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."'"

Comments

Christmas Vacation

[Pharmboy]

At least it isn't what happened to poor Clark Griswold, getting a "Jelly of the Month" certificate for a Christmas bonus.

Re:Christmas Vacation

[HockeyPuck]

To quote the great Clark Griswald, what do you say when you get the Jelly of the Month Club?

Hey. If any of you are looking for any last-minute gift ideas for me, I have one. I'd like Frank Shirley, my boss, right here tonight. I want him brought from his happy holiday slumber over there on Melody Lane with all the other rich people and I want him brought right here, with a big ribbon on his head, and I want to look him straight in the eye and I want to tell him what a cheap, lying, no-good, rotten, four-flushing, low-life, snake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, blood-sucking, dog-kissing, brainless, dickless, hopeless, heartless, fat-ass, bug-eyed, stiff-legged, spotty-lipped, worm-headed sack of monkey shit he is. Hallelujah. Holy shit. Where's the Tylenol?

Re:Christmas Vacation

[Lord Prox]

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

Re:Christmas Vacation

[cayenne8]

"My poor father has it pretty bad. He is an architect and puts in around 80 a week (not as an option) ..."

That sucks. A suggestion?

Maybe suggest your father, for the New Year, looks for a better job? I'm betting he is salary? There is NO reason to be working an extra 40 hrs for them for free.

Never work for free.....you time is too valuable.

Bah humbug.

[IANAAC]

I'll get modded troll for this, but...

When I was working for corporations, I always expected a bonus, gifts, whatever at holiday time and was nearly always dissapointed.

Now that I've been working for myself the last couple of years, I don't make as much money as I did with corporations, but I'm generally a happier person, in that I can set my own hours (well, somewhat) and spend more time with my family and friends. That to me is far more useful than any trinket or bonus.

I've also come to realize that token gifts from the company NEVER meant anything, and was never anything I could ever use - the corporate logo paperweight fits that bill - much like the years of service gifts with the coporate logos on them.

Sure, when I got bonuses the extra money was nice, but really, it's not something anyone should come to expect.

Don't expect anything and you won't be dissappointed. They're already paying you to do you job.

Re:Bah humbug.

[felix rayman]

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.

Re:Bah humbug.

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

When advice on to how to deal with the current state of the employment market is summed up as, "They're already paying you to do you job," perhaps it is time for workers to get pissed off about people who deliberately misquote summaries.

Re:Bah humbug.

[rjshields]

It's actually quite sound advice. Take the scenario that you are contracted to a do certain number of hours, but often work over that for whatever reason, and then feel hard done by that you get nothing in return. If you just try a bit harder to stick to those contracted hours, you won't feel so bad. People might also respect you more for not allowing yourself to be treated like a bitch.

Re:Bah humbug.

[killjoe]

You are right. Every working person should realize that they are just cogs in a machine. You don't matter to your employer, you are just a body easily exchanged for another body or better yet some machine. You should do your job, collect your money and never ever give your employer anything beyond exactly what you are paid to do. By the same token demand to be paid for every minute you work and demand that your employer define exactly what is expected of you so that they are not asking you to do a bunch of stuff for free.

Remember your company is not a person. You don't owe it anything beyond your time and the terms of your employment. Anything else has got to cost more to your company. Also demand as much money as possible, they will never ever give you a penny above that.

Finally, unionize. Your employee is trying very hard to reduce your pay as much as possible, you need a way to fight for what you are due.

It's a war, fight to win.

Re:Bah humbug.

[monoqlith]

Consider yourself lucky. I work for Myself too. My boss, Me, is a real dickhead. This year, he made all of his employees work on Christmas. Sometimes, he makes up reasons to fire people around the holidays, just for fun. Last year, he rented a hotel around Christmas so he could bang his secretary while his wife was at home preparing the holiday meal. He even made a big scene at last year's office event, drove home a little wrecked, and ended up crashing his Mercedes into a children's playground. Man, you should be grateful you don't work for Me. He's a real douchebag.

