My boss+1 bought a whole bunch of tiny nerf footballs with the corporate logo and gave them out as a "Christmas bonus".

To be fair, everyone here knows that there is a language thing with this person, and what she meant was: here's a little bonus toy to play with; the implication being: in addition to the financial thank-you's..

It didn't take ten minutes before emails started flying that the annual financial bonus had been replaced with these $0.50 toys.

As a consultant, I'm not elilgible for a bonus so I'm just sitting here with a growing collection of abandoned bonus footballs as pissed off folks toss them.

Happy Holidays to All !!!

But there were no production credentials or customer information printed on the footballs? FAIL.

snoofle:

My boss+1 bought a whole bunch of tiny nerf footballs with the corporate logo and gave them out as a "Christmas bonus".

To be fair, everyone here knows that there is a language thing with this person, and what she meant was: here's a little bonus toy to play with; the implication being: in addition to the financial thank-you's..

It didn't take ten minutes before emails started flying that the annual financial bonus had been replaced with these $0.50 toys.

As a consultant, I'm not elilgible for a bonus so I'm just sitting here with a growing collection of abandoned bonus footballs as pissed off folks toss them.

Happy Holidays to All !!!

Apparently, not everyone knows the language issue B+1 has. The last place I worked as a consultant had one quirk that annoyed me a little more than it probably should have, but loot like that wasn't given to consultants. So I came in in the morning a couple times, and everyone but me and 2-3 other people would have, say, a baseball cap with the company logo on it on their desk. Yeah, way to save money and also make the consultants feel part of the team!

What's a Christmas Bonus?

Our company, at least, used to do holiday parties. Last year we went from after-hours holiday parties to a petting zoo in the parking lot. This year we had a catered lunch, cold turkey and veggies with a small piece of cake for desert. You had to buy drinks from the soda machine, and you weren't allowed to make two trips to the buffet line.

It was pretty sad.

Today, though, we all got Christmas cards and a piece of chocolate!

 As long as they're throwing them TOO you and not AT you.

I've been at my new job for a month and got the same Christmas gift as all my workmates: a pre-paid visa card, good because it is effectively cash and not taxed.

Though the office is covered in company-logo stress balls, from the boss unsuccessfully trying to give them away at a trade show.

In this economy, you should be paying your boss a Christmas bonus for the privilege of working for him!

Zemm:

I've been at my new job for a month and got the same Christmas gift as all my workmates: a pre-paid visa card, good because it is effectively cash and not taxed.

 

Hopefully the company is simply paying withholdings behind the scenes and putting it on your W2 - legally (assuming this is in the United States) you are obligated to pay taxes on those kind of bonuses exactly like cash bonuses.

Thais turn the "S" into a "T" at the end of a syllable, so "bonus" comes out as "bonut". One year the company was in trouble, so I went around telling everyone "This year we cannot give you a bonut, but we can give you a donut. Do you want a donut? Sorry, no bonut."

FrostCat:

So I came in in the morning a couple times, and everyone but me and 2-3 other people would have, say, a baseball cap with the company logo on it on their desk. Yeah, way to save money and also make the consultants feel part of the team!

 

That's silly, why would you spend money to treat consultants like other employees? It's not like they're people or anything.

 

These little footballs... they wouldn't perchance be green?

Cat:

Zemm:

I've been at my new job for a month and got the same Christmas gift as all my workmates: a pre-paid visa card, good because it is effectively cash and not taxed.

 

Hopefully the company is simply paying withholdings behind the scenes and putting it on your W2 - legally (assuming this is in the United States) you are obligated to pay taxes on those kind of bonuses exactly like cash bonuses.

Not the US. Hint: it's the middle of summer here.

Zemm:

Cat:

Zemm:

I've been at my new job for a month and got the same Christmas gift as all my workmates: a pre-paid visa card, good because it is effectively cash and not taxed.

 

Hopefully the company is simply paying withholdings behind the scenes and putting it on your W2 - legally (assuming this is in the United States) you are obligated to pay taxes on those kind of bonuses exactly like cash bonuses.

