Employee gift ideas that make people feel bad
tremendous.com
tremendous.com
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...
The eng team was extremely confused about what had broken our webflow setup (we do some magic with Cloudflare workers to point our marketing pages at at Webflow with a custom domain)... and then I saw that we were frontpage.
A gift represents a decision made on behalf of the receiver by the giver. In very few situations would the receiver make the same decision as the giver with the same resources. It's assumed that the receiver will use the same resources in an optimal manner, so gift-giving is a net negative.
In some circumstances, gifts are valued higher by the receiver than the giver. Gifts of time, of expertise, of opportunity, or things that the giver can get at a much lower cost than the receiver - these can be more appreciated.
Anyway, that's my grand theory of gifting, and why I generally avoid it, unless I can make it worthwhile to the gift receiver.
I love making gifts to people, without expecting anything in return, but still wondered why it sometimes seemed to drive people away. That's why the "Law of Reciprocity"[0][1] never sat right with me while I experienced more personal anecdotal evidence for the reverse phenomenon [2].
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocity_(social_psychology...
I don't consider gifts as the items solely. The person who brought the gift spent some time pondering what would I like, gave his/her best shot. Spent time and funds to acquire this and gave it to me.
Yes, it might not be the exact item I'd get; yes, it might not be crazy expensive (or just flat out cheap and simple). But it's a small anchor which makes me remember the person who gave me the gift and the occasion. The thoughtfulness and kindness what makes a gift, a gift.
That gift is priceless for me from now on. It can be a mug, it can be a pin, it can be a watch, or anything.
Putting everything on a material perspective is just not very kind, and is a great disservice to the person who bought the gift.
Items of low value, carefully selected, actually work really well for gifts! I think the process of curation can dramatically increase their perceived value, compared to a "serious" gift. But at some point, you just have too much stuff of all kinds, and you have to start getting rid of it.
Have a 75-year old friend that thought exactly like this and because of it, her house ended up being cluttered with tons of cat trinkets that she didn't want because her coworkers happen to find out "she likes cats". So she had cat figurines, cat pot holders, cat pins, cat stuffed toys, cat Christmas ornaments, etc. Decades of accumulated stuff like that. The items were things she didn't enjoy and would never buy herself but she hung on to them because of the cultural meme of "it's the thought that counts!" being beat into her head. She's not an assertive person so it wasn't in her personality to tell people to "stop getting me cat things" -- so she just smiled and thanked them. And because she felt "obligated" to the thoughtfulness and memory of the giver, she felt compelled to keep everything and constantly relocate them to the next house when she had to move. She didn't know what to do with all of it and it didn't feel right to her to throw it all away.
I finally convinced her to just put all the accumulated gifts on Craigslist as a "free giveaway". This was the psychological breakthrough she needed because she knew whoever would come get them would actually want the items. She finally was able to de-clutter her house.
I was only able to give her that advice because 99% of the gifts I received just created clutter in my house and my brain.
>, and is a great disservice to the person who bought the gift.
As counterpoint, buying a gift can be a disservice to the recipient as you've now added a destructive mental loop in their brain that has to figure out how to reconcile the giver's generosity with an unwanted item.
The above situation makes me wonder if society needs a total re-think of gifting etiquette where only very close family relations exchange gifts such as husbands/wives and parents/children.
For lesser relations like coworkers, the counterintuitive thinking that can make life better: not buying a gift is "the gift of not forcing the recipients to expend mental energy about that unwanted item later in life".
My friend did enjoy giftcards from Starbucks. She likes coffee and it didn't clutter up the house. The problem with gift cards is that many think it's too vulgar (or "low effort") because it's a thin veneer over cash. Understandable. But that's also why she keeps getting "real gifts" she doesn't want.
In my experience "I don't give gifts because gift giving isn't efficient and here's a study proving my point" isn't conducive to fostering friendships.
If the people you hang out with think cat trinkets or socks are good gifts, I get why you became so jaded to it. Becoming the person that can give such gifts that are in the categories you appreciate, and cultivating friendships with others that do the same is way better approach in my view than just walking away from gift giving as a whole.
That is essentially gifting them your time and honestly I appreciate the company more than trinkets
I also tend to give out worn out or very old gifts to people who appreciate them. It's not easy as writing for me, too, but I know the real dangers of having an unintended hoarder's den.
