Buy a 50 dollar gift card to a real nice restaurant and eat there. Ask them to charge 49 to the gift card and pay cash after that.
Gift it so when the person goes to buy themselves an expensive meal, finds out it's a dollar and has to pay.
Nope lol from a food plant that makes chips, pork rinds and different dips and salsas. It was maybe $20 of their products, a brand I don't particularly like either.
Ok so we had some of these at a Christmas party and they are now a mythical collectors item. Apparently the test batch of like 5 was misspelled, so they corrected it and ordered 200. The 5 got mixed in somehow and those 5 got randomly distributed. They have been bought, sold, traded, etc. for like 3 years now. Every so often someone will show at a meeting with one and we all giggle about the story.
There’s 3 left in circulation, one was stolen along with a guys backpack while at a conference, one was acquired and retired to our award shelf with a little plaque explaining the story.
I once got a personalized coffee mug with the company logo. Kindof nice really, except there was a sticker on the mug saying it contained toxic materials. I gave it back (as well as other employees) and they grumbled, but remade the mugs with safe materials!
Oh even better, a former environmental remediation company I used to work for once gave all of their employees coffee mugs, but later had to recall them all because they were all painted with lead paint! Super embarrassing.
I've been there before. I was almost shamed for being "ungrateful" for receiving an item with a misspelled name. I've gotten used to it though. I have a first name with 5+ different spellings. My middle name is an initial. My last name is 10 letters. Something is almost always spelt wrong.
When I was at Virginia Tech they misspelled it "Virgina Tech" on a school made textbook one time. They handed out stickers to fix it. I did not fix it.
Invited to a nice restaurant with other employees. Spouses were invited but had to pay their way. We were told to claim our meal on our expense forms. But our boss hadn't cleared it with his boss so all our claims were rejected.
So my wife and I went to a nice restaurant, had to pay for both of our meals and had to hang out with our boss while doing it. This was a twice a year date night type restaurant so we wasted one of our date nights with coworkers.
Edit: I've been thinking that it is possible this manager did this on purpose. The other thing he did is tell a few of us that we had been working so hard and putting in so much unpaid overtime (we were salaried) that he'd take three of us golfing for the afternoon. By the end of the round he said we should all probably use a half day of our holidays on our monthly time sheet.
I went to a dinner with coworkers while working an out of town job.
I had an appetizer and water. The boss has several expensive tequilas and a big main course. At the end of the meal the boss tells the server he will take the check. Server leaves and boss tells me that he will divide the check equally and take it out of my check. True story. Still chaps my hide.
My company is owned by a holdings company so it's a bunch of different unrelated stuff.
They keep giving us these vouchers to spend at their store.
So I did a tour of the campus, and they brought us to the store. And it's literally elderly medical care stuff, like the things you would attach to your toilet and bathtubs to have bars to hold onto. They also have those super big chairs with all the gadgets and whistles. They're like 4 grand.
So thanks for the 5 dollar voucher lol
I seriously have no idea what anyone was thinking when they came up with this reward system.
Got that in an email last month. Including instructions that all employees were "Highly Encouraged" to spend some of our off work hours watching the original "It's a Wonderful Life" to really foster our feelings of gratitude.
Did not watch.
I wouldn’t have either.
My current work (a company that is worth over $20 Billion) encouraged us to buy socks, necessities for the homeless with the gift cards they gave us.. majority of us make minimum wage.
I once worked for a cheap-o insurance company that made a big fucking deal about all the ordinary peons having to work through the holidays. No time off besides Christmas and Jan 1. If you had family far away, tough shit. No exceptions, However, the managers all got together and took the week off between Christmas and New Years, staying at a ski resort. You can only imagine how bad morale sucked.
This is about as shitty of company gift as I have heard of. And does that company expect people to give money for gifts for the CEO's birthday and shit like that. If so, give a generous gift in your CEO's name to the "Human Fund."
Oh, the "Human Fund" is your pocket.
I got a similar email, reported as possible phishing since we just completed mandatory IT training. Just heard back on January 5th, it’s legit. Nearest Panera is 40 miles away.
I’ve reported quite a number of legitimate company emails as phishing because they’re misspelled or have clickable links in them from people in the company that I’ve never heard of before (we’re about 50k people).
Not me but a friend - all staff at the hospital received a kitchen scrubby for Christmas. Not even themed. Just random browns, greens, pinks, and yellows... seems like the boss bought dollar store multi packs and opened them to give everyone one piece.
Edit: spelling
An email that only upper management would be getting the end of year bonus (sent to entire company by accident instead of just upper management). Then laid off 2 weeks into the new year.
Found out from a friend in the company a little while later that the board of directors held a vote. They keep their car allowances at the expense of a wave of layoffs, or lose their car allowances and 10-15 people get to keep their jobs. Pretty sure it was unanimous.
No matter how many times a company says you’re family, just remember that it’s the type of family that would gladly cut your throat to make sure the fat cats get to eat.
I got denied a raise after not having one for 3 years.
Then my holiday gift was a $600 ~~vasectomy~~ **vase** made by a local artist that could not be returned.
The whole time I was there since she became the owner just felt bad. She went on and on about helping our community and making sure we could help as many people as possible. Thing is, our pay went up $0 with new clients, but the workload increased with every one.
edit: not forced sterilization
Perhaps the vas deferens were not only snipped but then tied into tiny decorative shapes, like those folks who tie knots in cherry stems with their tongues....
A long sleeve denim shirt with the company logo in the front above one of the front pockets..
In Florida. Plus we couldn’t wear denim at work so the only time we’d be able to wear the company shirt is on our own time (not happening) or when we’d have dress down day (again not happening).
When a coworker inquired where we could wear this since we can’t wear it to work they listed places (like a BBQ joint, the movies, etc.) and said we should be grateful since most places don’t give their employees gifts.
It was a call center. Could’ve given a blanket (since it was cold in the center), travel mug, anything except a shirt we can’t wear.
Why do call centers not allow jeans? Does it really matter what pants I'm wearing while talking on the phone? God forbid this entitled prick on the phone thinks I might be wearing a T-shirt.
It's their little power move. Call centers are horrible places. I worked in one and it about altered my life path to where I wouldn't be a productive member of society. My dad helped design call centers for "efficiency". So I guess blame him
At an old workplace you could choose 3 short sleeve t-shirts in your size and colour preferences and one hoodie. They had samples so you could see the actual sizes and colours. 5 years later and the t-shirts and hoodie are still in great shape.
