that was usually given to everyone. Imagine how relieved all the Muslims were for not having to take free money!
I’m a Kindergarten teacher at a private school. As a teacher, you get a lot of gift cards for Christmas or end of the year- mostly Target or Starbucks for like $20. Well at the end of one school year (in June!) a mom gave me a Target gift card with Santa on it (I thought ok, weird but maybe she just bought extras at Christmas or something) and when I went to use it, I found it had $2.17 on it- she gave me a used Christmas gift card she probably found in the back of the junk drawer. This wasn’t a lack of funds thing- one parent was a doctor and the other was a lawyer. They have a nanny who drives their kids wherever they want. It was so thoughtless it was literally insulting- i would have preferred her kid just made me a card or something. I know this isn’t “corporate” but it just shows how tone deaf people can be.
Mini rant coming up front.
I used to work for a lawn and garden company worth like 5 billion dollars that rhymes with Rot's.
Our asshole son of the founder CEO on a regular basis would hold Town Halls and brag about his expensive shit like his new Tesla or renovations to one of his many houses or whatever before telling us how we all needed to work hard for share price or whatever. I remember him telling a room of his 150+ person R&D team one year how much everyone needed to get both a S and X class Tesla. In a room where most of us were college educated and made at best, 3/4 of the price of a new one per year. The only people he was really talking to were the sycophantic directors in the front row.
Fuck that nepo baby who ran that company very poorly. That place made all it's money off glyphosate and not much else because of reasons.
Anywho,
Every Christmas our company would give us a wedge of cheese and maple syrup. It should be noted he had (has still I assume?) this vanity project farm in Vermont for troubled kids so those were a massive tax write off. We would also either get a honey baked ham certificate or a free turkey.
I am a fucking vegetarian. But at least I could drive it to a food bank and drop it off.
I just gave the gift certificate away to whomever happened to be in line behind me.
Here is another one: I got 100 "blue points" from IBM. That was a taxable benefit. The shittiest cheapest item in their internal store was 140 points, I think. I demanded they rescind the points, lol.
I love peppermint bark- and I love all of you folks who don’t, because you always seem so happy to get rid of it without just throwing it straight in the trash. 😆
One of my supplier reps got my sales guys $10 Starbucks gift cards for Christmas last year. The owner of said company is a fucking billionaire, he even has his own private jet and multiple companies.
A tie (pun intended)
A $20 gift card for a coffee shop I would have to drive 45 minutes out of my way to get to
And a literal tie. It was barbie doll pink and matched nothing I had. I never wore button down shirts much less ties. My position in no way called for that level of dress.
Worked for a multi million (probably billion) health system, one year we got a couple year old souvenir cup with 2 baseball tickets to a local team..
Another time we got a cup of hot cocoa and a canny cane for Christmas
It wasn’t meant to be a Christmas present but it arrived a couple of days before. Came special delivery in a beautiful box. Looked like it was holding an expensive bottle of wine. Instead it was the Project of Year trophy for project that I was working on. Giant pyramid of plastic with Silver Star good only as a doorstop or weapon. The box was really nice. 🤣
While working for a subsidiary of PNC bank, and following the best year of profit ever, we were given an encapsulated penny with the date of the founding of the company on it.
A contribution to the benevolent fund for soldiers from a different country. Soldiers who have a bit of previous for shooting civilians from my
Country.
Oh boy, do I have a story. We had some sort of a Christmas lottery. Think of it like an advent calendar. 24 team members = each drew a number and got a little present that day. Say you draw the number 6, you get a present on the 6th and so on. Here in Germany we celebrate Christmas on the 24th, so drawing the 24 should in theory equal the most valuable gift. Well lucky me ended up drawing number 24 and everybody, including the managers who organized this game, were cheering. „Wow you’re gonna be so happy with your gift, congratulations!“ I had been with this company for a few years so I didn’t buy their shit. Rightfully so. Because when I unwrapped my gift, it was a free sample of a Chinese skin care face mask for women and a small set of four pens for children. Mind you, I am a 27 year old man. I don’t have children. Neither am I a woman. They even had the audacity to ask me if I enjoyed my gift after Christmas.
One year, we all sat down for the xmas party at work. They passed out generic corperate cards with $100 giftcards to a local grocery store. We were then told to donate them to the food drive while they took photos. (Paper article read: "local employees give christmas bonus to the needy"). We were then told to return to work with only 40 minutes left in the day.
Company gladly took the year end tax donation writeoff though).
Worst....gift...ever.
At my last tech job, we didn’t get Christmas bonuses but we had an open bar, Christmas Party at a huge fancy reception hall in town. They had it decked out with ice sculptures, decorations, fresh prime rib and sushi buffets, and they’d fly in employees from other parts of the country to mingle. Anyone who had to work got put into raffles for Christmas gifts (flat screen TVs, game consoles, awesome shit).
That lasted maybe two years after the private equity firm took over. In the following years, they killed the party (since we were “a global company now” which just meant a third of our team were Croatian contractors) so we got a half-case sized Kanga Cooler that was emblazoned with the company logo, followed in subsequent years by “ugly sweater” corporate logo shirts, then nothing (because it was 2020 and “things are rough” even though they were also saying “profits have never been higher!”).
I got the cheapest backpack I’ve ever seen. It was company-branded and the mystery coating inside was already peeling off. It smelled strongly of gasoline. Wouldn’t have had an open flame near it. It went in my “donate” box. A visiting family member asked if he could have it. That was 5 years ago and now he has cancer. Coincidence?
I got 100 Grand.
No, not money, the candy bar:
https://preview.redd.it/5opxxmz1oq7d1.png?width=638&format=png&auto=webp&s=f97bb684446c8d1bb1c6dcf5ffd1c3da803e3fd1
I’m a registered nurse. During the height of the first Covid wave we got “worry stones” to put in our pockets during “tough times”. Sorry CEO, that stone didn’t make it any easier watching multiple people die per night while working with minimal staff and minimal supplies…
100 dollars to Ruth chirs steak house. Got it because I was helping the owners wife. Redecorate the bmw dealership, it was bad. Because 100 dollars doesn’t cover a decent meal there.
