Damn it!! accidentally posted before I was done.
All that said… if nothing like that is going on, then they are a great bunch of ungrateful bastards!
BTW, could I have used a few more quotation marks up there? :rolleyes:
Pebs
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And:
And:
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None of these things apply here. My husband works for a State agency (corrections.) These are all union jobs, very well paid, with annual raises written into the contracts. All overtime is vouluntary, and compensated at time-and-a-half. (People actually fight over who gets to work overtime shifts.)
I also feel compelled to note, before someone asks about it, that the gift certificates are not being paid for by your tax dollars. They come out of a seperate fund which comes from vending machine sales, and whatnot.
Sound like a bunch of creeps. I have never complained about a gift. (Ok, I whined a little about the weird gifts my mom buys me, but only cause she seems to be wasting a lot of hard-earned money on dolls for someone who is WAY too old to appreciate them).
If a company was treating me badly, I’d complain about that, not about the $10 gift card! I’d appreciate a $10 gift card! Tell ya what, being a homemaker comes with very few monetary bonuses!
I’ve received gifts from companies ranging from a slice of pizza to a $400 check (a surprise that came in the mail weeks after I was let go). I appreciated them all. It’s just nice to be thought of.
There’s your problem. Unions breed a sense of entitlement.
When you’re in management, you’re occasionally seen as a jerk or an idiot. That’s just the nature of the job, and you take it and move on. But it’s such a drag to try and do something nice for the employees and have that sort of reaction.
At my work, they buy our department breakfast on Friday mornings. Sometimes, the department secretary is running errands for the Big Boss, so she only has time to pick up doughnuts. This leads to a bunch of…
“Only doughnuts? No bagels?”
I mean, come on! It’s free breakfast! Who the hell are you to complain?
To do with 10 dollars…
1.) Buy a turkey. Turkeys are not that expensive.
2.) Buy a lot of vegetables or staple food. 10 bucks would buy several boxes of “Stove Top” stuffing.
3.) Alcohol-Buy a 12 pack of regular beer or a 6 pack of the good stuff. Buy a bottle of wine. A bottle of hooch.
4.) Two packs of cigarettes.
5.) Give the coupon to a homeless person or charity if you are to high brow to accept it.
6.) T-Bone steak.
7.) Many large stores have a video department, get some movies for after dinner.
A lot of good stuff.
Grady
I’ve worked with people who said things like “I’m going to be so pissed if I don’t get a bonus this year.”
On the other hand, at my current employer, we might not have a Christmas party due to austerity measures. Rumors have, of course, gotten out, and people are asking questions, mainly on our internal message board that employees use for communicating, anonymously if desired, with management. To their credit, all the questions and responses have amounted to “look, we’ve heard that the Christmas party might get cancelled, and we’ll understand if it’s due to finances, but we really like the Christmas party, it’s important to us, so we hope that it happens.”
Just when you’ve lost all faith in humanity…
Perhaps they should have a fundraiser if the party is really important to them. Five bucks per person would probably do it, unless you usually have caviar and Dom.
Not everyone is complaining. Why shit on the employees who take the $10 or the meal, say thanks and come to work the next day just like yesterday. Some people are just not in a good mood but that is not an excuse to call the entire workforce ungrateful.
Oh, yeah, about unions, we certainly do have a sense of entitlement as we are the workers without which the job would not get done. We are entitled to dignity and respect and fair compensation for our work.
Read your history books and look at the conditions of workers in the U.S.A. before the American labor movement. Unions were instrumental in eliminating child labor, getting the 8 our day and one of my favorites - the weekend.
Not saying I agree with what Bill H. said up there, but I don’t agree with this either.
I’m non-union. I think I’m entitled to dignity and respect and fair compensation as well. Let’s not make this a union/non-union argument. That should have nothing to do with this.
The employee who was ungrateful for the $10 certificate reminds me of so many people where I work. They do 4 hours of work all day, and expect a reward for it.
Reminds me of a saying that my wife uses: “He’d complain if he was getting hanged with a new rope”. I never understood this, though. Getting hanged seems like something worth complaining about. Perhaps we should go with “He’s complain if somebody gave him a scratched gold bar”.
Anyway, a $10 certificate beats no $10 certificate.
whatami: Nowhere do I see county implying that non-union workers should be entitled to any less dignity, respect, or fair compensation that union workers. He was merely addressing Bill H.'s poorly reasoned dig at unions.