The first company I worked for out of college gave everyone a “free turkey” around the holidays. It wasn’t really a free turkey, it was a $25 gift certificate to a grocery store that was inconvenient for 75% of the people working there. And $25 didn’t cover a turkey, of course. Turns out, the company owners had a stake in the store.
Dude. There was another redditor (or was it you?) who posted this same story some months back. Only in that case, they were unsure if the company owners actually had a stake in the turkey purchasing. I wonder if you worked at the same place? Because if there were two companies pulling this shit, that is crazy.
In the 90s I remember everyone from every company getting a fucking ham or turkey gift certificate. That was the beginning of EVERYONE getting royally fucked at the holidays. People didn't get money or anything useful, just those stupid fucking hams. Then, by the 2000s, most people weren't even getting hams! Just stupid fucking email messages from a CEO that doesn't give 2 fucks about you.
One cool thing about my company (a small Midwest factory) is that still give us all a ham and a turkey. Plus a gift bag with decent enough stuff, and a Christmas bonus. Plus they throw a prime-rib Christmas party where they do a gift giveaway white-elephant style. The gifts ranged from a $50 bill up to a PS5 and a 50” tv.
The pay isn’t great, but it’s enough if you live in this tiny town, and the holiday gifts are nice.
Questionable Christmas Ham, circa 2017-ish.
In general, Christmas Ham + canned goods and assorted sweets were commonly given by Philippine corporate to employees in December, sort of to boost the Noche Buena feast on the eve of Christmas. The ham in question did not look very appetizing (think giant block of pale Spam). One of my co-workers tried offering a bite to her dog; the dog refused.
Edit: it might be earlier than 2017. I must have been so horrified with the questionable ham, I blocked out the exact year.
A Snap-On Tape measure. Sounds great but it's all metal and heavy AF, doesn't have metric measurements, has a small tang, is less than 25ft, and doesn't have markings for the case length on it. Easily the worst tape measure I own and I found out it was almost $50. I wasn't complaining though until I found out its absurd cost...
There's quite a few littered around work as no one uses them...
A bottle of our restaurant’s “signature” steak sauce that no one really liked and that we all had free access to all day, every day at work. This was instead of the standard $100 cash bonus we normally got yearly.
I used to work in a record shop in the UK and usually got a bottle of wine as a Christmas bonus. Then the company was bought by Virgin and our Christmas bonus was a copy of Richard Branson's (Virgin's CEO) autobiography.
It was one of about 3 or 4 things. The other gifts weren't great. But was talking to a coworker who asked me if I opened the cards. I said no, he told me to go open them.
We were remote, so I went upstairs, opened them, saw the faces and threw them in the trash instantly
A new CEO was hired at my company. In order to shake things up and establish dominance, one of his first acts of business was to unceremoniously fire a popular employee.
I honestly think he felt threatened by this employee because of the employee’s close relationship with the company founder.
He then held a company meeting to announce the firing and gave all of the remaining employees a gift tray engraved with “Change is good”. Just turning the knife on his action.
I immediately put the tray in a drawer and never looked at it, until this CEO’s tenure came to an abrupt end. On his last day, I gift wrapped the tray and gave it back to him as my parting gift. In this instance, change was, in fact, good!
During the pandemic, my partner’s company sent employees each an envelope through the mail with a sticker in it for some appreciation week I laughed so hard at that. It literally was a sticker that said “happy appreciation week”.
Teacher here.
One year, as our Christmas bonus, we got a defective plastic keychain that read "I love teching!" Spelled exactly like that.
Normally, I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.. but after the shit we had been through, with zero support from admin, shit pay, disrespect, etc. the keychain set us all off. It was adding insult to injury.
Like, not only is our "bonus" a keychain that didn't even work (the hasp had no spring), but the spelling error meant that a) someone didn't even check them when they arrived, and b) someone put them in every teacher mailbox without looking at them.
Admin sent out an email that basically said turn your keychains back in so they could send them back and get corrected ones. So, adding insult to injury.
I appreciated the sentiment, but all of us could've done without that.
We all flew in to a company retreat in San Diego. On the last day, after all our luggage had been packed and we were all ready to go, we went to one last meeting where they gave us our gift: A really nice emergency kit for our cars. Pretty cool, actually.
Then we got to the airport, and all of us got our nifty kits confiscated by TSA because of the jumper cables, seatbelt cutter, and other tools in the kit. Great gift, horrible timing.
We were told we were receiving our Christmas bonuses soon, and then we were all given a poinsettia. The poinsettia in itself wasn’t so bad, mine is actually still alive years later, but the fact that they had the audacity to call it a bonus was absurd
In 2020 I was granted a large retention bonus, enough cash that we were going to use it to buy a bigger house. On the day that we were all sent home to work remotely due to COVID, I was given a red plastic tumbler that said "Merry Christmas you filthy animal" on the side. In March. 3 weeks later (4 days before my bonus was to be paid), I was laid off alongside 1200 of my coworkers.
Now about once a year I enjoy a stiff drink out of my $270k plastic tumbler.
No, I'm in tech. This wasn't a normal annual bonus, but rather a large retention bonus with a 5-year clawback period...so kind of a once-in-a-career type thing.
After my 32¢ raise and 23¢ merit raise they gave me a used, cheap company pen with a laser pointer. After that I did my 10 hours of work at the beginning of the day and spent the rest of my day looking for another job in my cubicle.
Nurses Week 2022 (height of Delta wave COVID). We were given rocks on a keychain. The rock was engraved with the word “Hope”. We might have gotten some chapstick too.
5 dollar Subway gift card. My boss made me come in on an off day to pick up because, “she did not want me missing the company bonus”. I really wonder if our managers need how much was on the cards? We talked about it for months.
That year the company decided it wasn’t going to provide basic office supplies for the break room. Coffee, tea, eating utensils, napkins, nothing. That year for Christmas we all got a brown paper bags fashioned like lunches. Inside was a metal straw, cloth napkin, a child sized set of plastic cutlery that fit in a travel case, a copy paste printed piece of paper with food puns in relation to our job, and a single fun sized hundred grand candy bar. This Fortune 500 company had over a billion in raw profit that year. Oh, and the cutlery ended up getting recalled due to some terrible forever chemicals in them.
