So, all year long, our company president/owner has been promising all the employees (about 350) a big bonus if we met our market share goal of 50.5%. While the figures were at first discouraging, we eventually reached 52% (!), and all employees got a bonus of $150 per month for each month that they’ve been employed, up to 12 years worth. I was ecstatic, because it meant Leigh-Anne and I could finally buy a car, which we did.
Well, last week, unexpectedly, I got another bonus of $5,000! We took that and paid a ton of student loan bills, bought a new bed (we’ve been dying for one for a year now), a new 32" Sony TV, an entertainment center to hold said TV, and a lot of stuff for the house.
Anyone else experience any surprise financial success recently?
Congradulations pl!! Guess God is blessing you… About 2 months ago,my son and I were walking across the street and he reached down and picked up something,it was a 10 and 20!
What a great company you work for. It’s nice to see that they distribute their success amongst the people who helped bring them there. Your story has renewed my faith in corporatekind.
“Only when he no longer knows what he is doing, does the painter do good
things.” --Edgar Degas
Purple Crackwhore, I’d have to say that this is without a doubt the best company I have worked for. Despite the often maddening pace, the company definitely loves to give back to the employees at every opportunity. I have been here just over 3 years, and I’d say I’ve amassed in the neighborhood of $18,000 in bonuses in addition to salary.
Not only that, but the company president is a world traveler, and sponsors company trips to various locales in which employees with 5+ years can participate, and he covers airfare from SF or NY to the destination, and accommodations.
Being a poor college student, I found myself last week with only $3 left to my name before I left for home for Thanksgiving week tommorrow morning. By Saturday that amount was down to $0.
Then yesterday I found $6, a five and a single, on the floor of my room!
I’ll repost mine…sorry to those who saw it in the MPSIMS Nov. 1999 thread.
When I was hired at my current job, I was deliberately underpaid, on the assumption that my bonus would make up the difference. Well, 18 months later when I got my bonus, it was $200. Not making up the difference by a LONG shot. So this year they tell us NOW that it’s an “investing” year, and there’ll be NO bonus, but everyone who came in under the old system had had their salaries adjusted. (HAH!) So I went to my boss and told her mine hadn’t been, and listed what I do for the company. (I’m the only true programmer/analyst here.) End result: a $2500 raise!! PLUS, I’m still eligible for my annual raise in January. Woohoo!!!
(Even though I don’t see the raise until Dec. 31st, thanks to being paid once a month, and having our paychecks a month behind, but that’s another story.)
“Men are from Earth, women are from Earth. Deal with it.” - George Carlin
This isn’t anything I earned, per se, but I recently won $500 in a scavenger hunt, which is a lot to a poor college student. I’m probably going to use a goodly portion of it to go to St. Louis in December.
Took a job at this company about 2 years ago. Didn’t like the company particularly, took the job because a friend of mine worked here. Figured I work here until I found a better place. In the meantime, we were bought by a larger company, which I’ll call “company a”. The gave us stock options, which we all laughed at since they weren’t public, and everyone knows the chances of a company going public are small, to say the least. Everyone wants to do it, but few actually turn a profit.
Six months later, Company A merged with Company B, which is a public company. We were all very impressed, since our stock options suddenly were worth in the middle to high five figures. Since then, the stock has gone up 500%. They keep giving us more. There’s no end in site. Plus, they’ve given us 3 raises in the past year.
I plan on retiring upon full vesting, in 2.5 years when I’m 32. Yup, that counts as a windfall.
Me and my son were in the Great Train Store at Tower City yesterday,and found a 5! Guess I’ll have to wait awhile for bonusus though.And Happy Birthday!
Phil, that is great! I am very happy for you and your wife. Have fun breaking in that new mattress
Hubby’s company treats their employees very well.
One year when either Chrysler or Ford had a profit sharing check that went out of like $5,000 per slave, one coworkers husband came in with a WAD of cash flashing his Big Bonus from Ford. I kept my mouth shut and grinned to hubby that we beat that so and so by $3,000.
We had a perk a couple of years ago when hubby went to his boss and asked for an advance on his Xmas bonus ( it was summer time). We wanted to square away some bills and buy something ( can’t remember what, but it was practical, lemme assure you.Probably a tool of some sort.) and his boss authorized his bonus at X amount ( the figure is hazy now, but about $2,000)with the understanding we wouldn’t get a bonus at Xmas. No problemo.
Well, that Xmas business was really down and no one in the company received any bonuses.It was never brought up to us about what we received by the Big Guy. The next year, when bonuses came out, Hubby received a small token, but hell, we’d gotten blood outta stone and were very grateful. ( I never received bonuses from work )
I was just recently informed by Hubby that his father gave to us XX amount to invest. We cannot use it to pay off our car loan to him (It’s paid off in 10 months anyways) This is a condition I can easily live with. The amount is very very nice and all I have to do, and it might kill me, is give FIL a hug and thank him.
(disclaimer:if my dipshit sister in law happens to lurk her -highly unlikely being the pagans and sinners that we are- the amount was $2.50)
I just got $1200 from a company I left about 6 months ago. Certainly surprised me. I didn’t even know what it was from, I just got a statement from my money market fund of $1200 in a IRA. I was freaked because a) I should have ~$2000 in my account and b) I can’t pull money out of a IRA without penalties. I thought I had written an $800 check I had forgotten about and they had mysteriously converted my fund to an IRA. So I call them up, trying to figure out what happened to my money and after about a half an hour of being shuffled around, I find out my old job had a profit-sharing thing that just paid out and they dump in into a money market fund until you tell them what to do. I actually had two money market accounts, one an IRA and one my regular one. Since both accounts are in the exact same fund and I never heard anything about getting any money it threw me for a bit.
“Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting.”
I like roleplaying, so I set up a club for my pupils. It stretches their imagination and teaches them to work together.
We enter the National Schools competition every year, but usually get eliminated at the regional stage.
This year I had a good team, and we reached the National final. Unfortunately my most experienced player had a university interview, so I had to put a reserve in.
We won! I was really pleased for the kids, because it was a great team effort.
Then I noticed that the teacher in charge gets $2500 of computer equipment - now that’s my first laptop!!
In the bathtub of history, the truth is harder to hold than the soap… (Pratchett)
I emptied the pockets of my denim jacket (which I haven’t worn since July) to wash it this evening and found $21.60 (a twenty, a single, 2 quarters and 2 nickels) that I didn’t know I had.
My husband and I recently decided to see just how much loose change we had lying around in various parts of the house. We collected over $50. In change. Half of it was in my purse.
My husband (UndeadDude) was hired at AOL in 1995 and recieved 800 shares in stock options. The stock split several times over the next several years as AOL grew into the huge giant that it is today… as of last February we had about $500,000 coming to us (vesting at the end of May) and we were starting to look at houses and stuff…
…then some creep refused to take down nude pictures of a friend of mine from their site after she started recieving harrassing mail and phone calls over them, and in her defense I wrote about it on my site. The creep proceeds to harrass my husband at work over this, and, to make a long story short, their legal department fired him to avoid having to deal with it. $500,000 in stock options vanished into the air.
I just got my lost wallet mailed back to me with all the ID’s and $37 dollars in cash still in it! Last year around this time I found someone’s checkbook and their most recent paycheck by the side of the road and I mailed it back to them, so I guess what comes around really does go around!
Guess God is blessing you… 
About 2 months ago,my son and I were walking across the street and he reached down and picked up something,it was a 10 and 20!
)