To everyone else: Methinks that the workers are interpreting this as a hearty “fuck you” from management. Depending on the particular situation, this may or may not be appropriate. As an analogy, think of a waitperson who finds a quarter tip on a $10 meal. Such a tip indicates that the person certainly remembered that a tip was expected, but sends a message that the waitperson’s services were not appreciated. If the waitperson gave shitty service, they deserve it. Or, alternatively, perhaps the person really only had a quarter left in their wallet. It’s open to interpretation. If the workers in this case feel that management doesn’t appreciate them, they may well interpret this as an intentional slight, whether or not it actually is.
The agreement between employer and employee covers hours worked, PDO and benefits. It doesn’t cover bonuses. People who bitvh about what they have no right to expect get on my nerves.
OTOH, my new employer sent me a birthday card, which I thought was pretty cool of them. Inside the card was an American Express gift check for $50 bucks. For my fucking birthday! I was floored. I mean, how cool is THAT??
I worked for a company for a number of years. My first year there was the last year they gave a Christmas bonus, which I was thrilled to get. I understood the reasoning for discontinuing the bonuses, as they were bad economic times. My co-workers did not. Fuck 'em. I made more volunteering to work the holiday anyway.
Quite possibly diabetic, or hypoglycemic? It’s a lot easier for me to make room in my diet for a bagel than a donut. I agree, though, that griping about it is ungrateful and quite possibly counterproductive. Perhaps someone could research a bakery which is open early on Friday mornings and offers donuts AND bagels? I’m somewhat surprised that the secretary doesn’t get both. Around here, ALL the donut shops sell bagels as well.
A year ago, my husband was working for a company where overtime was a fact of life and raises were doled out according to a schedule having nothing to do with performance. Management attempted to control production costs by reining in OT and non-merit raises. They were competing with ultra-cheap imports that came pouring in, killing the US steel industry. The workers had a fit and joined a union. (Shortly after this, my husband got another job and left. He heard the rest from friends.)
As a result, they lost their medical coverage in bargaining, and in the middle of the summer, the company did a 2-week across-the-board furlough to save some money. By September, the plant was closed. Largely because the workers had a sense of entitlement and no sense of work ethic. So they’ve lost it all.
And I expect these people would have bitched and moaned about a $10 gift certificate back when they had jobs. Is there a lesson in there somewhere?
On Lord Ashtar’s post, there is also the possibility that people skip thier normal breakfast because they know that there will be bagels at work. Faced with a doughnut only spread, they say to themselves “I coulda had my own breakfast if I knew there wouldn’t be bagels.”
Giving out trinkets is not an easy thing for a business, there is always the possibility of hard feelings. As Random pointed out, if there arent 3 digits on the check, it looks like an insult. My company has gotten around it a bit by allowing workers to give gifts to their coworkers for a job well done. Fairly cheap logo items, and you can only give to X number of people total. But, it actually feels good to get it because it came from a coworker. If the corporation gave this crap out directly, we’d probably complain, or ascribe ulterior motives to their generosity.
I have to kindof agree with Miller and cajela here. Just because there are people who are unemployed doesn’t make the people who are working their butt off on unpaid overtime and getting treated like crap feel any better about some insulting “token” bonus.
Not that this is what the OP was. But I had the same thoughts.
I’ve been at company’s where a 10 dollar cert truly would have been an insult. I worked for one nationwide multimillion dollar company that thought a cold cuts spread was an acceptable “Company Christmas party”. This was after a winter spent working in some of the most brutal conditions our state has to offer (weird weather including 90 below with chill factor).
It was truly insulting. But no one was really surprised, as the “brass” treated the employees like crap as it was. Everyone in the company had something to say (only about 85 people in our division), just not to the upper management.
And then I’ve worked for others where it was obvious that the 10 dollars truly was what they could spare and was meant in a good spirit.
I think all they’re saying is that there are two sides to every story.
If they don’t like it, there’s a deli downstairs which sells bagels. AFAIK, the few ladies who bitch when she only gets doughnuts are just complaining for complaining’s sake.
No shit, Haj. They’re griping because they only got $10 and a hamburger meal? My company would harvest my organs and sell them on the black market if they could only trick me into drinking more of this drugged coffee. And then theeeeey wouldddddd…ohhhh thashhh nut gooooooo *
Wow, we’re thinking a lot alike lately. This is a continual problem at work, when the few times I do a second meal of the day, and am tempted by what is available at work, it’s almost always 700-calorie doughnuts. Which the males at work will sit and eat from 3-6 at a sitting. :eek:
[sub]and still not gain weight.[/sub]