Re:Bah humbug.

[FLEB]

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?

Re:Bah humbug.

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

There is no contradiction between doing a good job and only doing what you have agreed to do. If an employer wants employees that will do a good job, then they need to make sure that is part of the employment agreement. For example, as a contractor who bills top-dollar I promise and deliver top-quality work -- my clients are happy with the results and I am happy with the compensation. In fact, that's the underlying premise of free markets - both parties derive value from the transaction and neither party is exploited.

Furthermore, I do tend to shop at minimum service stores for exactly that reason - no matter how up-scale the store, there is no guarantee of quality of service. I've been screwed over enough times - paying up-scale prices and receiving down-scale service, that I've learned not to play that game any more.

Re:Bah humbug.

[karmatic]

Wow. Who are you working for? Might I suggest you work somewhere else?

I've worked 9 to 5 (IT and services), union and non-union (Airlines). Unions have their place, but they are always going to have overhead. When the jobs aren't in horribly short supply, you can typically negotiate way better on your own. Working for America West (union), the guys I worked with would always do the bare minimum of what they were required to do to get paid. The pay took this into consideration, and it wasn't very good. I was there to work (didn't really need the money, but the flight benefits were nice); my coworkers would get ticked that I would take break time to go help out people on other gates. I'm paid to work, not paid to sit around - despite what the union contract said. Merit didn't matter, promotions and pay were based on time served, and it was almost impossible to get yourself promoted, or fired.

I also went to work for Mesa Airlines (America West Express, same facilities and terminal. Non union.) From what I understand, they weren't allowed to pay more than America West (contractual obligations); however, it didn't really matter. On time for work - $0.25/hour bonus. Working during the summer - $100 bonus. Company did well - $100 bonus. I made way more than any of the America West guys did in the same position, and since my coworkers could be fired, we got a way better caliber employee. Since the union didn't get involved, it was a lot easier for motivated people to make more money, and get promoted. On the other hand, lazy people who are just there to pay their dues do tend to stay where they are.

Finally, unionize. Your employee[sic] is trying very hard to reduce your pay as much as possible, you need a way to fight for what you are due.
This, quite frankly, can be stupid advice depending on the state, and the company. I run a software company, and I hate unions with a passion. I'm in a right to work state for a reason (sadly, airlines are covered under the railway act, and can unionize). If you are a competent, hard-working, educated person, with a skill useful enough to justify your salary, you should not (generally speaking - there are some exception) need a union.

I do take offense to the "trying very hard to reduce your pay" quip. Not all employers are like this, and I most certainly am not one of them. Paying employees the same, regardless of the quality of the work they do, results in disgruntled, unproductive, unhappy employees who do the bare minimum required to not get fired. Why would you want to run a company you wouldn't want to work for? I choose to pay above average rates, for above average service. I'll pay for education, too. Employees who have fun, and are paid well for what they do are less likely to go to the competition, less likely to produce crap software, less likely to steal. I have one employee (a developer) who is utterly irreplaceable. He is one of the top people in his field. He also makes more than I do, because he adds more to the company than I do. I can be honest; he does things for the company that I can't. I have another employee who will be making a $25,000 USD bonus after this last contract we made. That's more than what he made in two years at his last job (not a US guy).

In short, while I don't know everyone, I do know me (and a few jobs I've worked). Not everyone is out there to screw you; however, large corporations tend to be really large for a reason (and it's not being nice). Learn a skill worth something, and go to work in a field where you can make a difference (whether for yourself, or someone else). Work with a group of people who care about each other, where it's not just about squeezing every last bit of productivity out of an employee before you discard his drained husk.

Of course, if the economy gets REALLY screwed up, unions may once again serve a useful purpose. When you have college graduates working at McDonalds (nationwide, so moving isn't an o

Re:Bah humbug.

[aamcf]

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.

Re:Bah humbug.