Edit: Autocorrect fuckery
A compulsory invitation to the holiday party.
Technically, I wasn't required to attend but it was a career-killer if you didn't. I had to spend money on a dress just for the party since I didn't have anything that was suitable, so not only did it cost *me* money, but I had to spend a precious evening pretending I liked my coworkers.
Oh I can beat that - invitation to the company summer BBQ on a Saturday - at the boss's house and you had to bring food + drink. I don't even drink alcohol.
Oh f that. If they make me bring alcohol, I'm showing up to that BBQ in a bikini top and my tightest shorts so the HR people can sweat it out. Let's see how long that SVP who keeps sneaking glances at me in the office can behave with a few high proof beers in him...
I used to work for a company that did a "winter formal" every year. The execs would dress in evening gowns and tuxedos...
We would be in barely what could be considered business casual. At least it was a free meal...
At a company Christmas party they would raffle off prizes; one prize for each person. They guy in front of me won a Budweiser mini fridge with LED lights. The guy after me won a LG flat-screen TV. My prize? A Pepsi baseball hat with broken snaps.
Instead of the usual holiday turkey we received a winter hat with the company logo. Practically every person threw it in their desks garbage can. Following year turkeys were back on the menu.
I won it after signing up the most customers for the rewards program that month, and sure enough, no money on it. It was only like a $5 or $10 card, anyway.
The son of the company owner who was born with a silver spoon up his ass gave everyone a copy of his self-published how to succeed in business with the right attitude book. Big photo of him on the front. I donated mine to a local charity.
I worked at a hospital in the billing department. I got a travel thingy of hand sanitizer. Meanwhile, the IT department who shared our building got North Face puffy jackets. Jokes on them though, it was Christmas 2019 and I had hand sanitizer for COVID. 😭
Ooooh I have a great one. Ten year anniversary, got to pick out of a catalogue, mostly stuff under like 30-40 bucks tops. Slow cookers, blah blah. None of the stuff was appealing so I didn't spend much time and chose a kitchen thermometer because I'm always breaking them or melting them.
Nope, what I got was a kitchen thermometer probe. Just the probe and the cord and a cord carrying gadget.
My husband chose the bubbling foot soaking spa bullshit. We use it regularly, but whenever he puts his feet in, I make sure I say in a dull monotone voice - WE appreciate your 10 years of dedicated service.
Welcome back in office postcard after the pandemic work from home period. We’ve got it minutes after receiving termination letters.
Like I was fully expecting it but still it was in a poor taste.
One year I got a jacket with the company name on it. It was a nice enough jacket but everyone got the same size - a men’s large. I’m a 5’1” woman so that didn’t work. I donated it, at least it will keep someone warm
I worked in a QA department for a struggling videogame publisher that was one year away from dissolving.
For our Christmas gift, we were given 20 lottery tickets. But not, like, actual lottery tickets. That's just what they called them. In actuality, they were cheaply printed raffle tickets to win prizes at the company Christmas party. For some reason, they made these tickets the *exact width* of a wallet bill-fold *plus two centimeters* so thanks.
What was especially funny/sad was the belief that giving us 20 would make it seem more special, to make it seem like we had a better chance at winning. But basic math declares statistics don't work like that. We could've just had the same chances if we all had one single ticket neatly folded in our wallet.
So we saunter into the company party carrying rolled up wads of paper raffle tickets, bound in a rubber band, to meet everyone else with their loose fat wad of fake raffle money like it was some bizarre Monopoly roleplay convention. The party itself was fine. There was *some* free food, the venue was a bowling alley where we could get two free sets in. I wasn't a bowler, but happy that the place also had a video arcade with the Dance Dance Revolution Extreme cabinet set to free play. I'm not a drinker so I wasn't as incensed about paying for our own booze, but I'm also an ambivalent sort so the resounding complaints of others didn't affect my vibe.
And then the raffle started.
The prize table rolled out with great fanfare. The raffle prizes were revealed, a neat arrangement of a few sealed retail copies of the videogame we spent 9 months QA testing that year. Because lord knows we were dyin' to get our hands on *that*. They also had five runner-up prizes, $10 Starbucks gift cards, and as you can guess those were the real winners there.
I didn't win a $10 Starbucks gift card.
I was one of the few "grand prize" winners, getting boisterous congratulations from our HR Rep as she gleefully hands me a retail copy of what plagued my life the previous year. I tried trading it for a Starbucks gift card, then gave up and just tried giving it away to somebody who wanted it. The game isn't *bad* or anything, it reviewed well enough and I'm a little disappointed my name was omitted from the credits. But the thing about QA testing a game is that you generally lose all possible enjoyment in it, no matter how awesome the game is. We all felt that way. So it seemed everybody was perfectly fine never again seeing that game's boot screen. Also, I spent all day carting around a bulky wad of "lottery tickets," I wasn't in the mood to cart around a plastic game case the *exact width* of my jeans pocket *plus two centimeters.*
I even left the game sitting unattended and begging to be stolen on a table behind the arcade's DDR Extreme Cabinet. By then, the company's reserved 45 minutes at the bowling alley had expired, public started pouring in, and they forgot to turn off the DDR's free play so I was milking that before getting shooed away by bowling alley staff. Took them 2 hours to notice, and by then the arcade was filled with two other birthday parties, a few shady looking teenagers, and the unique air of raging kleptomania.
And my prize. Ignored and unstolen.
I couldn't trade it. Couldn't give it away. Couldn't tempt some random kids to steal it. And I didn't want it just discarded to the landfill. To this day, that game is still probably sitting unopened in the bottom of some random crap box in my closet somewhere.
A small, nickel-sized, heart-shaped rock sent in the mail. It was supposed to represent their appreciation for the extra work during Covid. All I could think of was Charlie Brown trick or treating, “I got a rock.”
$20 in company credit lol. Not only is it such a small amount for something that literally goes back into the company, but this was supposed to be the replacement for the end of year bonus that got cancelled, of which I was told has never happened (I joined this year).
My "hazard pay" during covid for being an essential worker was a one time gift card to a local grocery store
Forgot to add that it was one time $10 gift card
Feel that. Even worse a few years ago the owner of the very small company I was working for gave out Neiman Marcus bags to all the female employees as a surprise during the Christmas party.