On the other side of the equation, if my friend tells me that buying them these gifts creates mental load and clutter in their life, I'd listen. I'd instead gift experiences and/or expendables (e.g. gift cards), if he/she accepts.
I think these matters can be discussed, and it will certainly improve the friendship and the relationship between two parties.
If I can get enough information about people, I'd buy them what they like. This can be socks, gift cards, or just a box of chocolate.
I don't wish my gifts become burdens or pain points in one's life. I'd also not get offended if someone gives away something I gifted.
Being human and good relations is rooted in communication. No need to put this into hard molds and make people miserable by projecting our values over others under nice names. I buy gifts to make people smile. If I can learn what makes you smile most, I'll get that one. If not getting one will make you smile, I'll get you none.
Except when someone is in need of material things, I think he was right
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/14/man-accidental...
"The flight had been a gift from colleagues and the man felt he couldn’t refuse."
But even that can trip up people who like to keep stuff in pristine condition. I think there would be a market for products that come in a "open" state - the cover torn off, a fake outer seal broken, 3 chocolate slots empty ("eaten") etc. so they can be more suitable for hoarders.
Similar story with wine. Someone went to the effort of buying me a bottle that you can't get in USA from my home country and it was really special.
Buying something is transactional, but making something takes effort. My $1.30 cents of clay to make each knock-off baby Yoda figure one year was a huge hit compared to the $300-400 for some other themed item on Etsy.
Gifts from an employer are kind of blah to me as well. You’re spending money you could have given me but think you know better, because it’s tax deductible.
Apple crap is basically cash. I was able to sell it for sticker price within the week.
FYI, while I do not think this (or any) deduction should exist, this is only $25 per year for non cash or non cash equivalent gifts:
https://www.irs.gov/faqs/small-business-self-employed-other-...
There's "I remember you and I want to show that I care about you" gifts.
These days, I'm ambivalent about such gifts, whether it's giving them or accepting them. It's not the love I'm ambivalent about, it's just that it's also usually a ... thing. Which takes up space.
But there are also "Man, you've got to see this!" gifts. Not just something that the receiver will like, but which the giver loves also. Things that grow what you have in common.
These gifts need familiarity and trust. If the giver isn't on the same wavelength as the receiver, it becomes a "this is your sort of thing, isn't it?" gift instead, and they are not the same, even when they hit the mark.
And of course, a "you've got to see this" gift from a stanger is just a promotional sample. There has to be familiarity already, otherwise it's an imposition. "Why did you think I wanted to be more like you?"
My brother is the one who most usually gives the good "you've got to see this" gifts to me, and I dare hope I've managed to give some back.
That's a hell of an assumption to make. There's a very real chance they spent 2 seconds buying something last minute because they were obligated to buy you something! I see my girlfriend do it every Christmas.
That's a hell of an assumption to make. In my family we negotiate what we going to buy for every member for at least two weeks, taking account what they are going to like and what they actually need, amongst other criteria.
Any friend of mine and my wife also gets the same treatment, as far as I experienced.
BTW, nobody is obliged to buy me anything for any day. I'm perfectly OK with that.
I agree with you re: thoughtful gifts given to (or received from} people you have a relationship with. But I dont cosider employer gifts in this category. I view employee-employee gifts EXACTLY how the parent does. They tend to be impersonal (especially when given to the whole office) junk that gets forgotten, passed on or resold.
I'm also from an Asian background where cash is more acceptable. I feel any other form of gifting is a ruse to increase consumerism, i.e. the popularity of gift registries, the perception that one isnt thoughtful if you dont yet a good gift etc.
Best gift ever and good for the environment.
I do prefer receiving gifts when those gifts are informed. Which is why asking about desired gifts is perfectly fine.
There are certain classes of things that I do not consider necessary yet I would desire and for which the variety available results in paralysis of choice. For these, having the giver choose, and having the thing have additional sentimental value (it is from the giver) makes it more valuable than the thing itself.
Gifts are an emotional thing so it's no wonder that they don't make much sense from a purely rational perspective, as (at least most of the time) that's not the point of gifting.
A communicative gift is I know they won't like TinTin the way I do but given that they are a lesbian that wants to read lesbian focused literature maybe give them the Locas: Maggie and Hopey stories and they will get that you considered them in choosing what to get, but also to introduce something to them that you like that you value and that you hope they will value as well.
You chose well.
You need to try giving someone honey from a beehive you maintain. People seem to love it and come back for more. I have hundreds of kilos spare.