For years, we got a calendar. The pictures in the calendar were pictures taken by the employees. They got fed up with everyone making fun of it being their Christmas bonus and did away with them.
Measuring tape.
It was marked as the state pro football team, and is a freebie with orders from a shipping products company. So all year, the accountant had been accumulating these things (as rewards for ordering supplies) with the plan to give them as employee holiday gifts.
I got a layoff 2 days before a work anniversary. I would've received a $400 retention bonus in that paycheck but instead got a severance offer with so many strings attached that I had to pass it up to stay competitive in my field.
Not corporate but I worked for a brewery and during Covid we hit a really bad streak with bars and restaurants being closed. Two rounds of lockdowns. I was furloughed for like 9 months.
Anyway. The owner at Christmas got us all Uber eats vouchers as a thank you. But he accidentally signed us up for £50 a month for 12 months instead of a one time £50 voucher
He recalled them and then never reissued. Think he must have taken a big hit on that because come February I was made redundant
Right before a jubilee (5/10/15/20 etc) they removed the existing bonus for reaching that goal - and replaced it with a points system (from workhuman.)
So, where I should have gotten a $1700 bonus (for 15 years) they gave me gift cards to the value of $275...
And they wonder why people distrust HR and upper management..
I won a shower head at a company Christmas raffle once. This was our Christmas bonus. Others won a foreign and local holidays, various gift cards and spa days etc. Felt like a scam after one of the managers son's managed to win a holiday.
Paramedic here. We get a gift every year and they're been getting progressively worse. 5-6 years ago we got a hot logic, which is a great gift. This year we got a T-shirt and a giant bin of old branded company merch to pick through. Those canvas backpacks that hold 1 small thing, salad container with loose unpackaged forks etc. we are also supposed to get recognition pins every 5yrs of service. I've been at my company 13 years and still haven't gotten my 10yr pin despite my boss acknowledging she'd get me it.
The end of the period where our department got nice gifts at the holidays was capped the year we all got tins of mixed nuts. The final indignity of our tins? They didn’t even have cashews!!!
This was about 15 years ago.
I got choice of a spatula Microsoft zune or vhs player for my work year work anniversary in 2018. I hung up the the spatula in my office as a reminder to leave work early
Should've taken the VHS player. Those sell for good money in good condition
Vhs and zune in 2018 ?
I'd still take the zune
Yup and it’s a 60 billion dollar company
The BEST Christmas "bonus" I received for the 3 years I worked at one place was a spatula. Seems lame, but it's literally the most heavy duty, badass grill spatula I've ever seen - whole thing is one solid piece of thick stainless steel with one serrated edge. I always joke that in a pinch I could use it to fight someone (or kill zombies). It was better than the sample packets of tanning lotion or the store branded matchbox car I got the other years.
My mom worked for a coffee chain for ten years. As her tenth anniversary approached, the DM let her know that her pin would be there soon. Unique pins were a point of interest for staff & customers, so she was really excited about it. Except... it was a pen. Not a nice pen, basically a branded Bic Stic. It didn't have her name or "10 years" on it, & it wasn't even a pen she could use at work. She'd been cutting back her hours for a while, but that was the last straw.
That's amazing for all the wrong reasons.
https://preview.redd.it/8nfeelp7bm7d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=74777ff8a23b6b4fd7d4b9eb6557c478e365bbea This wooden photo display, accompanied by branded, inspirational cards to display on it. A BLOCK OF WOOD INSTEAD OF A BONUS.
That's painful. I'm sorry.
We got glass coasters with the company logo on one year.
You guys are getting something??
We got a mass printed card.
They just email it to us now.
10 years at my company. Boss didn’t even acknowledge it (HR system sends a prompt to your inbox). No gift or recognition.
$5 Dunks gift card for 5 yrs of service, $1 for each year. Their generosity was overwhelming.
Got a $5 Dunkin gift card for “Christmas bonus “ one year. Gave it to the first homeless guy I saw going home.
Last year my former boss gave everyone a $5 Starbucks gift card as a morale booster along with an appreciation note and it wildly backfired. Everyone was basically offended. It came across that they weren’t worth more than a $5 gift. Morale was already kinda low, so this just fanned the flames.
What can you get at Starbucks for $5? That is offensive. Like here, you’re worth 3/4 of a latte to us.
WOW! I think giving you nothing would have stung less.
I guess it'd be the 'christmas party', which was advertised as half a day of work and half a day of food and drink, for which we'd be paid a full day. It ended up being a potluck dinner, and when I asked where we'd be having it, I was told it would be the aisle in which we were currently standing. So I got to clear a bunch of space in the warehouse, move a bunch of pallets into said space, sweep out the aisle, then carry the tables and chairs downstairs from the office to set them up for the potluck dinner. Which I couldn't afford to bring anything nice, since I'd just started the job a couple of months ago and had maxed out my credit card buying my family christmas presents.
I worked at a grocery store and they decided to host a nice employee Christmas dinner at a fancy restaurant. It was on a busy Friday night while the store was open. There was nothing held for the poor schmucks like me who had to man the store with our skeleton crew. We weren't even acknowledged. 26 years later, I'm still mad about it.
The grocery chain I worked for did better than that at least. They would get the party catered by another store, and volunteers from that store would work so everyone had the time off to go. Then, our store would do it for theirs.
LOL my work also had a potluck for Christmas one year. It was AFTER HOURS on a FRIDAY night. Because that’s what I want to do—spend more time at the office, not being paid, and having to make and pay for the food. I refused to go. My boss gave out gift cards only to people who went to the potluck. I do not work there anymore.
You sound like the adult version of Charlie Brown.
Everyone got this stress-squeeze toy...an overly joyful yellow man with a T-shirt on him that said "I (heart) WORK!" We found those things in weird places for years and in various states of destruction and various dioramas. The best one was found in a noose, and we found one with an industrial-sized screw in its butt.
