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Employee gift ideas that make people feel bad

• Veen 4y ago
  The worst "gift" I have received is crypto in some shitcoin the CEO was trying to hype. I just left it where it was. It was worthless at the time and it's worthless now.
• google234123 4y ago
  They interviewed a bunch of entitled people here.
• bitwize 4y ago
  How about a crappy Windows CE netbook with your company logo on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgLtHu-9mnk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgLtHu-9mnk
• andirk 4y ago
  A blank check but the check is yours.
• metadat 4y ago
  Some of these criticisms come across as pretty entitled and spoiled. Lots of places never give out any gifts, or give you a shitty cheap watch or a plastic company pen in recognition for 30 years of dedicated service. 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.
  • MandieD 4y ago
    Jelly of the Month Club, instead of the bonus that he expected to cover much of the cost of his new swimming pool.
  • yakak 4y ago
    Asking people if they want to opt out of all gifts could also backfire as a perceived loss. I.e. gift quality is higher than they expected, or perceived costs of this perk for others seem to be getting out of hand to them, while they feel committed to their initial choice of being someone who declined and is sort of against the whole thing. 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.
    • metadat 4y ago
      > ..could also backfire.. Yeah, agreed. After a moment of reflection I edited it down to opting out of a singular gift.
  • bombcar 4y ago
    Yeah, lots of the stuff on the list isn't going to piss me off, it's just "meh" at worst. If they handed out $5 gift cards and people didn't want them you know I'd be going around and slurping them up.
    • bawolff 4y ago
      This is the tech industry. Lots of people are paid enough that they would be paid more than $5 in the time it takes them to pick up the card.
      • wink 4y ago
        Don't think it has much to do with the tech industry. 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.
• club_tropical 4y ago
  Some of these are objectively bad ($5 grocery card) while others (team dinner) are basically complaints about a job/coworkers you hate (now these fools are taking your free time, too).
  • smsm42 4y ago
    If it's cash-equivalent (i.e. I can actually use it in a store I commonly go to) then I don't mind even $5. I mean, it's not something that would make me particularly happy, but $5 is more than $0. I have also used some company swag for years (cups, water bottles, hoodies, scarves, backpacks, etc.) with no complaints, if it's not cheap-ass stuff but a proper product with a logo slapped on it, why not. I mean, if it's a gift and it costs me nothing, why feel bad about it? 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.
    • Brian_K_White 4y ago
      Once when I was a kid, too young to have any sense, I wanted to make some money shovelling snow. I didn't realize yet that you need to make an sgreement with your customer before doing the work. This was a small town in upstate new york so even the strangers were not really strangers. As a kid you don't really see any adult as being all that different from your parents or teachers. 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.
• eps 4y ago
  • Brian_K_White 4y ago
    And yet companies do it, so it clearly still needs to be said.
  • emosenkis 4y ago
    No, it's a thinly veiled advertisement for a company that facilitates... cash-equivalent bulk gifting.
    • sleepyK 4y ago
      Yep. It's an ad.
      • imdsm 4y ago
        It's 406 Not Acceptable in my opinion
• flappyeagle 4y ago
  Just put money in a red envelope. The envelope can be company branded.
• MichaelCollins 4y ago
  > It’s also best to avoid socks. Everyone already has socks, and realistically, they will likely also get socks from someone else during the holiday season. 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.
  • humanwhosits 4y ago
    Agree, socks are awesome and actually get used.
  • matwood 4y ago
    Agree. I love socks. They are also something I always need since they wear out (like you said), but I also lose them.
  • Waterluvian 4y ago
    Socks are great because they’re like a grocery item and yet aren’t. 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.
  • rrauenza 4y ago
    Especially if they are good socks. I've stopped wearing the cheapie white cotton ones. I love the "Darned Tough" ones -- which I originally bought for hiking boots.
    • undefinedzero 4y ago
      Everything is better in merino wool, but I wouldn’t say they make great gifts as they’ll often be above budget.
