Slashdot Mirror
America's Worst Christmas Parties
Ant writes "Slate Magazine asked its readers to submit reports of horrible office Christmas parties, gifts, and bonuses. Of nearly 200 submissions, they've chosen quite a few tales for The Corporate Scrooge Contest Results ... and they're not pretty. From the article: 'A contract consultant sends word that the company to which he is currently assigned recently sent out an e-mail to some 2,000-odd consultants. The company would give away two $100 gift cards--to two of the brave souls who would commit to work 80 hours between Dec. 18 and Dec. 31. As our correspondent noted: "Hey, if you work Christmas, we'll put you in a pool of 2,000 other folks to maybe win a hundred bucks."'"
HP has to be up there. In the four years I worked there, not only was there no bonus, they shut the office down that week, forcing you to either go without pay (even if you were salaried, your pay was docked) or take sick days.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I work at a daily newspaper as an artist and web developer (primarily) - high stress, low pay.
We got $20 Chamber of Commerce gift certificates. Woo. I actually wouldn't care if my hours were decent - while I am supposed to only work 8 hours a day (and regulations state that I can't work more than 6 hours without a break), I have many days where I end up working late when everybody else leaves.
Take, for instance, the day before Thanksgiving. It started at 9 AM, and went until about 12:30 AM Thanksgiving morning, with no break. 15.5 hours. The overtime sucked, too (thanks to taxes).
This friday everybody in the office was told that they could leave at 3 assuming the paper was done. Of course, this means that hourly employees lose a couple hours work. Thankfully, though, my day wasn't done - not even close - at 3 PM. Most people left - one of the artists stuck around and helped for a while, but there wasn't much she could do, so she left too. I got home about 7:30 PM.
Of course, since I'm just a 5 minute walk from the office (I couldn't afford a car and gas, anyway), I'm the one who gets called in whenever something needs to be fixed before the paper can print.
Hooray. $20 that can only be used locally at select places. That makes me feel really valuable. Sad part is, corporate actually has a policy against Christmas bonuses.
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
I work for Big Oil, and this year every employee in the state got a gift worth $450, after taxes. Yep, they paid for the gift via our paychecks, deducted taxes from the additional money (it was like $620 gross) and deducted the $450 after taxes for the gift. I.E. the paycheck was no larger than normal but you got a $450 gift with taxes already paid. I thought that was pretty nice.
We also received 'end of the year' checks for $1,000 after taxes and our bonus is usually around 10% of our yearly gross (so anywhere from $11,000 to $20,000 for most employees).
When I take a second to think about it, I really consider myself fortunate. I love this company.
TLF
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
When advice on to how to deal with the current state of the employment market is summed up as, "Don't expect anything and you won't be dissappointed", perhaps it is time for workers to get pissed off, and start doing something about it.
Where I work the christmas party is $35. This year the ticket count was so low that one of the people in charge sent a company-wide email telling people it was in their "best interest" to attend.
Did I mention we get nothing in terms of bonuses, etc?
Forty bazillion bucks per quarter in profit, making more money per quarter than any other entity in the history of Capitalism, and they gave you $450?
--chuck
When I worked for a division of the world's largest media company, bonus money was given to middle managers to divide up amongst their staff, including themselves. A few years ago, I saw the email announcing the amount. My manager was given $9000 to divide amongst a department of 11 people. We received half gallon jugs of maple syrup from her parents' farm, she received $9000. The best part was that she failed to notice the stamp across the label that read "Quality Control: Rejected". The next year, it was certificates thanking us for a $10 donation to a local soup kitchen. Apparently, she thinks she's the only one who watched Seinfeld.
Someday a real rain is gonna come...