Still, people appreciate it a lot, much more than if I purchased a better-looking loaf of bread from a professional baker for 2-3€.
I don't think it's necessarily tied to the value it represents to the receiver, it's the act of kindness with the unexpectedness of a gift that gives it value.
I enjoy baking sourdough loaves to return favors though e.g. if s neighbour takes care of my lawn while I'm away. That's fun and keeps the books balanced.
The basic idea is let's measure what the gift cost and what the receiver valued it at. But not everything that matters can be measured and not everything that is measured, matters. The study should have accounted for the strength of relationship between the gifter and gifted and how it was affected by the gift. It should have measured social status of the gifter before and after. These deepened bonds and increased social status could pay off later in the year. The 2001 paper Poverty and public celebrations in rural India (https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/2528.html) examines that idea and finds it to be true.
When you're looking at an institution that has developed independently thousands of times across human history in wildly disparate cultures, you need to ask yourself what benefit it brings before dismissing it.
This comment reminds me of the teenage atheists who think religion is worthless because it's a bunch of made up stuff they don't believe is true. Regardless of what they believe, religion has independently developed and flourished in a number of cultures. Religions that involve regular congregations bring benefits to their members, such as living longer, happier lives.
[citation needed]
Association of Religious Service Attendance With Mortality Among Women (2016) - https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar....
> Women who went to any kind of religious service more than once a week had a 33% lower chance than their secular peers of dying during the 16-year study-follow-up period.
I would hazard a guess the removed bit is actually very important, because having a social network has been shown to improve lives: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=social+network+and+old+age&ia=web (hopefully that's enough citation), and regularly showing up to congregation is probably a huge step in having a social network.
And of course it's not much use to someone who doesn't like wine (they may have had a non-alcoholic alternative).
It's like giving out RTX 3080s en masse. Most people won't get the value of what you spent.
(reached the first page too!)
exception: sexual favours ?
On other side picking what to give is endless source of anxiety to me.
It’s only a “net negative” if the receiver of the gift can’t afford their necessities.
The same is true when there is information asymmetry. I wouldn’t spend $10 on this specific candy from Japan, because I didn’t know it existed. It’s “non optimal” and again that’s the gift. I get to try a new candy I’ve never heard of.
Yes, we're privileged to get a free coffee, but relative to our paycheck, it's a pointless gift and just smacks of being out of touch with employee sentiment at the time.
Up to a maximum of $100 per year.
Or in other words, a benefit you could never even notice you had.
To be honest I think I would prefer a complementary Prime subscription.
Guess I now know why the Prime Video interface is so terrible!
[The upper text]
"As a small thank you for your effort during the corona year, we'd like to offer you an ice cream during the hot weather in summer."
[The lower text on yellow background]
"The voucher is valid for the selected ice creams in this [kiosk]. You're welcome!"
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Suomi/comments/o9g934/%C3%A4itini_t...
It's still not going to significantly raise morale on its own, but at least it's not going to sink it further, and it focuses on the nice gesture instead of the bureaucracy.
This retailer obv had massive campaigns for black friday, but also obv very shitty and inflexible systems.
This buddy of mine found that the black friday promotions pricings import failed 5 min before midnight. Meaning that not only would there be no black friday pricing, there would be no pricing at all on the site for 24h until the next pricing run.
He pulled some heroics and managed to fix the import in time and black friday was a success.
So he saved the company 5M GBP in profits, singlehandedly.
As a thanks he got a 25 GBP gift card to the same site.
But 25$ is quite an embarrassment. Nothing would have been better in that case.
And also a very long uncomfortable conversation with whichever architects or seniors decided it was okay for Black Friday pricing to only be uploaded five minutes before midnight - what the hell is that about?
If you pay a one-off bonus for outstanding work, make sure you tie it to something specific the employee can understand. If it's a reward for a massive deal decide in advance if you want to pay out similar bonuses for similar deals in the future and what the rules are.
An employer-employee relationship is not a friendship no matter how much you like each other. It's a dependent relationship and it needs rules to protect both sides. A five figure bonus is a big deal for many employees so treat them with the dignity they deserve by making sure they can understand the conditions. If you think there aren't any that just means you haven't spelled them out or don't want to be held accountable.
According to the story, no. The regular employees in the regular system failed, and OP person decided to act like an owner and save the company, outside of job responsibilities, covering up for management's failure to build and test a reliable system. Did the OP person get paid like an owneror promoted to a leadership position for being a leader? No.