• PopAlongKid 4y ago
  >that form allowed the company to then tax me on that ‘gift’ as income, 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.
  • squokko 4y ago
    But surely the embroidering of a company logo on it vastly reduces the value of the item, and this must be accounted for. If I have a new Cotopaxi or Arc'teryx item I can sell it on Facebook Marketplace for 90% of its MSRP. But if it has a fucking TurboTax Information Security Team logo on it I doubt I could get 25%. So I hope this is accounted for in the taxation.
    • count 4y ago
      My understanding is that logo'd swag is (usually) marketing expense, not taxable employee gift. If it's a non-cash-equiv gift under $100 in value, it's almost definitely not a taxable income item. If it's more than that, but has the logo on it...
    • nottorp 4y ago
      I used to work for a company that was for some reason doing both software and embroidery on clothing. 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.
  • pbourke 4y ago
    > Employer gifts (other than de minimis amounts) are taxable compensation. This was a coaster - hard to get more minimis than that.
  • throwaway74829 4y ago
    > Wrong. Must you really be this blunt?
  • 4y ago
• Aloha 4y ago
  Ironic, I just got a email about company holiday gifts. 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.
  • langsoul-com 4y ago
    What choice are you gonna take? If it's good ham, that seems like a good choice.
    • Aloha 4y ago
      I might take the donate to charity option, tbh.
      • langsoul-com 4y ago
        Plz donate the ham to me then :)
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• DonHopkins 4y ago
  Toilet paper with the boss's face printed on it.
• Brian_K_White 4y ago
  Why flag this? It's 100% true. My last place gave us cheap baseball caps and light jackets with the company logo. I would never wear either of those unless it was on the clock and a required part of something like staffing a booth representing the company at a convention or something. And they weren't even good quality compny advertizing, they were junk. 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.
  • fargle 4y ago
    not showing flagged for me? is it just greyed out? I think that's just downvoted not flagged?
    • dang 4y ago
      Someone emailed to protest the flags so we turned them off.
      • bendbro 4y ago
        How long was this email?
• winrid 4y ago
  Nothing like a $100 amazon gift card for working the weekend.
  • AmVess 4y ago
    Better yet, working Xmas weekend while the c-staff took off a week early.
• bawolff 4y ago
  > “It was company swag (a stone drink coaster with the company logo on it) that I had to sign a form for and that form allowed the company to then tax me on that ‘gift’ as income,” 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.
  • nulbyte 4y ago
    I agree, quality branded swag is awesome. Then again, so is the company I work for. I got a three way jacket once, and a nice book bag with a laptop pocket another time. I use both regularly.
  • jhbadger 4y ago
    Yes, I quite like high quality company swag like sweatshirts and hoodies with logos on them. It's particularly fun in retrospect after the company has gone under and you wear them to your current job or out on the town. People will say things like "Hey, I remember them! So you used to work for them?" It's a conversation starter.
• EdwardDiego 4y ago
  A company I know gave all their employees company branded beach towels, sunscreen, water bottles, and bucket hats for Christmas when it was making record profits. Being in the southern hemisphere, beach paraphernalia is seasonally appropriate, but I suspect they would've preferred just being given their share of the money that was spent on company branded products. Or, you know, a bonus because, well, record profits. In maybe an unrelated note, a few of those employees later stole from the company.
  • DocTomoe 4y ago
    Often, this is a side-effect of tax code weirdness. 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.
    • taffronaut 4y ago
      Unfortunately a lot of custom branded swag is sold B2B by companies who have not much idea about quality and are just branding so-so unbranded junk. Conversely I was happy to receive an iFixit pro toolkit with our company logo embroidered on the outer instead of the iFixit logo.
      • bombcar 4y ago
        The key to finding good branded stuff is to find the stuff first, then figure how to brand it.
  • seb1204 4y ago
    If the items are good, high quality I don't mind branding. If you want you can also make it more subtle. But don't give me the cheap use once beach towels and expect me to be forever grateful. All in all best gifts are time or money. E.g 2 paid days off.