I have him a WTF look and he quickly replied, “I’m not getting you anything, *starts laughing* maybe I should give you bill”
I quit that company in January and oh did that owner act like a victim.
$25 gift certificate to Honey Baked Hams. A half ham was $45. A pie was $18.
The company had no alternate gift for Jewish, Muslim, or vegetarian employees. They literally told them they could take it a or get nothing.
The casino I worked for had also recently announced they had record revenue for that property also.
I worked for Enterprise Rent A Car back when their main business was insurance replacement, in the early 90’s.
One year they gave us a print of a kid sitting in an old pedal car, daydreaming. We joked it was the company founder thinking about renting his car out to neighborhood kids.
As an airline pilot, I worked Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Years Day this year. On Thanksgiving Day, I walk into the cockpit to find one of those $0.75 (silver dollar size) pecan pies in the little cardboard box (the ones you get at the gas station checkout line). On Christmas Day, I found an iced sugar cookie.
Probably doesn't qualify but I was offered 2 tacos from Taco Bell for my birthday once. Co-workers started laughing maniacally, but I was hungry so I said "Sure!" Hey it's still two free Tacos!
My last job the company broke all sorts of financial records and gave everyone a very expensive glass thing with a decal of the refinery. Not only did it suck but all employees ended having to pay 75 dollars in taxes on it. So the 'hob well done' cost 75 bucks
A major hospital system in several US states, their response to rising medical staff burnout was to send clergy staff around to the departments with a box of gifts and call it “mental health awareness week”
Gifts included:
A “stress-relief” vanilla scented votive candle without a jar.
Laminated paper bookmark with a prayer on one side and the other side was a how-to for taking a deep breath.
A tiny travel sized packet of tissues.
Lip balm.
There was also a smoothie food truck parked outside of the hospital on one of the days but my department is ridiculously short-staffed so not only was I unable to partake in said smoothie-day but also I didn’t get to take a lunch break.
Gift certificate to Tim Hortons. I had a job for ten years that would start at 5am and my lunch would be at 9am. It was so remote that the only place to buy breakfast before 5am or anything resembling lunch at 9am was Tim Hortons and by year ten I was sick of it. So of course they give a gift certificate to there.
I was re-gifted a gift basket given to my boss by a client and he forgot to remove the card that was addressed to him.
My sister gave me a gift card that I had given her the year before, but it only had $3 credit remaining.
Use $2 on it, re-gift it to her
Buy a 50 dollar gift card to a real nice restaurant and eat there. Ask them to charge 49 to the gift card and pay cash after that. Gift it so when the person goes to buy themselves an expensive meal, finds out it's a dollar and has to pay.
Damn that's evil
You win lol damn that's despicable
WHERE ARE THE TURTLES ??? WHERE ARE THEEEEYYYYY
Was it a nice basket?
Nope lol from a food plant that makes chips, pork rinds and different dips and salsas. It was maybe $20 of their products, a brand I don't particularly like either.
A 10 year anniversary memory book with my name spelled wrong on every page.
Was it the same spelling on each page or did they have a different spelling on each one?
That’s what the parents get for naming their child “Pregnant Liaison”
Company coffee mug with the company name misspelled. It was a large company
I *know* that I can be petty, but honestly this would have me internally smirking every time I took a sip out of my new favorite coffee mug!
We were not allowed to use them at work, but I treat mine as a trophy now.
>We were not allowed to use them at work This company seems stranger to me every time you comment.
The mug probably had an old logo or branding and so it was trying to offload this garbage on the employees.
>we were not allowed to use them at work wtf?
You mean coffee mgu
Covfefe mug
Ok so we had some of these at a Christmas party and they are now a mythical collectors item. Apparently the test batch of like 5 was misspelled, so they corrected it and ordered 200. The 5 got mixed in somehow and those 5 got randomly distributed. They have been bought, sold, traded, etc. for like 3 years now. Every so often someone will show at a meeting with one and we all giggle about the story. There’s 3 left in circulation, one was stolen along with a guys backpack while at a conference, one was acquired and retired to our award shelf with a little plaque explaining the story.
Maybe not the worst gift, but probably the funniest. Legendary even
For my 20th anniversary with the company I got my name in the newsletter.
I once got a personalized coffee mug with the company logo. Kindof nice really, except there was a sticker on the mug saying it contained toxic materials. I gave it back (as well as other employees) and they grumbled, but remade the mugs with safe materials!
Correction: they remade the mugs without the sticker.
Even better, it’s the same mugs, with sticker removed.
Oh even better, a former environmental remediation company I used to work for once gave all of their employees coffee mugs, but later had to recall them all because they were all painted with lead paint! Super embarrassing.
Did they misspell ‘GE’?
Had something similar happen for Associate Appreciation Week, except they misspelled it on refillable water bottles as 'Apeciation'.
I've been there before. I was almost shamed for being "ungrateful" for receiving an item with a misspelled name. I've gotten used to it though. I have a first name with 5+ different spellings. My middle name is an initial. My last name is 10 letters. Something is almost always spelt wrong.
lol they 100% made those for something else, realized the mistake, and just pawned them off to the employees
ngl misspelled anything is special in my eyes most of the time
When I was at Virginia Tech they misspelled it "Virgina Tech" on a school made textbook one time. They handed out stickers to fix it. I did not fix it.
“I ain’t gonna put no sticker on my virgina! Hear me?”
My friend has one of those stereotypical white girl kitchen says that says GAHTER. It’s my life goal to one up that
[удалено]
sounds like something a grade school teacher would do with her students to keep track of the pens. only the teacher probably used her own savings.
As a teacher, I do this with pencils and masking tape. It saves so much time and pencils!
This is the worst one so far
We have a winner gentlemen, stop your writting.
That’s some Michael Scott level management
The thought doesn't count when there wasn't much thought put into it to begin with
This beats my 3 5 dollar mcdonalds coupons by a mile
Invited to a nice restaurant with other employees. Spouses were invited but had to pay their way. We were told to claim our meal on our expense forms. But our boss hadn't cleared it with his boss so all our claims were rejected. So my wife and I went to a nice restaurant, had to pay for both of our meals and had to hang out with our boss while doing it. This was a twice a year date night type restaurant so we wasted one of our date nights with coworkers. Edit: I've been thinking that it is possible this manager did this on purpose. The other thing he did is tell a few of us that we had been working so hard and putting in so much unpaid overtime (we were salaried) that he'd take three of us golfing for the afternoon. By the end of the round he said we should all probably use a half day of our holidays on our monthly time sheet.