I did not get a thanks - gratitude is meaningless, as whoever expresses it for whatever reason will be perfectly happy to turn around and rip your face off five minutes later having entirely forgotten that you just saved their bacon - however I also did not get a kick in the nuts, so that’s good enough for me.
Personally, that might've been a time I'd look and whether it was time for a promotion, even though I think rewarding heroics is tricky for engineering culture (better to celebrate work that means heroics never required).
The real problem obviously was that the company was so shittily run that heroics were needed to save the day. Also my buddy was junior enough to care and do it.
It's pretty sickening to see that people in this thread seem to focus on the moral hazard of thanking via a monetary means, where will this stop? One should not get paid? Not the management that led to this and also to the top level post of totally inept token gifts.
Great right? You have just given folks incentive to plant problems and reap the reward. You might say, they can audit and if you caused the problem, you don't get the reward. Great! Now, let's collude with another team mate, I cause they problem, they fix it, we split the rewards.
Once you give monetary incentive, folks start figuring out ways to game it.
There was an agreement on how much he was paid, the company paid that. Doesn't matter if he saved 5M in profits or not. What if he had failed? Or what if he was the reason the pricing import failed? Would it be okay for the company to penalize him by clawing back some of the money he had been paid in the past?
"Just given"? Doesn't this incentive already exist in the world with or without direct cash bounties for fixing problems?
the COMPANY was run really shittily already, there was absolutely no effing reason to plant anything. all the people tried to make the company better, for shitty effing pay.
have you ever seen a world where people take some kind of pride in their work? want to have a positive impact?
I think giving 25 pounds was strictly worse than not giving anything at all. This was an insult.
A thank you without a gift is way less insulting than a thank you with a paltry or trivial gift.
This is true, but he didn't make that 5M. If you count every contributing factor to that 5M, you end up with a vast amount of money. The power not going down saved the company 5M. The people who made the goods made the company 5M. The people who set the prices made the company 5M. Or, they were all doing their jobs, and 5M was made.
Whoever made that mistake should have just taken your buddy out for a nice dinner.
Also completely agree with everyone on the misaligned incentives.
The production/assembly building would get very hot in the summer. One day, a decision was made to pass out bottles of Gatorade to the workers in the building. The marketing/sales department decided to turn this into a social media 'opportunity', they left their air-conditioned offices to have pictures taken of them handing cold bottles of Gatorade to the production floor employees.
They made it look like an act of charity on LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.
What I've seen other employers do is provide large coolers of drinks and cups for employees to have throughout the day when it's very hot out.
Even dumber than that, this happened just weeks after the company removed the soft drink vending machines from the building because of 'health' reasons.
That's the best logic I can discern here. I honestly have no idea.
My guess would be that whatever abstraction they used ended up with no content produced (because of timeout or whatever) so the framework could not satisfy any of the content types that the client accepts. Still another error would be better but I can see how it could happen.
We still don't know what broke here - the Cloudflare worker or Webflow, or the combination of the two.
I’m allergic to casein and whey (proteins found in milk). And any amount of cross-contamination will make me physically sick. Caffeine and alcohol aggravate my mental health issues.
This was a disaster at my last job.
Every event involving food, one of the following happens:
- Pizza party, donuts, cake, etc as rewards. A number of people choose not to eat these because of calories, so people allergic to the food can choose not to eat it.
- Spend over a hour making a list of safe restaurants that are too expensive for me to ever have been to and still getting sick because food safety is for plebs.
- Help plan the catering for an event I’d rather not attend.
- Standing around awkwardly while everyone apologizes multiple times for forgetting my food allergies. I don’t want to be there and now I am responsible for making everyone else feel better about the situation.
- Told to get lunch on my own and expense it. Forget the receipt and have accounting get my manager involved.
And for fun, the worst situation: a VIP coming to the office to work with me for two days on an important project.
Well, if course everyone involved had to go to dinner with him. I had to pick the restaurant. Said restaurant did in fact not understand food safety, despite their claims to the contrary. Realized this about half an hour into the meal. I was severely sick for the next two days and felt terrible for the next week.
The damage was severe enough I couldn’t keep food down initially. Probably should have gone the hospital, but I didn’t want to pay hundreds of dollars on top of my misery.
I suspect this was career limiting. Got a new job eventually. So fuck that guy.
