"You're Giving me $10? Fuck You!"

The BBQ Pit
41

They’re only doing that to be hateful. Seriously, are these males under the age of 30? If so, time WILL catch up to them. My husband finds me to be quite unsympathetic when he complains that he can no longer eat the 3000 Calorie meals of his adolescence without any regard to his blood sugar, digestive system and waist size.

Don’t get me wrong, I love donuts, and free donuts would be even better, but I don’t regard them as a breakfast (despite their calorie count) and I have to be VERY careful to work them into my day’s diet. I’m a good deal more stable (in the blood sugar department) than many diabetics, but even so, eating an unplanned donut WILL make my blood sugar spike up alarmingly.

42

Most of them are about 30, you are correct. And you are also corret, in that most males in my office between about 30 and 35 now have that classic “bowling pin” look going. Mind you, from comparing notes, these are people who eat two bowls of cereal in the morning (400 calories), come in and have 2-4 large doughnuts (600 - 1600 calories), go out for lunch (1000+ calories), drink between 2-10 cans of non-Diet soda (typically Mountain Dew or Coke) a day (from 280 - 1400 calories), then snack on another doughnut left over from the morning (300 calories), then finally go home for that “steak dinner” they expect (1000+ calories). I feel like these people are trying to emulate Lewis and Clark, where I read that their diet of fatty buffalo hump was giving them about 8000 calories a day.

What sad from my standpoint, aside from the blood sugar issues (which have really SUCKED for me lately, and I’ve gone ketoacidotic twice in two months, and almost in hospital again, wee…hey, at least my out-of-pocket maximum cost is satisfied for this year) is that on my 800-calorie a day diet, a single large doughnut is all I could eat in an entire day. If I have one, I expect tablecloth, music, a flower in a Waterford vase, and a knife and fork. Maybe an after-doughnut Fonseca port if I’m being naughty and cheating…

[sub]God I’m so hungry. All the time. I have DREAMS about eating meals at night. Somebody please kill me. :frowning: [/sub]

43

mmm…fatty buffalo hump…

also,

Band Name!

44

Right on! If $10 is too piddly an amount for them, then give it to someone who will appreciate it. Hell, they can even take the glory of being a Good Samaritan.

45

Sigh.
Back before we downsized, we had 2 employees-Mike and Betsi.
We were very small but my husband and I tried really really hard to be the sort of employers that we’d always wanted to work for.
We gave bonuses (usually anywhere from $150.00-$250.00 per quarter and $500.00 at Christmas), bought good lunches for all at least twice a month, and took everybody and their SO’s out for a bang up dinner at Christmas. We never expected anyone to sacrifice their personal life to make us a profit and we were more than understanding if either needed time off.

Mike worked hard and never took advantage of the situation.
Betsi had an incredible sense of entitlement, whined constantly about being underpaid (she was making $12.85 an hour as my office assistant), had a fit when she wasn’t allowed to do her college class work at the office, and, right before we moved, could never ever even drag her sorry ass in on time.
On her last day, she had the audacity to imply that it was my fault that she did a shitty job because, if I’d paid her more, she might have been more motivated.

Both found jobs prior to our moving the office and letting them go.
4 years later, Mike is still with the same firm and doing very well.
Betsi however, has been through a number of jobs during the same period from what I hear.
Of course, the economy has changed drastically in Austin and you no longer get paid $10.00 plus an hour for just showing up.
You actually have to work.

My point-some people will always be unappreciative assholes regardless of what you do for them.
They’re also usually the ones that contribute the least to the company and make the loudest stink when asked to do anything extra.

Other small business owners that I’ve spoken to have commented that the employees in their 20’s and early 30’s had a much stronger sense of entitlement than those in their late 30’s and 40’s.
Betsi fell into the first age bracket while Mike was in the second.
I’m not about to brand an entire generation based on my experiences with one person but I’m curious as to whether anyone else has noticed a correlation.

46

**Bitter Shirley **
I would have taken a $10 certificate that I could use, at least.
When I was working, and this is 5.5 years ago, the bosses routinely went out on the day the company Xmas party was and bought the clearance stuff at the local Montgomery Ward’s or Sear’s to wrap up and give to us as our bonus.

When you receive, but not limited too, a beret, gloves and perfume ( ugh) (as well as other things that I have completely blanked out, and the beret was one year’s gift, the gloves another…) as a form of a bonus when you personally are bringing in a couple million dollars in sales since your second year, it is insulting. My co-workers ( only one had higher sales than me) were all insulted by this.

Oh, and we had a company dinner at a nice restaurant ( always near the bosses daughter’s house which was where no one else in the company lived near. Which was over an hour’s drive home for me in the pitch dark.) and if our spouses were invited along by the owners we, the employees were hit up for their dinner bill the next day at the office. I never paid.

Every year I (we) would take the stuff back to the store (usually that night or the next lunch time) and find out that the bosses spent about $5 per person. It showed me they didn’t really care about us and did not know our tastes.

However, had I received a $5 gift certificate to anywhere I would have been slightly more appreciative, as that is far more flexible than a friggin’ beret or goddamn old lady perfume.