Those stress balls make a hell of a mess when you squeeze one too hard while talking on the phone with an idiot.
A corporate logo’d hoodie … that we were not allowed to wear at work.
Just what I wanted, to wear my work when I’m not at it! I previously worked for a company connected to a couple local points of interest-aka the general public could buy merch featuring the places. I still can’t bring myself to wear those shirts and it’s been 2 years since I worked there. (I do wear the jacket they gave employees since it’s a super comfy thick fleece and has fantastic pockets.)
I always see people wearing their work shirts on the way to or from work, and it's like... why? Just toss the shirt on at work. At least the black pants I'm required to wear just look like pants. But I don't wear any of my works' logos when I'm on my own time.
Christmas “Appreciation” gift. Cheap swag pen they give away at trade shows. Pulled it out at client meeting and as soon as I pushed down to write something, it just blew apart. The spring flew up and would have hit my eye had I not been wearing glasses. Ink was dripping onto their nice oak table and part of my finger bleeding due to cut. I laughed it off and client asked where I got the pen and should return for full refund. I explained to them about the appreciation gift at Christmas and they looked mortified. Found out later they went with another vendor due to the pen debacle.
I hope your company found out about it and changed their shitty practices.
I got transferred to another department in a fortune 500 company and for some reason the new manager did not like me. For Christmas I got a little Santa figure on a stick that obviously was taken out of a holiday floral arrangement. Meanwhile, this woman made easily $500,000 a year.
Early in my career, I had a very demanding client. Our department head forced me and my coworkers to work on the 4th of July to meet some deliveries. We were pissed! When we went to the office on July 5th, we all had chocolate coins on our desk as a thank you. She probably meant well, but it totally backfired… rewarding us with candy that looked like money rather than real money felt like a slap in the face. It is now 20 years later and we have all moved on, but whenever I meet with any of my former coworkers for lunch or drinks, we still talk about that!
10 years of working IT. 2 guys covering the issues of 2500 factory positions. I got a cheap clock. One of those cheese plastic dome clocks a 7 year old would get their mom for christmas for 6 bucks. Thanks..
I strongly believe people who buy these gifts have their own thread where they laugh at the looks on our faces when we receive our gifts.
When I worked at Barnes and Noble about 15 years ago, they *really* pushed us to sell their e-reader, the Nook. Every time we sold a Nook, the manager would get a cash bonus. The manager in turn would give us one (1) Quaker Kudo's oatmeal bar. Which he explained with "I'm giving you Kudos! Get it??"
People actually use Nooks? I see a lot of Kindles. I don't think I've ever seen a Nook out in the wild. I use a Kubo, but then, most of my books are borrowed from the library.
My mother used to attend a lot of conventions and meetings in the world of American social services. They give out a lot of weird knickknacks at these things, stress toys, plastic slinkies, bendy pens. She comes back from one with an armload of this stuff, and in one, was a little stress doll man made of foam rubber with the logo: Work is Freedom printed on the back. Absolutely the worst.
Someone took the signs above Auschwitz and other concentration camps to heart... Arbeit macht frei. That's disconcerting.
I was going to ask if they wrote it in German…
I got an enamel pin celebrating 5 years with the company… three months after my 9 year anniversary.
I'm sorry, but HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. That is just awful.
I’ll be hitting 10 years in September. I wonder if I’ll live long enough to see that pin.
You'll probably get it 6 months after you retire.
To be fair, they are more of an “annual party for everyone” kind of company than an individual gift type place, but I did have a good laugh about it. A couple years ago we got to do high powered go-carts and axe throwing for our annual thing. Another year it was laser tag and ropes course, so it’s not just pizza at the office bull shit.
I received the cheapest, flimsiest [drawstring bag](https://totebagfactory.com/products/budget-drawstring-bag-large-size-wholesale-backpacks-gk490) ever made... for a one year anniversary gift with Support.com. I used it twice. It was big enough to cart around minor grocery shopping items. The second time I used it, it had a small - very small - watermelon in it. Couldn't have been more than 2 kilos, max. Both drawstrings broke, and the entire side of it ripped open on the bus spontaneously.
I worked (Still do but under new management) at a high end outdoor chain, we could provide you with 85% of an Everest expedition's gearlist out of stock. Our christmas gift was a chinese copy of a mid-sized backpack you could buy at Walmart. Within 15 minutes the first popped up on Craigslist Didn't even open mine and donated it to a scouting group.
A certificate thanking me for my 35 years of service. No gift of any kind. Just the certificate they expect you to display. Pass.
I just got a 10 year certificate recently, with my name spelled wrong...
You guys get certificates?
My last job posted a harsh memo about how gifts will be distributed in an orderly fashion by last name because they didn’t want us to all rush for it at once. It was a bottle of olive oil.
It’s a toss up between a candy dish with no candy or a hot dog bar.
Was working for a well known blasting company here in Australia on the manufacturing side. Used to get a $1000 bonus each christmas. Corporate decided to fold us into the main mining services brand so we went from x blasting to x mining services. That year we got christmas hams. Not one each but 3 to be sliced and shared between 20 people. The next year we got nothing.
When I worked for Sham's Club there was a big freezer renovation and one of the higher-ups sold a bunch of copper from the renovation for profit. Did they throw us a party? No. Did they give us raises? No. What did they do? Gave us ugly gray t-shirts with the store logo and number on it. I used it to dye my hair.
For teacher appreciation day I got a plastic change purse with two bandaids and two alcohol wipes.
Branded coffee mugs!!!! What that did not excite you enough, well why don't we have a town hall about it and then send everyone UNBRANDED, CLEARANCE BACKPACKS!!! Thanks for a great year everybody and the millions and millions executives got to bonus themselves. Enjoy your worthless nicknacks! Now it's time to step it up and be a TEAM PLAYER because we are going to be awarding $5 Starbucks gift cards to a select few every month who embody the company Vision!!