I have celiac disease, so I also have a lot of issues with cross contamination at restaurants, and I have problems similar to GP.
I can usually eat at restaurants, but I need to ask a lot of questions and/or make sure I go when they aren't busy, so I can be reasonably sure that the kitchen staff have the time to ensure that my food isn't contaminated. I also need to avoid fast casual restaurants unless it looks like the food bins at the counter have been recently replenished (less risk of utensil contamination).
I simply don't eat at company events, and for that reason I too don't put any value on food as a company gift. I try to eat pretty healthy anyway, so I don't mind being barred from pizza, Italian combo sandwiches, and tacos. When the team goes out to lunch, I usually walk with them to the door of the restaurant, and then go my own way.
That said, GP seems to be carrying a lot of guilt and bearing a lot of emotional burden related to this. Seems like the company work environment might have been disrespectful and/or toxic for other reasons, of which the food issues were a symptom.
For me, being aware of relationship politics and social expectations to be a necessary survival skill.
I’m also in the Midwest. Food safety is a bit of a foreign concept out here.
In maybe an unrelated note, a few of those employees later stole from the company.
In my legislative framework, branded stuff is considered "advertisement", which can be given out with any amount of value to employees. Non-branded stuff - or money - would be taxable income. With a tax rate of up to 48%, that's a difference, and paperwork for the employee.
So I have a very nice thermos with my employer's logo on it, and I am quite happy about it.
I managed to fly in the same week the swag arrived. There were 5+ open boxes of swag visible, but person responsible for handing them out wasn’t available every time I checked. I didn’t matter that my name, size, and selection was on the list. After I went home there was a company-wide email there were “extras” available for pickup in the office. They hadn’t ordered extras, they were the remote employees’ orders.
This happened twice.
There are people who don’t have a life outside of work and they live for those things. For me, it’s just another obligation. I’d rather a cheap beer in a dive with my actual friends over a posh corporate wine mixer any day.
How convenient.
I would love see the numbers behind the survey and the questionaire and the selection method of the sample.
Still, I prefer something more personal than money.
I'm not sure how you could insult people more. Even no gift would be less insulting.
I'm fairly sure I've already spent more than $100 in my time on trying to use it. So in a sense, I was gifted negative money. When I realised this I ended up throwing it in the rubbish bin.
It would have been so much more efficient for everyone involved to just send me an extra $100 in cash. Put it in an envelope with a fancy card if you want to make it special. But eh, gotta feed the gift card business.
Does it? I’ve never experienced this.
A company is not a person. A good gift or a bad gift makes me feel the company made a business decision that affected me, just like any other business decision that affected me.
Extra Leave Days.
That would not only motivate me, but it would result in an overall higher level of productivity.
It was very motivating
But the generic "give one of these to everyone in the company" gifts? Nah.
That sort of thing sadly only seems to happen at small companies where people really know each other. If the CEO says "we're pulling someone off deliveries to send Jon a gift" then it happens, but beyond a certain scale you end up having to go through an approval chain to do so, and someone higher up that chain takes one look at it and says "no, its more profitable for us not to do that, send him an Amazon voucher instead".
It's a sad reality, but the one we live in.
I would say the quality of a gift matters. A big part is managing expectations though, if employees aren't expecting a gift, you have a lot more freedom than if something is expected. A free Paczki on Fat Tuesday is more appreciated than a Christmas cookie (especially if referred to as a bonus).
How did this happen? Something between backend and frontend breaking under the HN load?
In a rather interesting twist, this page serves up Datadome's bot management scripts; but I wonder why they don't proceed with the fingerprinting as opposed to directly blocking the user.
Also a grocery card is kind of insulting. Sure everyone buys groceries, but giving one can be interpreted as implying you think they need help paying for food.
----
My company contracted out its "performance rewards" gifts to a 3rd party company. As far as I can tell ALL of the items are 2x overpriced in points, compared to gift cards, but the gift card selection isn't great. At least for a couple items I was looking I could get the offered item via one of the offered gift cards and save literally hundreds of dollars.
Another suggestion for the list: don't do that, and make things a good deal, or at least value them fairly.
In a previous gig we were on the receiving end of a fairly pathetic "Christmas bonus". It was $100, which is a decent amount, but after tax we only saw about $60 of it. The "insult" was very much compounded by the fact that the previous year's bonus had been $300, and worse, that the company sent out an email the previous week which said "expect a little something extra in your paycheck next week, Merry Christmas!".
