Bonuses of Christmas Past

Ah, the Christmas season! The time of year when your employer (for those lucky enough to be employed) give you time off so you can double up on work before and after you come back from holiday vacation. Think I’m making this up…I’ve done work all during my supposed Christmas break. I know if I don’t, I’ll get slammed by superiors when I return. And even with doing work, I’m still going to be behind on my assignments. Why bother giving us the time off?

But I digress. What I really want to talk about are Christmas bonuses, specifically, the monetary and food gifts I have been given (or not) at the end of the year from various employers. No names will be divulged but those companies know who they are and they should be ashamed. Ashamed, I tell you!

This year, I got a $100 bill. Yeah, you read right: That’s a 1 with two 00 after it. Wow. Could they spare it? I had to agree with my equally thrilled co-worker who exclaimed (sarcastically), “Now we can retire!”

Seriously, can they be that cheap? Or that disdainful of their workers? If it had been $200 or even $150, I wouldn’t have felt so cheated. I took the shinny new bill immediately to an ATM and deposited it in my savings account to cover a miniscule portion of the money I had to pull from savings to cover things like rent, food, holiday gifts for friends and family. I can survive with a small bonus (barely), but what about those who have young children, a mortgage or college tuition to pay?

Look, I understand companies are not obligated to give bonuses at the end of the year, and I’m grateful for any extra dollars. There have been times when my employer said there was simply no money for bonuses that year and we got nothing, nada. Fair enough. And I can understand if some employees, such as those who bring in most of the company’s revenues, get a bigger bonus than me.

Then there was the year my boss got some kind of deal on frozen turkeys (I kid you not). Yep, I lugged that inert mass of game flesh home on the NJ Transit bus and gave it to my mother. She was Italian and could cook anything and make it delicious.

Perhaps the best —and fairest —bonus I’ve even gotten is an extra week of pay. At least it was enough to pay off some credit card bills.

Companies may believe that if they give us a holiday party, that it counts toward our yearly bonus. Ah, yes…holiday parties! Those faux-festive occasions when we get to feast on greasy protein and carbohydrate-laden catered dishes and watch our bosses and co-workers get drunk and nasty. Joy to the world! Even I’m not that hard up for free food and drink that I wouldn’t forgo those ridiculous and unnecessary bashes for a little extra money in my pocket. Because the only thing I want to see less than my co-workers naked is my co-workers in an upchuck fit.

I will say this again: Company holiday parties with open bars should be outlawed. Now. They are truly depressing, desultory affairs that serve no purpose except to line the coffers of the food service industry. Hey, one relative who was in the restaurant business for many years talks about how crazy those parties were and how foolish people would act. He hated them. And he made money off of those parties.

Like everything upper management says and does (or doesn’t say or do), a holiday bonus carries a message to workers. A small bonus (or none at all) could mean the company is in dire financial straits and may be gearing up to cut staff or go under entirely. It also stinks to high heaven of cheapness and a disdain for the workers who toil daily to make the company profitable.

Of course, upper management’s attitude is, “You’re lucky to have a job, so we can treat you as badly as we want.” That is somewhat true. With an unemployment rate well nigh of 7 percent, the job market is far from employee-friendly. Ring the bell when it hits 5 percent.

Except…three people in my department recently got other jobs, good jobs. So there is some movement and it’s not as bleak as it was back in 2009-10 when there were two types of workers: those had been laid off and those who were going to be laid off. The job market is somewhat better, but not strong enough yet for any worker to rejoice.

UPDATE: I talked to my sister recently. She worked for a major telecom company for over 30 years and never got a bonus or a holiday party. So either that makes me the most ungrateful worker on earth, or it supports the whole theme of this blog: Companies are so cheap it makes your teeth hurt.

As for bonuses, if a company has the wherewithal to hand them out, great. If they cannot, that’s OK, too. Or going back to the frozen turkey tale, why not hand out food instead of a check or a measly $100 bill. A ham or turkey can feed a family for days.

So even though you are underpaying us and stiffing us on holiday bonuses, we can have something to eat.