(And to show what a crank I am, when I had my baby shower at work, all I received from the entire office -8 women - was $35 in Toys R Us dollars. 8 years of working with these women, commisserating with them, helping them out with their computer problems, writing their letters, doing their hard clients, eating lunch with them. I knew everything about them) and I receive $35 from all of them. ( oh, and that includes the four bosses.)

It didn’t help at all that a friend of mine had a work baby shower with a smaller office that she had worked for for less than two years and received an amazingly cool wagon for her future child which retailed for over $120 at the time.

I went home and cried hard that night. My husband ( the most patient and understanding of men) was disgusted. In fact, one of his coworkers whom I went to the movies with on occaison gave us/me a check and a gift for the baby that was twice the amount than my entire office. (she did not know of the office fiasco) and I cried again, but differently.

I only went into the office once with our son after he was born. I haven’t had any contact with them ( except one). Oh, and they are out of business. Between shitty management and 9-11, it was inevitable.

Which leads me to the point(s) of this crankfest:

  1. YOu learn more from bad bosses than good ones.

  2. I have always made a rather extensive ( not necessarily expensive) effort to personalize the gift for people because of my experiences.

[/crankfest]

47

As an afternote, I was published once in a national travel agents magazine about the aforementioned ‘gifts’ under an article about ‘bad bosses’. I found out after I left the biz. HA.

48

Ironically the only place I’ve ever worked that gave a Christmas bonus (and a good one too - equal to one week’s pay), was far and away the most abysmally miserable place I’ve ever worked.

I’ll take a decent daily working environment over a once-a-year bonus anytime.

49

I’m with romansperson. My last boss liked to take everybody out to the fanciest restaurant in town for a Christmas dinner, and she handed out $25 grocery store gift certificates around Thanksgiving. All in all, though, I would have preferred some day-to-day respect for the job I did.

See, there was one day when I was just having a “bad day” - one of those where everything was just going wrong, and I admittedly let the situation get the better of me and I blew up. So later, in a “counselling session” :rolleyes: with the boss (mind you, I got busted for having one bad day out of many, many really good days) I attempted to explain the various situations that had prompted my outburst. My ever-thoughtful employer decided that the best way to handle the situation was to tell me, “You shouldn’t get so upset about these things! It’s just a job!!”

Now considering that I’ve been in my line of work for nearly 20 years, I’m excellent at what I do, and thoroughly enjoy what I do, and take a lot of pride in my work, that was probably the single most insulting thing anybody has ever said to me.

Of course, “It’s just a job” probably explains why that particular boss had been fired from almost every job she had held in the 15-or-so years prior to deciding to buy her own business. And how she took a very successful existing business (I and several other employees came with the place, having worked for the previous owner) and ran it into the ground. I eventually quit, choosing unemplyment over continuing to work in that environment.

But, hey, how about those Christmas parties?

50

Daddy brought me up with the saying, “Never lick a gift horse in the mouth.” I think he was playing with the phrase, but to this day I can’t stomach listening to people who whine about free stuff ala “only $10?” if you don’t wannit, give it back–did any of the guards give it back?

I CAN see getting irked about a costly and useless gift when there was an opportunity to give a personally useful gift ($300 collector’s edition ceramic doll for my 3 year-old daughter that she will immediately destroy? How about a $300 digital camera to take her picture with). But to make the suggestion to the giver that they could have done better–be it a holiday bonus, a new car or a measly $10 grocery store coupon–is just absolutely tasteless.

And yes, we need a good Union Pitting.

51

Wrenches. On their heads. From the top of nearby baobab trees.

52

heh

53

I cannot believe the audacity of those assholes!! I would give my left tit for a measly 10 dollars right now. My DH is busting his ass working MEGA OT just to pay the damn bills and both the kids need clothes. Ten dollars would buy Thanksgiving turkey for my family and feed us for at LEAST a week. What the HELL. DAMN I HATE ungreatful pricks like that.

54

There will always be a certain sect of people that bitch and moan no matter what. I’d hate to see these people ruin things for everyone else.

I won a $100 gift card from my job! :smiley: But, it could have been $10.00 and I would have been happy. You’d be amazed how far you can stretch $10.00, especially on Ramen noodles! :wink:

55

I disagree that a bonus has to be three digits, or else it’s an insult; I’ve only ever worked one place where my Christmas bonus was that big, and the $15 bonuses I got certainly never crossed my eyes any.

A bonus ought to be in the double digits, though, especially when it’s a gift certificate to your place of employment. The year I was working at Cracker Barrel, not only did the night shift have to work through the Christmas party (they’d closed early, but we still had to clean and roll the silverware, and all that), but my bonus was a $5 gift certificate to bleedin’ Cracker Barrel. Gosh, I hope that didn’t break the budget, especially combined with that whoppin five cent an hour raise. Really, I’d as soon they hadn’t bothered. I suppose I should be grateful, though; the employees at lower par levels just got computer-printed cards.

56

What is it with you and wrenches?

57

I love all the chat about the diabetics.

In my office, our customer service will always send down snacks during busy times.

Snacks are always Mike & Ike’s and M&Ms. None for me.

Also, after every busy season (3 small ones a year and one big one), we always get a pizza party. I’ve never been a big pizza fan, but what the hell, it’s free. In the old days, we used to get chinese food. Wish that would come back.

58

Hey, would you rather it be paint thinner?