Then your check hits your account and you're like "... wait, is this even different than my normal pay" and then you're logging into ADP to check your statement only to realize "oh, it's just $60".
I don't ever like to complain about free money - after all, it's pure sugar on top of your agreed upon salary no matter how you slice it - but at some juncture you hit the point where it's just not even worth the trouble.
I strongly disagree, at least in my area and culture. It's widely assumed that employers will provide some kind of year-end holiday-time bonus. It's just as much a part of exprcted total compensation as tips in industries afflicted by that cancer.
An employer stiffing employees deserves to be called out for violating norms.
There was a lot to like about the pitch, but my reaction to the “rewards store” was “ugh, this feels like the incredibly manipulative and icky ‘reward catalogs’ we got whenever their was a youth fundraiser. It would lower my trust in the company. Can we just do cash?”
Apparently they could do that, but the sales team couldn’t conceive of the “rewards center” as being a turnoff. They either truly thought it added value or it was so central to their business model they couldn’t believe people might not want it.
The most contact I've had with sales is walking through their area, but it just comes of as a totally alien culture to me. Their walls were covered with posters about this or that quarter's big prize. They even had an area commemorating the big prizes from years past.
I think it's a great way to show your employees they are valued. I don't need a pizza party with co-workers or some junk I'll toss in a corner and never use.
-specific retailer -food -household(ish) item
I've gotten some great swag, clothing mostly - a very very nice couple of jackets, headphones (which were made by a sibling in our conglomerate) and a pack of misc snacks - plus the ubiquitous coffee cups.
This year on offer is an 8 lb ham, an 11-13lb turkey, a mix of foods, or a premium chocolate sampler, or I can donate the equivalent to the local food bank.
Yeah, i dont think the problem there is just that it is swag.
Lots of swag is kind of crap, but on occasion i've gotten some higher end swag, and i dont really mind it.
When I was an employee I hated non-work related stuff as part of work
turns out, even the patronizing stuff is team building amongst the workers. they build rapport with each other by talking about how patronizing it is. shrug. moving on.
I mostly don't care about gifts but there is one that had me burst laughing; Company wanted to celebrate "employee appreciation day" or something like that. We received a big announcement from the CEO with... a 10$ gift card. It's coming from a good sentiment but is my work only appreciated to only 10$ ?? ahah I can keep my head around it, how can anybody thought it was a good idea, feels so cheap and even unnecessary as we were paid decently. It was definitely net negative for the company but still makes me laugh.
The candy bar I received was melted and the ink pen did not work.
This was a couple of days after I learned that I would not receive a bonus that almost every other employee received.
Things I do feel bad is either crappy quality things, or things I couldn't use - like gift card for a place I don't go to, or crappy tshirt I would never wear, etc. - that's just waste and I am becoming part of it, that makes me feel bad.
So dippy me just starts shovelling the sidewalk in front of one of the shops on main street, a good chunk of storefront between the shop and the street that hadn't been done when the others had been.
It took a good hour or more, and I cleaned it all up good, no haphazard slack job. Then the owner comes out when it's all done and gives me 2 quarters. This is about '77 to '79, that's 1978 to be clear not 1878...
I go home and my dad asks how I did and I tell him, and he said first, you should have asked if he wanted his sidewalk shovelled first, and agreed on a price before doing it, so in that sense you can't complain because you did that to yourself. However seperately, you should have given him the 50 cents back and said no thank you sir. if this is all you can spare, then you obviously must need it more than me. And refuse to take the 50 cents and even refuse to take anything even if he then offers more. You were wrong to just start doing something without being told to, but he should be ashamed to do that.
That is what's wrong with a $5 gift. Or an uttery thoughtless gift. Keep it. You obviously need it more than me.
It's more about dignity and respect and thoughtfullness than plain money, but a tiny token money value with no other aspect to make it more about being funny or something, is itself a message.
> It's more about dignity and respect and thoughtfullness
I guess I just don't think people giving me money for free is an affront to my dignity. In fact, I am willing to accept monetary donations of any size (well, maybe above $1, otherwise it's too much trouble to bother) - as long as they are not accompanied with any reciprocal expectation from me. As I said, if there are expectation or cultural norm, that's different business.
That store owner absolutely deserved to be humiliated. It doesn't matter the tiniest little bit about the kid didn't make an agreement first. I suppose you will now call the unsolicited shovelling vandalism and the store owner actually should have called the cops?