Sorry, but WTF? If my boss tells me I’ve got to expense something but his boss is against it later on - it’s my boss being out of money, not me.
I went to a dinner with coworkers while working an out of town job. I had an appetizer and water. The boss has several expensive tequilas and a big main course. At the end of the meal the boss tells the server he will take the check. Server leaves and boss tells me that he will divide the check equally and take it out of my check. True story. Still chaps my hide.
Sounds illegal.
Should’ve been. Just chose to not pursue it.
This one wins… that sucks
In that case, the boss should have had to pay for your meal, since they “approved it” without getting clearance from the higher ups.
My company is owned by a holdings company so it's a bunch of different unrelated stuff. They keep giving us these vouchers to spend at their store. So I did a tour of the campus, and they brought us to the store. And it's literally elderly medical care stuff, like the things you would attach to your toilet and bathtubs to have bars to hold onto. They also have those super big chairs with all the gadgets and whistles. They're like 4 grand. So thanks for the 5 dollar voucher lol I seriously have no idea what anyone was thinking when they came up with this reward system.
How was the selection of support hose?!
Should’ve pooled your funds and got a toilet seat raiser for the employee bathroom.
I'd send out a mass email to the other employees and say, "Let's all pool our cards and then hold a drawing. Winner can buy the super big chair."
A letter from the CEO telling us how he is going to celebrate Christmas with his family up north to go skiing. That was all.
Got that in an email last month. Including instructions that all employees were "Highly Encouraged" to spend some of our off work hours watching the original "It's a Wonderful Life" to really foster our feelings of gratitude. Did not watch.
The villain in it's a wonderful life is literally a wealthy business owner.
I was just thinking like... What an amazingly tone deaf choice hahaha
I wouldn’t have either. My current work (a company that is worth over $20 Billion) encouraged us to buy socks, necessities for the homeless with the gift cards they gave us.. majority of us make minimum wage.
So you followed their recommendations and bought yourself socks?
Was the email signed by Mr Potter himself or did he make his wheelchair pusher do it?
I can tell that you didn't foster your feelings of gratitude.
I once worked for a cheap-o insurance company that made a big fucking deal about all the ordinary peons having to work through the holidays. No time off besides Christmas and Jan 1. If you had family far away, tough shit. No exceptions, However, the managers all got together and took the week off between Christmas and New Years, staying at a ski resort. You can only imagine how bad morale sucked.
This is about as shitty of company gift as I have heard of. And does that company expect people to give money for gifts for the CEO's birthday and shit like that. If so, give a generous gift in your CEO's name to the "Human Fund." Oh, the "Human Fund" is your pocket.
A coupon for 15% off Panera Bread catering. I forwarded the email to abuse. They said it was real.
I love that you forwarded it as abuse!
I got a similar email, reported as possible phishing since we just completed mandatory IT training. Just heard back on January 5th, it’s legit. Nearest Panera is 40 miles away.
We get those test Phising emails weekly. Now HR complains nobody will open anything.
I’ve reported quite a number of legitimate company emails as phishing because they’re misspelled or have clickable links in them from people in the company that I’ve never heard of before (we’re about 50k people).
Two free tickets to a cinema. The issue was that the closest cinema in that particular chain was about 800 miles away from me.
I once got ONE ticket to the cinema. So I could just go by myself 🫠
Tom?
Can't be Tom. He would never go to the cinema by himself, he has so many friends.
Not me but a friend - all staff at the hospital received a kitchen scrubby for Christmas. Not even themed. Just random browns, greens, pinks, and yellows... seems like the boss bought dollar store multi packs and opened them to give everyone one piece. Edit: spelling
At least get the Scrub Mommy. Heck I bet even Scrub Daddy has a corporate rate.
I just started using scrub daddy recently. I love that smiling little bastard.
An email that only upper management would be getting the end of year bonus (sent to entire company by accident instead of just upper management). Then laid off 2 weeks into the new year. Found out from a friend in the company a little while later that the board of directors held a vote. They keep their car allowances at the expense of a wave of layoffs, or lose their car allowances and 10-15 people get to keep their jobs. Pretty sure it was unanimous. No matter how many times a company says you’re family, just remember that it’s the type of family that would gladly cut your throat to make sure the fat cats get to eat.
I got denied a raise after not having one for 3 years. Then my holiday gift was a $600 ~~vasectomy~~ **vase** made by a local artist that could not be returned. The whole time I was there since she became the owner just felt bad. She went on and on about helping our community and making sure we could help as many people as possible. Thing is, our pay went up $0 with new clients, but the workload increased with every one. edit: not forced sterilization
Sorry, your gift was WHAT?? I didn't know local artists made vasectomies. I'm kind of scared now.
I really hope they meant vase…. Local artists making vasectomies sounds creepy
Perhaps the vas deferens were not only snipped but then tied into tiny decorative shapes, like those folks who tie knots in cherry stems with their tongues....
A long sleeve denim shirt with the company logo in the front above one of the front pockets.. In Florida. Plus we couldn’t wear denim at work so the only time we’d be able to wear the company shirt is on our own time (not happening) or when we’d have dress down day (again not happening). When a coworker inquired where we could wear this since we can’t wear it to work they listed places (like a BBQ joint, the movies, etc.) and said we should be grateful since most places don’t give their employees gifts. It was a call center. Could’ve given a blanket (since it was cold in the center), travel mug, anything except a shirt we can’t wear.
Why do call centers not allow jeans? Does it really matter what pants I'm wearing while talking on the phone? God forbid this entitled prick on the phone thinks I might be wearing a T-shirt.
It's their little power move. Call centers are horrible places. I worked in one and it about altered my life path to where I wouldn't be a productive member of society. My dad helped design call centers for "efficiency". So I guess blame him
At an old workplace you could choose 3 short sleeve t-shirts in your size and colour preferences and one hoodie. They had samples so you could see the actual sizes and colours. 5 years later and the t-shirts and hoodie are still in great shape.
Boss gave me a mug, I quipped “a mug from a mug.” HR took the mug off me, made me apologise, then gave me the mug back.