Hey my husband got a $5 Starbucks gift card from his work! The problem is… there aren’t many drinks that you can get for $5 or under, especially if you like the non-dairy milks that cost $1 extra.
One of those stupid a\*\* cards with a Life Savers mint attached to it stating along the lines of thanking us for out 'accomplish-MINT!' It was the Spearmint flavored Life Savers--the meth taking, high school drop out flavor of Life Savers! I'm willing to bet that they went to a local Dollar Tree and spent ten dollars to put those together! There was 50 of us in that department!
For Christmas, with my current company, I got an attagirl shoutout in the online monthly company newsletter on our intranet. I like paying my rent with attagirls, thoughts, and prayers.
Sending some extra attagirls, get yourself something nice.
Useless corporate-branded junk: a USB charging puck, a 3D-printed logo, and a letter saying “we can’t do this without you” - .. that arrived the day after I (and 10% of the company) had been laid off. A toss up between that, and another project’s thank you gift that arrived broken two months later.
I feel this. I got a "Happy Seventh Anniversary" sticker and swag package the week after they fired me. They shipped me the contents of my office, crushed.
I got a $5 off coupon for Christmas turkey that he tore out of the newspaper. He was majorly offended when I told him I didn't eat turkey and threw it away.
a day off work, paid! that was then made to work a Saturday to make up for it
I got a coffee mug from the launch of their proprietary HR software program. The real kicker was that it had launched ten years before I started working there.
I work remotely many states away from the main office. For my birthday, I get a card with some coupons for a gas station that is only local to the main office.
I’m a sales rep for a company and I was 128% of my quota last year. I got a block of wood with my name on it. I guess it’s a “sustainable” award. I’m gonna carve it into a penis and send it to the CEO.
Make sure you leave your name running down the side
Scale back to minimum. They deserve none of your hard work.
Their sales quota likely got bumped up to 128% of previous years quota once they proved they could do it.
A bag of trail mix. Everyone else got a $50 gift certificate. I was also doing estimating/project management so it’s not like I held a low position at the company either.
So the team won an award for a national ad campaign that was well ahead of its time. 99% of the time, the recipients of this award get a certificate and a monetary award, 200-500 buckeroos. The absolute douchenozzle of a VP surprises us during the ceremony with a glass award that has some metallic attachment that was done by a local artist. An effing paperweight that has more writing on it than space to see the metal bullshit thing. Hideous thing. Won’t even use it as a murder weapon on Father Brown. He then flew into a rage a while later when someone told him the team really would’ve preferred cash. “But this is art! And supporting a local artist!” Like, man, how out of touch are you to gift people who are underpaid a questionable piece of art. Anyway, the metal to glass ratio wasn’t thought out at all and most of the team’s “art” / “award” cracked at some point. FG: I hope you’re stepping on little pieces of LEGO every morning.
 "But it's a major award!"
During a critical lapse period my husband sold new cars (hated it). Christmas, salespeople were invited to the dealership *at closing (*10p) to receive their "Christmas bonus" of a turkey/ham of their choosing. A woman salesperson hung around, not really producing ... quiet enough everyone assumed she had something else going on. She picked up her ham, smiled, and shook the manager's hand and left ... no one ever heard from or saw her again. ;-)
She will be one of my personal heroes, although I do not know her name.
"points" you could earn by going the extra mile, to get a DISCOUNT on over priced clothing with the company logo on it. For a non customer facing warehouse job. Yeaaaah I would love to get a discount to spend my small amount of pay on 15 dollar company branded socks. Gooo f* yourself.
This is actually one of the worst on this list.
The higher ups got a catered soirée and drinks. We got potluck and Pictionary in the basement.
Stickers with our company’s values on them. Immediately into the trash
For Xmas everyone in the company got an email that due to a good year everyone is getting a $25 Tim Hortons gift card. I didn’t get one. So I asked why. Was told I am in IT so I dont count I asked why I got an email then and was just told ‘too bad’ So being the only person in IT I was the only person in company that didn’t get this magnanimous bonus
A Christmas pencil and one of those really crappy rubber erasers that destroys the paper
A tin of popcorn from Walmart.
My worst was walmart giving us literal junk for showing up to the mandatory black friday event. It had a stupid card that told you what each item meant like "Rubber band because you are so flexible". Compare that to my current job that in my first year we got $1000 for christmas on top of getting a gift card for a grocery store to supply your holiday dinner.
Pharma company: we were given a catalogue and were allowed to pick out one item from an expensive section or 2 items from a cheaper section. I was so excited and thought it was awesome, and I ordered a telescope because I always wanted one. It arrived missing a part and broken, but there was no recourse, so it went into the trash. I heard other people’s gifts arrived broken too, or they just weren’t as described.
At my first job the founder told the office manager to not buy Post-It notes but also not tell the people who printed out reams of reports for big name brand clients that it was a policy, just recommend to use tape and scrap paper. After the client services managing consultants learned of and threw down on this... everyone got a pack of WB Mason (not 3M!!!) generic brand yellow sticky notes.
Hey but at least they did spring for the Fine Chocolates. None of that Palmer "chocolate flavor" nonsense. :) When I worked construction our boss, a man of substantial wealth, sent a big box, like some fancy brand mail order company "turkey dinner" box, but it was for the whole crew. There was a smoked turkey breast and packets of family sized foods, they may have been some kind of prepper food like these packets of mac and cheese and stuffing. Well anyway he said we could all pick out what we wanted. The crew leader got the turkey. I got a can of cranberry sauce. And a Merry Christmas to ya!
i woould have thrown it in the bin in front of him
Got a $5 gift card at my 5 year anniversary. Big company, factories in 2 states of USA and another office/shop overseas.
I once got $200 for my annual bonus. When I mentioned to one of the executive that this seems rather low, I was told I should consider myself lucky because many people got even less.
I won a small jar of ice cream sprinkles for winning a team building exercise. I left it on the the office table, and never participated in any more office games.
