. . . And deliver each and every one of us a big tin with “Happiness is Warm Cookie” on it. With squeals of delight (and lines at the ladies room to throw 'em up afterward), all the little magettes here open the tins—to find a bag of cookie mix. The pretty consernation (or what passes for same on Botoxed faces) was a delight to see. “What do I look like, Martha fucking Stewart?” “I don’t bake cookies, I pay people to bake cookies!” “What is this, powder or something? Do you put it into a glass of water and get cookies?”
Whoever in the Upper Floors decided that a bag of cookie mix would be a good Xmas gift for an office full of Manhattanite magazine gals was laboring under a misapprehension, it would seem. They should have just given us each $5 so we could go out and buy some Pepperidge Farm.
We get no Holiday Bonus, I might add. What misguided efforts at cheer do your offices make?
The Morale and Rec Committee holds a decorating contest and caroling on the last day before Christmas shutdown. It’s pretty pathetic. Frankly, I would prefer that the office remain a place of business and the cheesy paper snowmen and Santas be confined to home and retail use.
Not quite the same thing, but at my last job, the head of the division gave one of the people who worked for him an expensive gift pack of various gourmet cookies. Very nice, except that he knew the guy has celiac disease and cannot digest products containing wheat, oats, barley, or rye. I’m sure he didn’t do it on purpose, he simply forgot. (If he’d had his secretary buy the present, however, she would have remembered - she was great at remembering details like that.)
We get a “Holiday Lunch”. Basically, the hospital forks out enough money to get a honey-baked ham with all the fixings, and we all get to have an extended lunch hour. I’m sure it makes a great scene: a bunch of doctors, nurses, research assistants, and pharmacy people running around a buffet table acting like someone’s about to snatch all the food away. No Christmas bonus for us; we don’t even get to take Christmas off without taking it out of our annual paid-time-off.
In 2000, we got fleece vests with the company emblem and a $50.00 gift certificate.
In 2001, we got lunch bags with the company emblem.
Can you say “Stock Market Crash?”
This year we’ll probably get pens with the defunct name of our division (it’s changed three times in six months).
El Hubbo’s small dental laboratory company does it up right every year.
1998: Mystery Dinner Theatre - Ate a meal and saw a really stupid interactive play, but had fun laughing at it.
1999: Mystic Lake Casino for a buffet dinner and stage show.
2000: Chanhassen Dinner Theatre for a production of “Nunsense.”
2001: Dinner at Howie G’s, a nice cook-your-own steak place.
2002: We’re going to the Hey City Theatre for “Tony ‘n’ Tina’s Wedding,” another meal and interactive play deal. I’ve heard the food is bad but the play is good.
My father-in-law used to work for a company that supplied food for grocery stores. Lousy working conditions, pay wasn’t great, but on Thanksgiving all the employees got a frozen turkey and a big box of fixin’s for a complete Thanksgiving dinner. And for Christmas, they got the same thing plus a ham.
Many many moons ago I worked for a company that went all out for us employees.
It was a retail job, wherein 70% of our yearly sales were in October, November, and December.
Every year the owner (Tom) would send catered lunches to those working the day after Thanksgiving. If you worked X-Mas Eve, you got another catered lunch and $20.00
PLUS he would throw a huge party for all employees- Jax, Nicollet Island Inn, his house in the Bryn Mawr chichi area of Minneapolis.
Now that I am not in the private sector, we receive bupkis. Depending on the supervisor, we may have a lunch, but there’s always a meeting involved.
Last year I got a plastic bucket with 2 bottles of wine in it, never quite worked out why the plastic bucket, maybe for hangovers.
Better than my previous employer who sent us all out for Christmas dinner then couldn’t pay, I put it on my Visa card and afterwards the bastard refused to reimburse me. Kinda explains why I quit.
$25 for lunch, but you can spend it at any lunch venue you like.
Which means I don’t have to have lunch with the dorks in my office, I can go out with friends and put it on the company plastic.
We haven’'t worked out the day for putting up the deccies this year, but down in the shopping centre, they are up and annoying, so maybe we’ll wait until 1/12.
At my last company, we got a Christmas lunch of Chinese food (my favorite part of Christmas has always been the Egg Roll under the Tree…). At my current business, I get a gift certrificate for the local supermarket – the low-spoilage equivalent of getting a Turkey for Christmas.
We have a very nice lunch, place of our choice, for Christmas. Which is nice since I like the people I work with a great deal and we get to take as long as we like on company time. That’s it. Not much but better than most. I guess that’s how I view Christmas…more by the people I get to enjoy time with than the price/gift.
Where I worked last year, we were given £5 high street gift vouchers . . .
After Christmas we found out that they had been donated by one of our clients, as a thank you. But the company tried to pass them off as their own!
Well, where I was working part-time last year, we all got taken for a morning sail on the tall ship Leeuwin. Then we had a catered picnic lunch (drinks included) in a park near the harbour. Very excellent Christmas party, and even more excellent that we casuals and part-timers were included
This year, alas, I am jobless, so no festive jaunts on other people’s money for me.
We usually get a Christmas lunch and a nice Christmas bonus. Plus two days off for Thanksgiving and then two more off for Christmas.
Much better then the job I worked a few years ago where the week before Christmas you were allowed to wear a Santa hat rather then your work hat. Of course you had to provide your own Santa hat. Oh the fun we had. Ho Ho Ho.
