My employer is a retailer that sells specialty gift items. Traditionally the employees receive a holiday gift, usually an item that's grossly overstocked. Year before last, because of poor sales, there was no employee gift. Last year we received not one but two gifts.
One day early in December a roving band of people from HR reverse pillaged its way through the corporate office. They handed each employee one of these:
It's hard to tell from the overexposed portion of the picture, but this high quality brushed aluminum picture frame has a generous capacity of 2" x 3". The area devoted to the motivational slogan and the company logo (redacted) is larger than the picture frame itself.
A few days later the same band of HR people swept through the building again. In each cubicle and office they left one of these:
Each box contains twenty five, yes twenty five, one gallon food storage bags impregnated with nanoparticles of silver. As the box says, the nanoparticles are a miracle.
Here's a shot of both gifts in their gift boxes:
The picture frames weren't well received. The most common reaction was "Why?" Then came the bags. It's hard to believe that the second gift was, perhaps, more underwhelming than the first. Together they had a synergistic effect. Unease became unrest combined with disgust. Some employees threw the gifts away. Others stuffed them in a desk drawer. One of my co-workers has the picture frame on her desk with a picture in it. I took mine home so I could take these pictures.
There was a bright side to the affair. We also received our choice of a chocolate cupcake with white frosting or a white cupcake with chocolate frosting. Both had sprinkles. They weren't bad. It was only after having eaten my cupcake--I chose the white with chocolate frosting--that I realized that I could have done a food storage bag experiment by putting half of the cupcake in a conventional storage bag and the other half in a miracle bag. I know it was selfish of me to have eaten the cupcake when I could have made a contribution to science.
Please don't judge me.
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Comments: 23
You should wrap them up and re-gift them to the CEO next year...
Ina, the letter size piece of paper must have been quite expensive. Was it possible to clean if off and use it for scratch paper?
To be fair, I like working here. The head of my department believes his employees should be treated like human beings. He's in a good position to be a heretic because it's the IT department. He knows things, and not just dirty little secrets, that no one else in the company knows. He could cause a lot of trouble by leaving suddenly.
Actually, the main reason for this comment is to ask, politely of course, for clear instructions as to posting a picture in an article here. I found something at a doctor's office today that I simply MUST post in a rant, but I don't know how. Because I'm dumb, that's why. Thanks, buddy.
Here's another photobucket picture that isn't mine:
On photobucket double click on the image. When the image page comes up clickon the url labeled "HTML Tag - Websites & Blogs."
Hilarious article Nippy!
Nurses are often taken for granted by their employers, especially if they are a large medical facility... that's why there's a nursing shortage in this country!
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I'm with Melissa on the cupcake question... where were the chocolate cup cakes with chocolate frosting? (I keep forgetting and call it 'icing'... is frosting an American thing?:))
You put the other gifts to very good use by posting them here!
Icing--Isn't icing a violation of hockey rules?
My ingratitude--I think the title of the article covers that.
Employers that don't give Christmas, Boxing Day, Winter Solstice, Chanukkah,....gifts--It's the old thing about expectations being defined by context. Since my co-workers and I are used to getting something it's disappointing to get something like the most recent gift. It makes you wonder about your relationship with your employer. If I worked for a company that didn't give "holiday" gifts I wouldn't care.
Nurses--My mom was a nurse, my sister is a nurse. My sister can, like many nurses, go on at length about the respect nurses receive. She has a masters and knows what she's doing--they don't necessarily go together. She gets treated like crap.