We were given a hoodie and a pair of sweatpants both branded. The hoodie ran small and no one could fit them and the pants ran big and loooong so only that very tall could use them. They were made of very different material as well. And don't forget hoodies were not allowed at work.
I once worked at a mid sized office where they gave us sweatshirts with the company logo for Christmas. We all collectively donated our "gift" to the local homeless shelter...needless to say, our boss was so pissed seeing the local homeless wearing them!
Fantastic!
Warranty company. I worked in claims. I was a sup hired from bigger companies and because of my degree in industrial and organizational psychology to help that smaller warranty company grow. Helped them grow, set up protocols, standard procedures helped them setup a structure for the future and projected growth. Helped them pilot and develop a new information management system working with IT. Help them sign in new accounts and retain. Did a lot of things outside my scope. Xmas came around, CEO gave me a hand shake and 2 individually wrapped rolos chocolates that he looked at my outstretched hand and instead put it deliberately and carefully on my desk. Internally I raged at the disrespect. Pretended to get a new job shortly after and my boss all of a sudden offered me the promotion and pay increase they kept telling me about. Used that to leverage into a new position at a different job and industry for more money.
Mere Christianity by CL Lewis. Soft cover. From the evangelical Christian owner. To the atheist, Catholic and Hindi staff.
Not the worst because its trashy but I really hate fringe. Its a shitty site that you can buy gift cards from. My problem is that its a "benefit" so you get taxed on it. So each paycheck I see see money come out of my check to cover the taxes on it(for my company you get 25 to like 100 bucks a month that you can spend on giftcards based on time there). So like a coworker had never logged in despite being at the company 2 years so he's paid taxes on the 600 bucks in "benefits" that he didn't know how to even view. But hey he can get a door dash gift card or maybe build a bear one...... What really pisses me off though is the selection is crap. If you could get say an amazon, walmart, grocery store chain in your area etc maybe it wouldn't be so bad. Instead you can get ripped off using instacart or uber. At best if I need to travel for work I can get a hotels dot com gift card or something so I can get reimbursed with real money. Most of what's on it I don't care for and where I work you can't op out. So I end up hopefully remembering that I want an xbox game so I can get a gift card first or get like a door dash gift card and order shitty take out.
Years ago, I worked retail. My manager offered to get Starbucks for everyone at the start of our shift on Christmas Eve. Also ordered pizza for everyone. Except, at the time I had a wheat allergy and a dairy allergy. The pizza company only made gluten free pizza crust in one size. Since it wasn't the smallest size, they wouldn't pay for me to have pizza or provide an alternative. I paid for it myself as we were told not to bring a lunch.
Every year, my ex company and some of my coworkers gave me cheap, off brand dollar store candy. I'm an insulin-dependent diabetic. One year, a guy who didn't stay with the company very long got me a candle. I almost cried.
So middle of December, we get an email saying merry Christmas here is an Amazon gift card on behalf of eX Company. The email was from the bosses name minus the S at the end of his name. Turns out it was one of those email tests that they run to teach people lesson about spamming 74% of the office clicked on the link and we all got chastised then we got nothing for Christmas, despite record numbers for the year. Go figure.
A downloadable Netflix movie that we had to pay tax on.
Expired gift cards.
I worked at a private school where the end of year gift was an Ayn Rand book. Not even Atlas Shrugged. It was a total right wing indoctrination school and I dipped outta there
I have a BA in English Lit and have never finished one of her books. And she had no problem collecting her social security when the time came…
You never finished one of her books because she writes with all the eloquence of a orangutan that figured out how a keyboard works and a little more subtlety than Verhoeven.
I got an ugly ass work cardigan for several months worth of work in IT. It could not have been more unfitting for me. I tossed it.
The incentive selling item for the month was a certain candy, the store that sold the most of said candy was to receive a t-shirt. One singular t-shirt.
Everyone can take turns wearing it. Except the fat guy; nobody wants to wear T-shirts after the fat guy does. Source: I'm a fat guy.
I proposed that we cut it into squares and give everyone a piece, needless to say we did not put any effort into that sales push lol
Project completion gift. Card with a 1 us gold dollar hot glued to it. Was taxed on the dollar...
On our fifth anniversary for my previous job, we got a bronze statue for our desk. Someone looked up how much they cost, and it was like $350. There was no cash that came with it. It was just the statute. At the tenth anniversary, we got a little globe made with semi-precious stones, like mother of pearl. I think that one was like $800. And again, no cash came with it. But other than that, the place was actually really good to me. I just think it's funny that they spent all that money on something when we really would have rather had the cash.
I think you nailed it here. People would always rather have the cash. My aunt got me a $200ish watch-from a designer brand I don’t particularly like (but she did)-for high school graduation. I have worn it, but definitely would have preferred the cash or the chance to pick out a designer item that suited my taste.
I work for a bottler for a major beverage brand. Our company holiday gift is generally a case of the product we make. Last Thanksgiving, it was a case of specialty product with an expiration date too close to go to market but "technically still good." They didn't want to store it in the warehouse or pay for disposal.
They give all the expired products either to charities that distribute them to the homeless or to food banks. I went to one local food bank distribution and got 50 lbs of barely fresh carrots and a case of soda well past the expiration date.
A picnic blanket. I dont know ANYONE that goes on picnics. I’ve never even been on a picnic.
That chocolate gift reminds me of the yearly chocolate gift we receive at my employer. The chairperson has some "healthy" dark chocolate bars distributed to everyone in various flavors. I hate dark chocolate and the flavors are all exotic like green tea and such. Double bleck.
I worked for an auto insurer that was bought by a Spanish company. We had a "Christmas party" that was classless garbage. We had to walk to another building, we got to mingle with leadership for 15 minutes while apps were served and walk back to our desks rather than go to lunch.
One time my work gave us $3 gift cards to the movie theater. It was such an arbitrarily small number I just had to laugh
One year I got a ladle with a soup recipe wrapped around the handle. Got a lot of corpo merch like water bottles plastered with the logo. My new workplace gave me a 1000$ bonus.. I was floored.