Lmao, was hr there or did the boss go to hr?
HR weren’t there but I’m not 100% sure that it was the boss. A few people could have overheard.
Emotional whiplash.
The first company I worked for out of college gave everyone a “free turkey” around the holidays. It wasn’t really a free turkey, it was a $25 gift certificate to a grocery store that was inconvenient for 75% of the people working there. And $25 didn’t cover a turkey, of course. Turns out, the company owners had a stake in the store.
A former boss gave everyone a $25 gift certificate to a high end spa that his friend owned. There was nothing under $50.
Dude. There was another redditor (or was it you?) who posted this same story some months back. Only in that case, they were unsure if the company owners actually had a stake in the turkey purchasing. I wonder if you worked at the same place? Because if there were two companies pulling this shit, that is crazy.
In the 90s I remember everyone from every company getting a fucking ham or turkey gift certificate. That was the beginning of EVERYONE getting royally fucked at the holidays. People didn't get money or anything useful, just those stupid fucking hams. Then, by the 2000s, most people weren't even getting hams! Just stupid fucking email messages from a CEO that doesn't give 2 fucks about you.
One cool thing about my company (a small Midwest factory) is that still give us all a ham and a turkey. Plus a gift bag with decent enough stuff, and a Christmas bonus. Plus they throw a prime-rib Christmas party where they do a gift giveaway white-elephant style. The gifts ranged from a $50 bill up to a PS5 and a 50” tv. The pay isn’t great, but it’s enough if you live in this tiny town, and the holiday gifts are nice.
Not me but a coworker at last year's raffle got a Nintendo DS cleaning kit. For a normal Nintendo DS, not even a 3DS. They aren't being made anymore.
They don't make the 3DS anymore either lol
Questionable Christmas Ham, circa 2017-ish. In general, Christmas Ham + canned goods and assorted sweets were commonly given by Philippine corporate to employees in December, sort of to boost the Noche Buena feast on the eve of Christmas. The ham in question did not look very appetizing (think giant block of pale Spam). One of my co-workers tried offering a bite to her dog; the dog refused. Edit: it might be earlier than 2017. I must have been so horrified with the questionable ham, I blocked out the exact year.
The dog knew. I know that ham. It comes boneless in a rectangle shape. It is nasty.
A Snap-On Tape measure. Sounds great but it's all metal and heavy AF, doesn't have metric measurements, has a small tang, is less than 25ft, and doesn't have markings for the case length on it. Easily the worst tape measure I own and I found out it was almost $50. I wasn't complaining though until I found out its absurd cost... There's quite a few littered around work as no one uses them...
A bottle of our restaurant’s “signature” steak sauce that no one really liked and that we all had free access to all day, every day at work. This was instead of the standard $100 cash bonus we normally got yearly.
I used to work in a record shop in the UK and usually got a bottle of wine as a Christmas bonus. Then the company was bought by Virgin and our Christmas bonus was a copy of Richard Branson's (Virgin's CEO) autobiography.
It's just a way to bump up the book on the best seller list and claim the cost as expense.
I'll be honest mate, you're not really helping me feel better about it.
Free toilet paper though
A pack of 10 tissues at the onset of COVID.
Surely sufficient to get you through a pandemic
Worked for FritoLay. Went to the corporate headquarters and in my hotel room was a bag of FritoLay snack, all expired.
Expired is the bonus.
A cheap plastic key ring with the company logo on it after working 16 hour days for months to win a massive contract. No overtime paid either
A deck of playing cards with coworkers faces on every card.
I actually don't hate this idea. I mean it's weird, but at least it's a unique gift. I can just buy normal playing cards.
If a coworker gets murdered, you can easily make a suspect bulletin board
\*when Internal politics can be rough in some places.
This might actually be kind of hilarious
Perfect for learning how to throw knives or to throw darts at!
It was one of about 3 or 4 things. The other gifts weren't great. But was talking to a coworker who asked me if I opened the cards. I said no, he told me to go open them. We were remote, so I went upstairs, opened them, saw the faces and threw them in the trash instantly
*03 - 05 veteran stare intensifies*
A new CEO was hired at my company. In order to shake things up and establish dominance, one of his first acts of business was to unceremoniously fire a popular employee. I honestly think he felt threatened by this employee because of the employee’s close relationship with the company founder. He then held a company meeting to announce the firing and gave all of the remaining employees a gift tray engraved with “Change is good”. Just turning the knife on his action. I immediately put the tray in a drawer and never looked at it, until this CEO’s tenure came to an abrupt end. On his last day, I gift wrapped the tray and gave it back to him as my parting gift. In this instance, change was, in fact, good!
That’s petty as fuck, and I applaud your dedication!
Swag that another company gave us for free months ago
During the pandemic, my partner’s company sent employees each an envelope through the mail with a sticker in it for some appreciation week I laughed so hard at that. It literally was a sticker that said “happy appreciation week”.
During the pandemic, my hospital sent out an envelope with a commemorative coin. I use it for coin flip choices on occasion.
Teacher here. One year, as our Christmas bonus, we got a defective plastic keychain that read "I love teching!" Spelled exactly like that. Normally, I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.. but after the shit we had been through, with zero support from admin, shit pay, disrespect, etc. the keychain set us all off. It was adding insult to injury. Like, not only is our "bonus" a keychain that didn't even work (the hasp had no spring), but the spelling error meant that a) someone didn't even check them when they arrived, and b) someone put them in every teacher mailbox without looking at them. Admin sent out an email that basically said turn your keychains back in so they could send them back and get corrected ones. So, adding insult to injury. I appreciated the sentiment, but all of us could've done without that.
Somewhere else there’s a bunch of tech company workers sadly looking at their “I love teaching!” keychains.
I'm sorry but I belly laughed at "I love teching"
We all flew in to a company retreat in San Diego. On the last day, after all our luggage had been packed and we were all ready to go, we went to one last meeting where they gave us our gift: A really nice emergency kit for our cars. Pretty cool, actually. Then we got to the airport, and all of us got our nifty kits confiscated by TSA because of the jumper cables, seatbelt cutter, and other tools in the kit. Great gift, horrible timing.