Do you not have any sense of perspective or context?
Not full retribution, but we were all chasing the startup dream, or perhaps a bigger bonus later. There's some value in small short-term rewards, to show appreciation.
When I first moved to the US I wasn't particularly flush with cash and had maybe a 1000 bucks in my pocket by the end of the first year. At some point I worked a Saturday and my manager gave me a $50 gift card to Ruth's Chris as a thank you. So I went with a friend only to come to the conclusion the cheapest steak on the menu was $60 to begin with, oh the shock I felt.
The gifts that really get me going are the 500 mAh power banks that probably cost all of $2, tiny terrible speakers were a thing for a while too. They'll end up in a drawer or the landfill.
You could imagine I'd be against drinking tap water, no - I've been doing that for years. But I am against lugging bespoke branded water bottles around and I can not get over the fact how people would assume they're even a decent gift.
If after all of that, you would rather actually see your family for a change, or catch up with friends, or get some of your chores done that've been piling up due to work, or relax with some hobbies - then somehow you're painted as the bad guy who hates their coworkers and isn't a team player just because you don't want to spend 24/7 with them?
Employees are here for the money. Having an interesting job, a good work environment, perks, flexibility, etc... is a nice plus but no matter what you are doing, none of your employees will work for free.
Employees are not stupid, when they receive gifts, they know where the money is coming from, and it is money they could have received as extra pay, and they most likely would have made better use of that money than whatever gift they received. Give them money, that's why they are here.
There may be some good reasons for other gifts: taxes. If you give money to your employees, it may be considered salary and taxed as such. An gift card may not, and it can be almost as good as cash depending on where you can use it.
They were shit bagels, and cold, but the employees got to work early on bagel day and they stood in line to get one.
They all seemed to love it as much as I hated it.
rewarding say a much harder *year* of work over COVID with a few giftcards or $50 sucks balls because everyone knows we deserve much more than that. the only meaningful rewards are large bonuses or promotions and that will just never happen.
The socks complaint really bugs me. If I received a pair of socks from my boss, as long as they weren't tube socks, I'd actually like and use them! As long as you don't love in the tropics, it's hard to have too many socks.
Company swag can be great when it's medium or high quality, or at least a bit exclusive.
A few examples:
* Medium- or high-end backpack, jacket, or other clothing embroidered with then coolest version of the company logo
* Soft and comfy team- or project-specific designed t-shirt or hoodie
* Branded shades or tennis shoes
* Cash is always nice, too
As long as the gift isn't offensively cheap or completely thoughtless, I wouldn't respond harshly or harbor any bad feelings. Any token of appreciation is likely better than none at all.
Perhaps best to be considerate and ask around beforehand and allow people to opt out from the gift? This could help minimize the likelihood of negative responses and feels.
p.s. Who remembers Chevy Chase in Christmas Vacation? That was a quintessential example of an offensive company holiday gift; IIRC, without any warning, the cheap-ass boss swapped a long-standing cash bonus for a fruit club membership.
At larger companies, I noticed that you can do a give away with tables along the path to the cafeteria, etc, and really get away with giving out shwag of pretty much no value in a way that pleases quite a few either because they get excited by anything free or they get caught up in the moment, branding as a sort of collectible, etc.
Yeah, agreed. After a moment of reflection I edited it down to opting out of a singular gift.
If it's a 5€ thing for a shop you have to get to first that might actually eat up the benefits already. (I'm in Europe, if I have to go to the city center I'd actually pay 6 € for both ways with public transport and probably 2-4 € in parking (+ gas)).
So yeah, unless I'm taking the bike it would probably not make sense to go out of my way to even cash in a 10 € voucher if it's not online or something I frequent anyway. There are no malls here in a sense that I'd be stopping by on even a monthly basis.
It’s pretty wild that when you look at one of his later character’s, Pierce Hawthorne in Community; an old inappropriate white guy, you still don’t see such behaviors played for gags to mock the inappropriateness of it in modern times to such an extent.
The mockeries of that era are tamer than the reality even in light hearted comedy.
I wondered aloud to my partner, would they be happier if they just got a certificate?
Also gifting is social MADness, as gifts imply fortifying alliances, i gifted you, the others did not gift, we are allies in social warfare, now, like it or not. Its trying to enhance a social bond, meanwhile the best gift is a respect for the life time of a human being. Not many companies who respect that, unless its expensive as hell.