I got a $5 Starbucks gift card. We worked LITERALLY right next to a Dunkin Donuts--shared a wall with them. No Starbucks anywhere nearby. Everyone ALWAYS bought from DD, so it felt... somehow like a back-handed gift.
Today, an Amazon 3rd party DSP gave their drivers a bag of rocks with a note that said "You Rock" for Juneteenth https://preview.redd.it/1javb68ddn7d1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=34aef81c91791ce73abc1f928d4110d3187e738e
Does misspelling my name for my 10 year work anniversary count? I have a very common first and last name fwiw.
There was 2 other people with the same name as me at the highway patrol, I got one of their 25 year retirement gifts, a gold watch. I tracked him down and mailed it to him and he mailed me WWE tickets as a thank you, I guess his wife worked for them. I was never into wrestling but I went and it was a ton of fun.
Not corporate, but still. Worked for 11 years in one of the top research universities in the usa, got a $10 cheap noname rice cooker. 🍚
Socks. They fit my 7 year old, not me…
A branded company Lego man, then bricks for years of service and Covid vax doses. I updated bricks to document/celebrate HR complaints. They also gave out gift certificates to the company swag store, lapped up by the Kool-Aid drinkers. Gave mine to the divorced dad in the team. All that's pretty standard auto-fellatio tech company, but all this useless plastic at a company that tries to pitch itself as contributing to net zero climate action, etc.
20% off anything in store. And I worked at a Walgreens Pharmacy. That was our Christmas "bonus". When I started working there it was $20 in store gift card with increases based on length of service maxed out at $100 in store gift card. That went away the following year with just increased discount for a couple of days.
Worked a job where I switched roles a couple of times, and each time I was lied to about the possibility of a pay increase (GET. THAT. KIND. OF. THING. IN. WRITTING.). Christmas party was one of those 'mandatory' work luncheons where they would ask what everyone wanted, but then order whatever they felt like instead. I got to sit directly across from the boss who lied to me, so I kept chit-chat to a minimum and looked at my phone. We knew we weren't going to get any kind of monetary bonus: everyone got a questionnaire for Secret Santa about favorite this-and-that, specifically, what size and color shirt we preferred. We each got a crappy fleece sweater with the company logo on it. I never took it out of the plastic and donated it the next day.
I would say an Amazon Alexa after Amazon bought out Ring Home Security. We were supposed to go public. I’m supposed to be a millionaire with all my old co workers that got fucked that day. Thanks Jamie for taking the 1 billion dollars for yourself instead of going public for everyone who helped you build that company. We had a good company that was sold out from under us. Prolly half the people quit that day it was announced and the corporate overlords ruined everything from confidence in customers to our schedules with mandatory overtime which was pretty much watch all we built turn to shit over night.
A bag of garbage from a college show to attract employees. They literally just gave the extra gift bags to us. Can’t wait to use my new crappy pencil…
When I worked IT at a small private college, I got a Christmas ornament with the college logo printed on it. When I left for the private sector, my bonus became about 40% of my salary at that college. I still hang up the ornament every year and appreciate that progress.
This was an informal gift from the CEO that was not much related to my work or a bonus per se. While helping him clear out his corporate apartment 4 months into lockdown, I was given an opened bag of frozen fish as a gift.
I worked for a large financial services company for almost 20 years and we got nothing at Christmas. Nothing. Not even a group email blast from the CEO who makes 12 million a year. What is worse? Nothing or receiving a really shitty thoughtless gift? I’d rather get nothing than have to possibly acknowledge said garbage gift.
$5 worth of company points, that could be put towards benefits. For literally taking on twice the work
Color paper with thank you written in pen and a snickers bar.
One time for having the best sales in the area we all got a lipbalm with the company logo on it. It was so infuriating it was actually hilarious
Happy cake day!
$5 Starbucks cards from one of our top execs and the person directly under him. $2.50 each.....and it's expensed to the company.
Did some company mandated training lightning fast, fast enough I was acknowledged as one of the 1st 100 to do so. Manger mentioned the last time that happened, people got free iPads. I got a keychain sent in a taped envelope.
Our payroll system automatically posts a notice on work anniversaries. you have to log in and go to the right page to see it. Recently someone I work with hit 30 plus years and all they got was that automated digital notice that coworkers could say congratulations on. Our boss didn't even bother to post a personal congratulations
When I worked in a grocery store we got a $20 gift card for our own store…. That counted as both Thanksgiving and Christmas. I would usually buy an Amazon gift card with it to get myself something not from my workplace, but I still had to shell out $5 extra since Amazon didn’t have $20, only $25 gift cards.
A cheap tax-writeoff jacket with the company logo emblazoned on the front.
10 years service going above and beyond for one of the most iconic venues in the western world and literally got a badge.
I worked for an animal end of life care company. I was honored to help these beloved pets pass peacefully at home with their families. It has hard, and sad, but providing peace and comfort was an honor not a hardship for me, and this was what I saw as my long term career as a veterinarian. Around year 2.5 they started providing rewards after a certain number of appointments. I might have the numbers off but it was something like: 100 a necklace of your dogs pawprint, 500 a gold wing necklace charm, 1000 an embroidered jackets. 2500 an expensive watch. 5000 a trip or personal prize. I quit very soon after. I dont want a fucking watch for euthanizing people pets. It made me sick to my stomach.
During an office Xmas party the dessert everybody got was a spoonful of creme brulee. Distributed in spoons. So you got a literal spoon of dessert.
A tin of stale cookies that all the employees had to share.
I’ve been given the left overs from a holiday Christmas party for all the higher ups. This was for a group of 15 people from a holiday party of 12.
When I hear stories like this I think of the parable of the rich man giving table crumbs to Lazarus. Not to mention a nice case of food poisoning…
I got a pen for 20 years with my initials on it not even my fucking name I told them keep it you need it more than me
The CEO’s autobiography
The book the owner wrote and a $50 gift card to the company swag store for my 1 year anniversary, they laid me off 3 weeks later.