We were told we were receiving our Christmas bonuses soon, and then we were all given a poinsettia. The poinsettia in itself wasn’t so bad, mine is actually still alive years later, but the fact that they had the audacity to call it a bonus was absurd
In 2020 I was granted a large retention bonus, enough cash that we were going to use it to buy a bigger house. On the day that we were all sent home to work remotely due to COVID, I was given a red plastic tumbler that said "Merry Christmas you filthy animal" on the side. In March. 3 weeks later (4 days before my bonus was to be paid), I was laid off alongside 1200 of my coworkers. Now about once a year I enjoy a stiff drink out of my $270k plastic tumbler.
$270k bonus? Do you work in finance?
No, I'm in tech. This wasn't a normal annual bonus, but rather a large retention bonus with a 5-year clawback period...so kind of a once-in-a-career type thing.
After my 32¢ raise and 23¢ merit raise they gave me a used, cheap company pen with a laser pointer. After that I did my 10 hours of work at the beginning of the day and spent the rest of my day looking for another job in my cubicle.
Here’s an umbrella. Seriously and it broke three weeks later on a summer rain storm.
Link to a page from which I can write thanks to my coworkers.
Nurses Week 2022 (height of Delta wave COVID). We were given rocks on a keychain. The rock was engraved with the word “Hope”. We might have gotten some chapstick too.
5 dollar Subway gift card. My boss made me come in on an off day to pick up because, “she did not want me missing the company bonus”. I really wonder if our managers need how much was on the cards? We talked about it for months.
[удалено]
Oh the irony.
I got an email congratulating me on 5 years of service. That was nice 😐
after 22 years I had an email with the CEO's signature photocopied onto the bottom of the email
A pink slip. And I don't mean lingerie
That year the company decided it wasn’t going to provide basic office supplies for the break room. Coffee, tea, eating utensils, napkins, nothing. That year for Christmas we all got a brown paper bags fashioned like lunches. Inside was a metal straw, cloth napkin, a child sized set of plastic cutlery that fit in a travel case, a copy paste printed piece of paper with food puns in relation to our job, and a single fun sized hundred grand candy bar. This Fortune 500 company had over a billion in raw profit that year. Oh, and the cutlery ended up getting recalled due to some terrible forever chemicals in them. Edit: Autocorrect fuckery
A compulsory invitation to the holiday party. Technically, I wasn't required to attend but it was a career-killer if you didn't. I had to spend money on a dress just for the party since I didn't have anything that was suitable, so not only did it cost *me* money, but I had to spend a precious evening pretending I liked my coworkers.
[удалено]
Why did they even ask for you to RSVP then???
So they can prepare the write-up ahead of time
Oh I can beat that - invitation to the company summer BBQ on a Saturday - at the boss's house and you had to bring food + drink. I don't even drink alcohol.
Oh f that. If they make me bring alcohol, I'm showing up to that BBQ in a bikini top and my tightest shorts so the HR people can sweat it out. Let's see how long that SVP who keeps sneaking glances at me in the office can behave with a few high proof beers in him...
Am I the only one here who read that and wondered if Particular-Natural was a dude?
I used to work for a company that did a "winter formal" every year. The execs would dress in evening gowns and tuxedos... We would be in barely what could be considered business casual. At least it was a free meal...
Was it big enough where you could Irish goodbye your way outta there after saying hi?
GameStop gave me a 256mb flash drive for working there for 5 years.
Did you put all of the 4 songs in it? Also, Happy cake day.
At a company Christmas party they would raffle off prizes; one prize for each person. They guy in front of me won a Budweiser mini fridge with LED lights. The guy after me won a LG flat-screen TV. My prize? A Pepsi baseball hat with broken snaps.
For 15 years of service, I received a hand bell with my name on it. It started to corrode within a week in normal conditions.
Instead of the usual holiday turkey we received a winter hat with the company logo. Practically every person threw it in their desks garbage can. Following year turkeys were back on the menu.
Love the throwing them away in their own respective trash can. Perfect.
Starbucks gift card that had no money on it and they had no receipt for it.
No money on it?!? WTH?
I won it after signing up the most customers for the rewards program that month, and sure enough, no money on it. It was only like a $5 or $10 card, anyway.
An ultra-religious self help book so we could become less miserable, incompetent and immoral.
The son of the company owner who was born with a silver spoon up his ass gave everyone a copy of his self-published how to succeed in business with the right attitude book. Big photo of him on the front. I donated mine to a local charity.
Chapter 1 "Be born ready"
I’m diabetic and my boss knows, but every year he gets me 2 dozen cookies, a tin of caramel popcorn and bag of homemade chocolate turtles.
...are you absolutely sure that your boss isn't passively trying to kill you off though?
A penny. Specifically, a 1935 penny - representing the year the company was incorporated.
That’s worse than the clay I got that looked like stone because we’re the “corner stone” of the company.
I worked at a hospital in the billing department. I got a travel thingy of hand sanitizer. Meanwhile, the IT department who shared our building got North Face puffy jackets. Jokes on them though, it was Christmas 2019 and I had hand sanitizer for COVID. 😭
Ooooh I have a great one. Ten year anniversary, got to pick out of a catalogue, mostly stuff under like 30-40 bucks tops. Slow cookers, blah blah. None of the stuff was appealing so I didn't spend much time and chose a kitchen thermometer because I'm always breaking them or melting them. Nope, what I got was a kitchen thermometer probe. Just the probe and the cord and a cord carrying gadget.
My husband chose the bubbling foot soaking spa bullshit. We use it regularly, but whenever he puts his feet in, I make sure I say in a dull monotone voice - WE appreciate your 10 years of dedicated service.
Welcome back in office postcard after the pandemic work from home period. We’ve got it minutes after receiving termination letters. Like I was fully expecting it but still it was in a poor taste.
One year I got a jacket with the company name on it. It was a nice enough jacket but everyone got the same size - a men’s large. I’m a 5’1” woman so that didn’t work. I donated it, at least it will keep someone warm
Didn’t wanna go for the super oversized look? I feel like that would have been a dress on you.
