My office ignored my surgery, undergrad using ChatGPT to network badly, and more
askamanager.org
askamanager.org
I too fall under millennial on the younger side.
I think if you work for a very tiny company that will really badly miss you, then you have a higher chance of them recognizing you but also have a higher chance of them replacing you quickly too. Anything else, you are generally a clog in a machine.
I've worked at 3 small shops over the past 15 years (wow, 20 as a "young millenial"? You're busy!), and I'm on the older side of millenial...yes, cards get passed around, but no, flowers don't typically get sent out. There's a couple people who make sure that wedding anniversaries, employment anniversaries, birthdays etc. get mentioned at company meetings, most of us engineers shrivel under the spotlight. I have noticed that many of my coworkers glow when they get a compliment - "Take the time off, you deserve it after that hard work on the Acme Inc project", "Your services were rock solid and needed no maintenance while you were out for surgery", etc. but flowers? Cards? Don't care.
We DO make sure to send flowers and cards to the boomer-generation receptionists who pass the cards. I don't think the rest of us would care if the birthday cards stopped going around, but it's clearly of critical importance to those ladies.
The way large companies do it is just jarring. When my coworkers find out it's my birthday, it's because a random lady from HR is asking them which one is me so they can deliver the card.
In smaller firms I've had we've done this but it was precisely because of our size and relationships. In a larger company people might not be connecting the same way.
Perhaps that’s the difference between my experience and others’ posting here: we are small enough that nothing feels like “the company” doing something, we all retain our individuality at this scale.