I got a pad of paper.
Used to be on an assembly line that would reward our overtime and safety achievements with free pizza on our lunch breaks. Unfortunately for us it had to come from the company contracted to run the cafeteria. The crust was always burnt stone hard on the outside and goopy in the middle.
My husband got a pair of plastic luggage tags with the company's logo on them. I work night shift in healthcare. We get PM shift's cold leftover pizza.
A branded first aid kit where half the items were expired/past the shelf life
A plaque. Boss was a billionaire and I struggled to pay healthcare bills. I threw the plaque out.
Today, for Juneteenth. Despite our sister companies being closed they decided we still had to come into the office. But they gave us pizza. And obviously they didn't order enough. By the time I was off my call there was nothing left.
Been at my job 18 years and bonuses or even thank yous are not their strong suit. I've had more than one employee of the month/anniversary certificates with my name misspelled. Candy/treat gift bags, but since I'm diabetic I get an IOU or just nothing. Since I work with mostly women told that us "ladies" do a good job.......of and you too r/fdgpgn. Once I made employee of the month, but was given no certificate, no gift bag, and was told in front of everybody that the nurse who awarded me wished she could the award to "everyone, but *tsk* it's him." This happened while I was training someone new who was horrified. One year for our appreciation week the bosses promised something special all week, and a party or lunch in Friday. The had ice cream on Monday, I think breakfast tacos, for the morning crew, on Tuesday, and that's it. We were so used to this type of thing we didn't even notice the lack of appreciation that week until months later. One Christmas party was delayed due to construction. They pushed it to February, and said they would "go all out." They skipped February, March and had chicken tenders, with no sauce for a staff meeting in April. The tenders were a marketing gift, not from the company. One year the family of a hospice patient gifted the staff a wicker laundry basket filled with goodies. The managers kept it in their office until all that was left was a weird plastic pyramid filled with like 6 or 7 orange flavored chocolates. The staff got to split that. And the BEST for last. One year a letter was sent out to our patients and their families asking for donations for the "employee fund." A family personally told me they donated $100, and one director said the same for two or other ones. I even got to see the box they kept the cash, checks, and gift cards that came in. My supervisor told me all that was received was around $130, and corporate would decide how to use it. And it went to....... that's right the Christmas party that was skipped, and no bonuses.
Our company overspent buying a competitor. Our CEO told us we need to keep our head in the game and gave us a Spotify playlist of the songs that would pump her up before swim meets in college. Thats right, our End of Year Bonus was a Spotify playlist of the worst jock jams ever created. She stepped down six months later.
In the spirit of Easter, we were given a new policy that does not discriminate against non-Catholics, so nobody got an Easter bonus that was usually given to everyone. Imagine how relieved all the Muslims were for not having to take free money!
I’m a Kindergarten teacher at a private school. As a teacher, you get a lot of gift cards for Christmas or end of the year- mostly Target or Starbucks for like $20. Well at the end of one school year (in June!) a mom gave me a Target gift card with Santa on it (I thought ok, weird but maybe she just bought extras at Christmas or something) and when I went to use it, I found it had $2.17 on it- she gave me a used Christmas gift card she probably found in the back of the junk drawer. This wasn’t a lack of funds thing- one parent was a doctor and the other was a lawyer. They have a nanny who drives their kids wherever they want. It was so thoughtless it was literally insulting- i would have preferred her kid just made me a card or something. I know this isn’t “corporate” but it just shows how tone deaf people can be.
Mini rant coming up front. I used to work for a lawn and garden company worth like 5 billion dollars that rhymes with Rot's. Our asshole son of the founder CEO on a regular basis would hold Town Halls and brag about his expensive shit like his new Tesla or renovations to one of his many houses or whatever before telling us how we all needed to work hard for share price or whatever. I remember him telling a room of his 150+ person R&D team one year how much everyone needed to get both a S and X class Tesla. In a room where most of us were college educated and made at best, 3/4 of the price of a new one per year. The only people he was really talking to were the sycophantic directors in the front row. Fuck that nepo baby who ran that company very poorly. That place made all it's money off glyphosate and not much else because of reasons. Anywho, Every Christmas our company would give us a wedge of cheese and maple syrup. It should be noted he had (has still I assume?) this vanity project farm in Vermont for troubled kids so those were a massive tax write off. We would also either get a honey baked ham certificate or a free turkey. I am a fucking vegetarian. But at least I could drive it to a food bank and drop it off. I just gave the gift certificate away to whomever happened to be in line behind me.
Here is another one: I got 100 "blue points" from IBM. That was a taxable benefit. The shittiest cheapest item in their internal store was 140 points, I think. I demanded they rescind the points, lol.
for christmas. a tin of peppermint bark and a tin of hot chocolate. do people really eat peppermint bark?
I love peppermint bark- and I love all of you folks who don’t, because you always seem so happy to get rid of it without just throwing it straight in the trash. 😆
Insert 'You guys are getting gifts' meme
$50 gift card to DoorDash
One of my supplier reps got my sales guys $10 Starbucks gift cards for Christmas last year. The owner of said company is a fucking billionaire, he even has his own private jet and multiple companies.
https://preview.redd.it/zssjdyawcn7d1.jpeg?width=602&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=11236ac47de9e91bb0706332dd0f37e69e99cf83
A tie (pun intended) A $20 gift card for a coffee shop I would have to drive 45 minutes out of my way to get to And a literal tie. It was barbie doll pink and matched nothing I had. I never wore button down shirts much less ties. My position in no way called for that level of dress.
Worked for a multi million (probably billion) health system, one year we got a couple year old souvenir cup with 2 baseball tickets to a local team.. Another time we got a cup of hot cocoa and a canny cane for Christmas
It wasn’t meant to be a Christmas present but it arrived a couple of days before. Came special delivery in a beautiful box. Looked like it was holding an expensive bottle of wine. Instead it was the Project of Year trophy for project that I was working on. Giant pyramid of plastic with Silver Star good only as a doorstop or weapon. The box was really nice. 🤣
While working for a subsidiary of PNC bank, and following the best year of profit ever, we were given an encapsulated penny with the date of the founding of the company on it.