Not the US. Hint: it's the middle of summer here.

You live on the sun? Cool.

So did you all get what you wanted for Christmas from your employer? We all got a choice of a bottle of Jack Daniels or Irish Cream (50ml) with the caution of "Do not drink it on the premises". I think I downed mine before I got back to my desk, and seemingly, so did most people.

I got a 40-hour bonus. My wife spent it before I had even left the office...

No cash, but two weeks paid vacation was nice (a week more than I'd technically accrued).

I didn't receive a layoff notice or a pink slip, so I'm chalking this up to a win at this point.

I hear, for those of us who were here on Christmas Eve, that one of the executives came around and wished everyone Merry Christmas, and told them they could leave early. I took PTO though, and left town.

 Sadly, there are legal reasons they can't give you all those little bits of crap (toys, t-shirts, morale events...)

 When Microsoft was sued in the class action by temps, that was one things the plantiffs pointed too as evidence that they were just like employees. So now we can't even use the ping-pong table in the break room...

 I got ~$15,000 from that suit, but I wouldn't have filed for it on my own. It cost me more than that in the required breaks between contracts they have now. The jerks who filed it (I worked with one of them for a short while) ruined it for everyone.

Cat:

Zemm:

I've been at my new job for a month and got the same Christmas gift as all my workmates: a pre-paid visa card, good because it is effectively cash and not taxed.

 

Hopefully the company is simply paying withholdings behind the scenes and putting it on your W2 - legally (assuming this is in the United States) you are obligated to pay taxes on those kind of bonuses exactly like cash bonuses.

There's a number of countries where there are specific schemes designed for this purpose. Here, non-cash benefits of any description get converted to a cash equivalent for tax reasons, but one single, sub-€250 benefit per tax year is actually exempt. If you go over one per year or over €250, the voucher/prepaid CC firms can do the entire tax/social insurance payment for the company. Obviously this works out as the voucher costing a hell of a lot more than the face value but means no tax return required for what are probably PAYE staff.

 Interestingly on a WTF level, the accountant's site I found with a good explanation has been hijacked to have payday loan links in the text so I'm not going to link it.

In Spain, due to the crisis, the government decided to not pay the christmas bonus this year to public employees (which amounts to 1/14th of they yearly salary). But, and here's the fun part, they still had the tax for it withheld from their salaries. So they actually made less money this December than the previous months.

spamcourt:

But, and here's the fun part, they still had the tax for it withheld from their salaries. So they actually made less money this December than the previous months.

Woohoo! Interest free loans! I guess those public employees really care about their employer.

In Corrupsylvania, the idea of a christmass bonus is ludicrous, heck the idea of christmass as something else than a day off to be with your family or maybe go to church is unheard off.

serguey123:

In Corrupsylvania, the idea of a christmass bonus is ludicrous, heck the idea of christmass as something else than a day off to be with your family or maybe go to church is unheard off.

You mean you don't have 40 days of christmas? Fascinating.

Ben L.:

serguey123:

In Corrupsylvania, the idea of a christmass bonus is ludicrous, heck the idea of christmass as something else than a day off to be with your family or maybe go to church is unheard off.

You mean you don't have 40 days of christmas? Fascinating.

It would appear to be not much more than that for the US - there's a general impression out there that, of those that are full-time employed, don't actually take that much time off; Wikipedia's numbers for 2003 (average paid annual leave 12 days, against say, 25 in the UK) seem to bear this out unless something drastic has changed in the past 9 years...

Unless you're alluding to the fact that Xmas decorations up in October don't seem to raise an eyebrow, in which case it's not too different in the UK.

PJH:

Xmas decorations

Wait... people actually do that? I though it was some sort of marketing ploy or a silly movie prop

Ironically one of the worst jobs I had was also one of the few to ever give a Christmas bonus (it was $100 which wasn't a lot, but I wasn't expecting anything at all).