[mabhatter654]

My experience is that it's almost always the BOSS that starts the antagonisms. In corporations it's usually passed down from "on high" as some way to squeeze out the "lazy" employees. That makes it a fight from the top down and always set's up the bad mojo.. because you can't ever PROVE your office/department/etc. isn't the problem.. they'll always find some metric that's off and say they want better.

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.

Reverse it...

[chill]

If the company I'm contracted to guarantees me an 80-hour week, I'd happily work it. The time-and-a-half would more than make up for the inconvenience. Hell, *I'd* buy *them* a $100 gift card.

  Charles

No mention of HP?

[AuMatar]

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.

Re:No mention of HP?

[jcr]

HP docked your pay for the week? Was that a Carly idea?

Apple closes from December 23 to January 2, and they paid us our regular salary for that time.

-jcr

Re:No mention of HP?

[AuMatar]

To top this off- they make you pay for the Christmas party too. Our division fought that for 1 year, and it came from up high to start making people pay, it demoralized people in other divisions for ours to be free. Amazingly, the number of people going dropped overnight, and the number of engineers who go is almost 0- noone wanted to pay 25-35 for a black tie party with a bunch of people you didn't know. Shocking. Marketing still made an almost 100% appearance rate.

Re:Cookies

[flyingfsck]

*Two* cookies huh? So, where is mine???

Cheapskates!

[NoseBag]

After meeting or exceeding all of our yearly company goals and setting a new profit level, each of us salaried folks received a bonus envelope with 25 brand-new,consecutively-numbered one-dollar bills in it.

I still have it, 8 years later. I'm no longer with the company though.

Re:Cheapskates!

[CthulhuDreamer]

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.

What companies give the BEST Christmas Gift?

[jsnz]

I work for a bank and we get a hamper with Christmas cake, bottle of wine, cookies etc. Not bad considering they give this to about 10,000 employees. What is the best gift you have recieved?

Re:What companies give the BEST Christmas Gift?

[The Living Fractal]

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

Re:What companies give the BEST Christmas Gift?

[Bug-Y2K]

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

I give cash

[NineNine]

I give all of my people AT LEAST $200 in no-strings-attached cash, tax-free in an envelope. And $200 is for a new, part-time employee. I would never dream of giving them a $15 gift card. That's just shitty.

Eh. That's life.

[SocialEngineer]

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.

We have to pay for our christmas party.

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

No alcohol or ciggies at Le Mart de Wal

[lee n. field]

From the linked article:

offered employees a $25 Wal-Mart holiday gift card, but that the card couldn't be used to buy alcohol or cigarettes.

I'd blow it on ammunition anyway.

You missed the last part.

[IANAAC]

I said "They're already paying you to do your job."

If you wanted or expected more, you should have asked for it up front. It amazes me that people complain about not getting something they didn't ask for in the first place.

Re:You missed the last part.

[ScrewMaster]

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.

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 ... 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 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 ... 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

There are a lot of Carly Fiorinas running the show nowadays: the work force is expendable.

Hey, we always get a Christmas bonus...

[HanzoSpam]

Hell, every year, my company gives us a bonus...

....they bend us over a barrel, and then they bone us.

Ah, yes! My first Christmas bonus.

[flabbergasted]

I was straight out of graduate school. I took a job in the Northeast, and the company paid all of my moving expenses to relocate me from Texas to Massachusetts. Five and half months later I'm sitting in my office when the vice president comes around to give me a bonus check. Now I wasn't even expecting a bonus, so I was thrilled to get it! Then I opened the envelope and discovered that they had given me a bonus of $2400...from which they then deducted my moving expenses, leaving me with $59. In a matter of seconds, I went from being thrilled to get any kind of a bonus (no matter how small!) to feeling like I had been servered a piping hot bowl of cream of shit soup.

Big Surprise.

[macthulhu]

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.

Wait a minute....

[TrappedByMyself]

Atheism is the new cool, but we're still expecting perks for Jesus day?