Can't really complain, can see how gift cards go unappreciated though. Usually just top up my Amazon account balance and use it on everyday things or gifts for other people.
This year, cryptocurrency and NFTs are also making news as Diwali gifts.
Cryptocurrencies and NFTs shall be taxable in the hands of the recipient under Section 56 (2) of the Income-tax Act, 1961 if total value exceeds Rs.50,000 for the year.
To be honest a lot of the things company do don't even seem like profit maximization (since a Christmas gift could easily be argued that way), they just feel like constant short term thinking, medium to long term be damned. They know this is worse for them eventually, but yet they do it anyway since that 1% saved today across the whole company might be a big number.
A lot of it all comes back to poor management training and how they spend too much time maximizing the balance sheet rather than maximizing the workplace itself. Same reason why IT pros spent years trying to get two monitors regardless of the well known productivity gains.
But non-cheap high-status gifts can make a positive difference. I know one company ordered an upscale Christmas hamper for everyone, with home delivery. It had a very good effect on morale and was much appreciated.
It depends a bit on the swag but I have gotten some pretty decent "swag" over the years some of which I had been using privately for quite some time.
Through it depends on the context, there are quite a bunch of situations where giving someone a gift can feel more insulting then anything else.
Well usually I order hot chocolate when at starbucks. They do not have only coffee. So this specific example seems like looking for a problem.
Companies: just give money as gift. Period.
What is this crap? Socks are the best gift. Didn't the author stop to wonder why everybody gives people socks during the holiday season? Because virtually everybody uses socks, because socks wear out fast, because new socks are the most comfortable and it's always nice to get a new pair even if you already have lots of socks. If anybody asks me what I want as a gift, I tell them socks.
I love groceries for my birthday and Christmas. Things I wouldn’t normally get like fancy sauces or beef jerky or special sodas. Because every long-term item I already have, don’t want, or you aren’t likely to get the correct one.
Because socks are short lived, they’re kind of like that without someone feeling bad about the gift. Nobody but my wife feels comfortable getting me groceries.
My family knows not to buy me socks…
As I must wear smart clothes to work, and white socks with a suit is a fashion faux pas, this means I must wear smart boots to work. But this works for me as then I choose zip-up boots to save time doing laces.
I acknowledge this 'life hack' is a minor time and convenience saving with some drawbacks, and clearly won't work for everyone. But as a working father with two young children, this gives me a little more time to spend on myself, and a little more time with them.
I do the exact same thing because when i do my laundry i don't want to spend my time trying to find socks that match, and have the same wear level.
I don't like socks as a gift for a secondary reason. I have tiny feet for a man and I have been gifted socks (twice??). Both times they were size 10 and what should have been the ankle was half way up my calf? What am i to do with them?
It's strange to expect the same treatment here.
Imagine giving your kids a presentvfor their birthday, and it's a pencil holder with your name on it. You don't give "worlds best dad" mugs to your kids.
A place before that, we had company xmas dinners, but the compny was smaller and the dinners were always at some actually very nice local place, no junky chains, and we got plain bonuses, and for my 10 year anniversary they gave me a nice Tag Heuyer watch.
The watch was only about $1,200 or so in value so it wasn't exactly a lot of money spread over 10 years, and something like a watch is easy to not be appreciated because people have different styles and might not like what you buy. But it was pretty neutral style and I'll tell you, it did NOT make me feel unappreciated. I never bothered wearing a watch before that, so I wasn't even a watch wearer, and it turns out that the self-winding feature of mine never seemed to work (even while being active and shaking it) and I can't be assed to bother winding it so it's never actually tellng the right time or date, and I can afford way more expensive watches in whatever exact style I want if I actually wanted a fancy status watch, but I've worn that thing every day since 2010 just as jewelry. It only means anything to me and my wife, but it made me feel very appreciated.
True, I gave them all "world's luckiest kids" mugs, it's far more appropriate.
It also matches their bedroom decor... https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2005-12-04
Wrong. There is no "form" needed for taxation, it is required by the IRS (in U.S.) and the company does not "tax" anyone. Employer gifts (other than de minimis amounts) are taxable compensation. (see IRS Publication 15-B for details).
A good employer will "gross up" cash gifts to cover the taxes.
They gave me once a nice winter jacket... but not with their logo embroidered on it but my nickname.
Needless to say, I'll keep it for a loooong while.
This was a coaster - hard to get more minimis than that.
Must you really be this blunt?