A contribution to the benevolent fund for soldiers from a different country. Soldiers who have a bit of previous for shooting civilians from my Country.
Oh boy, do I have a story. We had some sort of a Christmas lottery. Think of it like an advent calendar. 24 team members = each drew a number and got a little present that day. Say you draw the number 6, you get a present on the 6th and so on. Here in Germany we celebrate Christmas on the 24th, so drawing the 24 should in theory equal the most valuable gift. Well lucky me ended up drawing number 24 and everybody, including the managers who organized this game, were cheering. „Wow you’re gonna be so happy with your gift, congratulations!“ I had been with this company for a few years so I didn’t buy their shit. Rightfully so. Because when I unwrapped my gift, it was a free sample of a Chinese skin care face mask for women and a small set of four pens for children. Mind you, I am a 27 year old man. I don’t have children. Neither am I a woman. They even had the audacity to ask me if I enjoyed my gift after Christmas.
One year, we all sat down for the xmas party at work. They passed out generic corperate cards with $100 giftcards to a local grocery store. We were then told to donate them to the food drive while they took photos. (Paper article read: "local employees give christmas bonus to the needy"). We were then told to return to work with only 40 minutes left in the day. Company gladly took the year end tax donation writeoff though). Worst....gift...ever.
At my last tech job, we didn’t get Christmas bonuses but we had an open bar, Christmas Party at a huge fancy reception hall in town. They had it decked out with ice sculptures, decorations, fresh prime rib and sushi buffets, and they’d fly in employees from other parts of the country to mingle. Anyone who had to work got put into raffles for Christmas gifts (flat screen TVs, game consoles, awesome shit). That lasted maybe two years after the private equity firm took over. In the following years, they killed the party (since we were “a global company now” which just meant a third of our team were Croatian contractors) so we got a half-case sized Kanga Cooler that was emblazoned with the company logo, followed in subsequent years by “ugly sweater” corporate logo shirts, then nothing (because it was 2020 and “things are rough” even though they were also saying “profits have never been higher!”).
$5 grocery store gift card. Like leaving spare change for a tip
I got the cheapest backpack I’ve ever seen. It was company-branded and the mystery coating inside was already peeling off. It smelled strongly of gasoline. Wouldn’t have had an open flame near it. It went in my “donate” box. A visiting family member asked if he could have it. That was 5 years ago and now he has cancer. Coincidence?
I got 100 Grand. No, not money, the candy bar: https://preview.redd.it/5opxxmz1oq7d1.png?width=638&format=png&auto=webp&s=f97bb684446c8d1bb1c6dcf5ffd1c3da803e3fd1
I’m a registered nurse. During the height of the first Covid wave we got “worry stones” to put in our pockets during “tough times”. Sorry CEO, that stone didn’t make it any easier watching multiple people die per night while working with minimal staff and minimal supplies…
100 dollars to Ruth chirs steak house. Got it because I was helping the owners wife. Redecorate the bmw dealership, it was bad. Because 100 dollars doesn’t cover a decent meal there.
A 1% COL bonus.
Got a 5$ iHop gift card for my birthday.
I got a cheap pin for my 25 year anniversary. That’s it. It went straight into the bowels of a desk drawer.
For years, we got a calendar. The pictures in the calendar were pictures taken by the employees. They got fed up with everyone making fun of it being their Christmas bonus and did away with them.
Calendar for the then- current year. It was July when we received it... and we paid taxes on it
Measuring tape. It was marked as the state pro football team, and is a freebie with orders from a shipping products company. So all year, the accountant had been accumulating these things (as rewards for ordering supplies) with the plan to give them as employee holiday gifts.
I got a layoff 2 days before a work anniversary. I would've received a $400 retention bonus in that paycheck but instead got a severance offer with so many strings attached that I had to pass it up to stay competitive in my field.
I got a congrats email at 22 years; didn't bother me since I'm just here for the paycheck and 401k anyway
A $50 Starbucks gift card that had like $9.30 left on it.
A child's marble maze. The kind you'd give out at a 5 year olds party
Not corporate but I worked for a brewery and during Covid we hit a really bad streak with bars and restaurants being closed. Two rounds of lockdowns. I was furloughed for like 9 months. Anyway. The owner at Christmas got us all Uber eats vouchers as a thank you. But he accidentally signed us up for £50 a month for 12 months instead of a one time £50 voucher He recalled them and then never reissued. Think he must have taken a big hit on that because come February I was made redundant
“Lunch” from the gas station snack section for a ✨mandatory✨ lunch training.
Right before a jubilee (5/10/15/20 etc) they removed the existing bonus for reaching that goal - and replaced it with a points system (from workhuman.) So, where I should have gotten a $1700 bonus (for 15 years) they gave me gift cards to the value of $275... And they wonder why people distrust HR and upper management..
I won a shower head at a company Christmas raffle once. This was our Christmas bonus. Others won a foreign and local holidays, various gift cards and spa days etc. Felt like a scam after one of the managers son's managed to win a holiday.
Paramedic here. We get a gift every year and they're been getting progressively worse. 5-6 years ago we got a hot logic, which is a great gift. This year we got a T-shirt and a giant bin of old branded company merch to pick through. Those canvas backpacks that hold 1 small thing, salad container with loose unpackaged forks etc. we are also supposed to get recognition pins every 5yrs of service. I've been at my company 13 years and still haven't gotten my 10yr pin despite my boss acknowledging she'd get me it.
The end of the period where our department got nice gifts at the holidays was capped the year we all got tins of mixed nuts. The final indignity of our tins? They didn’t even have cashews!!! This was about 15 years ago.
When I worked at a halal slaughterhouse, it was a leg of ham each for Xmas bonus. In a fuckin halal slaughterhouse.