True, but it gets a little tricky. If you're an hourly employee, and you get your hourly pay (including any required or agreed-upon overtime), it's time to STFU. But salaried folks are a bit different. It's often expected (not without reason, depending upon the particular position and its responsibilities) that a salaried employee would put in some unspecified amount of time beyond the basic 40 hours (or whatever that is where you are.) For example, in my job I generally just work my regular hours, but it's expected that if a problem occurs or there is some other transient need that requires extra effort that we'll all pull together and take care of it. That's only ethical behavior on our part (don't want to leave a customer hanging in the wind) and the company is careful enough not demand that kind of plus time too often.
... yet it does! That's the amazing thing. Some of these guys honestly don't understand why their people would resent working 80 hour weeks, especially when the managers leave on time every day. The problems start when corporate types begin to see their underlings as "lucky to have a job". Things usually go from bad to worse at that point.
... and that's only rational behavior because they know that, with rare exceptions, employers cannot be trusted any longer. Corporate America got what it wanted: a ruthless generation of management that considers people to be replaceable components of limited utility, all in the name of more efficiency and lower costs. And when they discovered that we could be replaced with foreign labor at even greater (apparent) savings, they jumped at the chance. The irony is that they screwed themselves too, and we're all paying the price for their inhumanity
But yeah, when a company tries to save payroll costs by squeezing its staff too hard, management has no right whatsoever to expect anything resembling loyalty from said employees
And once that kind of corporate behavior becomes widespread (which it most certainly has here in the U.S.), employee loyalty drops and turnover increases. Workers feel no particular involvement with the success or failure of their employer, and will leave at the drop of a hat
There are a lot of Carly Fiorinas running the show nowadays: the work force is expendable.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I think that it was a serious, albeit overemphasized, considerable reaction to being treated as a simple device. Now, I'll personally say that a job that becomes this antagonistic isn't one worth keeping, but in such an environment, where you're being treated as a nothing more than a work machine, what motivation or obligation should you have to act as more?
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
I used to work for a manufacturing company that promised profit sharing if profits were above a certain amount. For years, they never had to pay out, but it was always mentioned by management as an incentive. Then a really good year came along, and we crossed the profit sharing line with several months to go before the end of the year. Every month, the profits were tallied, and the profit sharing pool grew, and grew.
December hits, and our company buys another company for 8+ million dollars, in cash. Two weeks later, they pay off some big loans with cash, eating almost a million dollars in pre-payment penalties on top of the loan amounts. The profit sharing pool drops to zero on the last week of the month.
Christmas comes and they pass out $15 gift certificates for Safeway as appreciation for all of our hard work. Most of the certificates were collected and given to the local food bank as a mass protest. I haven't paid attention to bonus programs or incentive programs since.
I agree with this. I'd prefer to be paid what I am worth through the year rather than have part of my salary withheld to be given to me as a "gift" at the end of the year. I used to work at one place where the Christmas bonus was an open bar at the company dinner - not worth much to someone like me who doesn't drink.
My poor father has it pretty bad. He is an architect and puts in around 80 a week (not as an option) and for the second (or is it the third?) year running got a $100 gift car. Not any gift card, mind you, but a gift card to the luxurious Ralph's supermarket.
It is more of an insult than a "thank you for your team effort". A simple handshake would be better.
Here is my fathers work
Bless my Pops. and curse his boss
It usually starts as "help out the company", get the project done on time... then devolves into you MUST do X amount mandatory "free" work or you're not "dedicated". As soon as the employees start giving out "free" work to get themselves caught up, the corporation immediately will rely on them to do the free work again.... and again... instead of updating their resources for the increased needs they have. I worked one place that pushed that to the limit.. I ended up leaving, but I wanted to "help out" with stuff not my specialty, then it just became "assumed" I would do it whenever with no more pay... or at least the "no more pay" gets forgot about when you go to say the "extra" stuff's not working out and you need somebody else to fill in a while... then it becomes "lazy employee's" fault for failing, "helping out" is almost always PUNISHED, never truly rewarded because it's not what you were "hired" for and somebody "hired" for the position you "helped" in will always do it better than you.