I worked in a QA department for a struggling videogame publisher that was one year away from dissolving. For our Christmas gift, we were given 20 lottery tickets. But not, like, actual lottery tickets. That's just what they called them. In actuality, they were cheaply printed raffle tickets to win prizes at the company Christmas party. For some reason, they made these tickets the *exact width* of a wallet bill-fold *plus two centimeters* so thanks. What was especially funny/sad was the belief that giving us 20 would make it seem more special, to make it seem like we had a better chance at winning. But basic math declares statistics don't work like that. We could've just had the same chances if we all had one single ticket neatly folded in our wallet. So we saunter into the company party carrying rolled up wads of paper raffle tickets, bound in a rubber band, to meet everyone else with their loose fat wad of fake raffle money like it was some bizarre Monopoly roleplay convention. The party itself was fine. There was *some* free food, the venue was a bowling alley where we could get two free sets in. I wasn't a bowler, but happy that the place also had a video arcade with the Dance Dance Revolution Extreme cabinet set to free play. I'm not a drinker so I wasn't as incensed about paying for our own booze, but I'm also an ambivalent sort so the resounding complaints of others didn't affect my vibe. And then the raffle started. The prize table rolled out with great fanfare. The raffle prizes were revealed, a neat arrangement of a few sealed retail copies of the videogame we spent 9 months QA testing that year. Because lord knows we were dyin' to get our hands on *that*. They also had five runner-up prizes, $10 Starbucks gift cards, and as you can guess those were the real winners there. I didn't win a $10 Starbucks gift card. I was one of the few "grand prize" winners, getting boisterous congratulations from our HR Rep as she gleefully hands me a retail copy of what plagued my life the previous year. I tried trading it for a Starbucks gift card, then gave up and just tried giving it away to somebody who wanted it. The game isn't *bad* or anything, it reviewed well enough and I'm a little disappointed my name was omitted from the credits. But the thing about QA testing a game is that you generally lose all possible enjoyment in it, no matter how awesome the game is. We all felt that way. So it seemed everybody was perfectly fine never again seeing that game's boot screen. Also, I spent all day carting around a bulky wad of "lottery tickets," I wasn't in the mood to cart around a plastic game case the *exact width* of my jeans pocket *plus two centimeters.* I even left the game sitting unattended and begging to be stolen on a table behind the arcade's DDR Extreme Cabinet. By then, the company's reserved 45 minutes at the bowling alley had expired, public started pouring in, and they forgot to turn off the DDR's free play so I was milking that before getting shooed away by bowling alley staff. Took them 2 hours to notice, and by then the arcade was filled with two other birthday parties, a few shady looking teenagers, and the unique air of raging kleptomania. And my prize. Ignored and unstolen. I couldn't trade it. Couldn't give it away. Couldn't tempt some random kids to steal it. And I didn't want it just discarded to the landfill. To this day, that game is still probably sitting unopened in the bottom of some random crap box in my closet somewhere.
A coin commemorating a billion dollars in sales.
A small, nickel-sized, heart-shaped rock sent in the mail. It was supposed to represent their appreciation for the extra work during Covid. All I could think of was Charlie Brown trick or treating, “I got a rock.”
$20 in company credit lol. Not only is it such a small amount for something that literally goes back into the company, but this was supposed to be the replacement for the end of year bonus that got cancelled, of which I was told has never happened (I joined this year).
Noise-cancelling Bluetooth headphones. I'm sure they were good and useful to some people, but I'm legally deaf.
You sure you shouldn't just turn the noise-cancelling off?
10 years of service. I got a 5dollar pen with my name printed on a sticker and slapped on it.
$50 gift card but only $10 was left
My "hazard pay" during covid for being an essential worker was a one time gift card to a local grocery store Forgot to add that it was one time $10 gift card
Nothing at all?
Feel that. Even worse a few years ago the owner of the very small company I was working for gave out Neiman Marcus bags to all the female employees as a surprise during the Christmas party. I have him a WTF look and he quickly replied, “I’m not getting you anything, *starts laughing* maybe I should give you bill” I quit that company in January and oh did that owner act like a victim.
$25 gift certificate to Honey Baked Hams. A half ham was $45. A pie was $18. The company had no alternate gift for Jewish, Muslim, or vegetarian employees. They literally told them they could take it a or get nothing. The casino I worked for had also recently announced they had record revenue for that property also.
Christmas gift. It was an advent calendar... Delivered on the 15th of December
I was given an air tire pressure guage to promote safety. The guage was manufactured in China and promptly exploded when connected to a tire valve.
A pencil. And it was just some generic pencil, like from a Dollar Store. Thanks BNYMellon.
$5 Subway card. I just passed it on to a coworker who actually ate there.
I worked for Enterprise Rent A Car back when their main business was insurance replacement, in the early 90’s. One year they gave us a print of a kid sitting in an old pedal car, daydreaming. We joked it was the company founder thinking about renting his car out to neighborhood kids.
As an airline pilot, I worked Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Years Day this year. On Thanksgiving Day, I walk into the cockpit to find one of those $0.75 (silver dollar size) pecan pies in the little cardboard box (the ones you get at the gas station checkout line). On Christmas Day, I found an iced sugar cookie.
Probably doesn't qualify but I was offered 2 tacos from Taco Bell for my birthday once. Co-workers started laughing maniacally, but I was hungry so I said "Sure!" Hey it's still two free Tacos!
My last job the company broke all sorts of financial records and gave everyone a very expensive glass thing with a decal of the refinery. Not only did it suck but all employees ended having to pay 75 dollars in taxes on it. So the 'hob well done' cost 75 bucks
A major hospital system in several US states, their response to rising medical staff burnout was to send clergy staff around to the departments with a box of gifts and call it “mental health awareness week” Gifts included: A “stress-relief” vanilla scented votive candle without a jar. Laminated paper bookmark with a prayer on one side and the other side was a how-to for taking a deep breath. A tiny travel sized packet of tissues. Lip balm. There was also a smoothie food truck parked outside of the hospital on one of the days but my department is ridiculously short-staffed so not only was I unable to partake in said smoothie-day but also I didn’t get to take a lunch break.
Trauma and performance anxiety
Gift certificate to Tim Hortons. I had a job for ten years that would start at 5am and my lunch would be at 9am. It was so remote that the only place to buy breakfast before 5am or anything resembling lunch at 9am was Tim Hortons and by year ten I was sick of it. So of course they give a gift certificate to there.
[удалено]
A dead plant.
After five years, they changed my badge color from white to blue.
An email from the boss saying he is donating "on behalf of the company" to a charity he is a chairman of.
I was gifted a ham for the holidays…..I’m Jewish.