  • 4y ago
• allenu 4y ago
  One place I worked had layoffs and project cancellations, so morale was way down. As a tone deaf move one day, we got an email saying as a treat because we appreciate you all being here despite how shitty everything is, you can purchase yourself a coffee and expense it (max of $10). That turned into more jokes than anything. Morale was horrible and they thought making people feel good was letting them buy coffee, which they'd then have to fill out expense forms to get "for free". 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.
  • thaumasiotes 4y ago
    This reminds me of the Amazon employee discount. 10% off any and all purchases on the site. Up to a maximum of $100 per year. Or in other words, a benefit you could never even notice you had.
    • thrtythreeforty 4y ago
      Not quite so generous. 10% off any items shipped and sold by Amazon. Up to $100 per year. To be honest I think I would prefer a complementary Prime subscription.
      • murphyslab 4y ago
        You'd think that Amazon would do that (and apparently they do not) just so their employees would be more familiar with the products and able to offer better suggestions on improvements. Guess I now know why the Prime Video interface is so terrible!
        • account42 4y ago
          As a customer I don't want Amazon employees to have free Prime membership so that hopefully at least some of them get annoying by the constant Prime-pushing that they make normal users go trough.
    • 4y ago
• jerlam 4y ago
  Not just employee gifts, but nearly all gifts are valued less by the receiver than the giver. 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.
  • imartin2k 4y ago
    Yep in most cases and to different degrees in different cultures and contexts, gifting seems to be a procedure that primarily is about the giver and their needs, rather than about the receiver - while claiming the opposite.
  • m463 4y ago
    That's what makes it easy to know what gift to give a kid - they will tell you.
    • Al-Khwarizmi 4y ago
      If I always gifted my son what he asks, he would have nothing but cars and other vehicles. He wouldn't have discovered many other kinds of toys that he loves (as well as some that he doesn't, of course... one can't have a 100% success rate). Gifting can be a good way to expose people to new things that they might like, and this is even more so in the case of kids, as they ask from a much more restricted set of known things than adults.
  • GameOfFrowns 4y ago
    I like your theory and it puts into words this nagging feeling about gift-giving (material or immaterial) which I had for years. 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) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reciprocity_(social_psychology... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cialdini [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Franklin_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Franklin_effect
• tdeck 4y ago
  Looks like it's down, here is a cache link: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.tremendous.com/blog/5-employee-gift-ideas-make-people-feel-bad https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...
  • nomilk 4y ago
    First time encountering a 406: Not acceptable.
    • ehnto 4y ago
      I had a giggle. It seems we have disappointed the server. It's kindof ambiguous as a response too, I wonder what they intend it to mean.
      • account42 4y ago
        It's suppposed to mean that the server doesn't support any of the formats the client specified in the Accept* headers. At least for the main Accept header, browsers typically include */* and even if they don't the server is better off just pushing whatever so yeah, would be interesting to know why they chose to return that particular error here.
      • justsomehnguy 4y ago
        https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/406 https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/406
  • vasco 4y ago
    I thought that was the joke to the article title. Disappointed.
  • kapilkale 4y ago
    Sorry about that ya'll. We're back up now. 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.
• unsupp0rted 4y ago
  > A good gift gives employees a renewed fervor to work harder, helps them feel more motivated, and makes them feel more valued by their employers. 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.
  • colechristensen 4y ago
    I really can’t imagine a gift that would motivate me as an employee. There are things i might appreciate, but the only “gift” I would find motivational would be a raise.
    • lelanthran 4y ago
      > I really can’t imagine a gift that would motivate me as an employee. Extra Leave Days. That would not only motivate me, but it would result in an overall higher level of productivity.
    • zerg2k 4y ago
      I worked at a place that when the company did really well you get a bonus of two weeks paycheck. It some times could happen twice a year and nobody had to ask for it you will receive the news through a “thank you” email. It was very motivating
  • Falkon1313 4y ago
    I've had a few that made me feel valued. Thoughtful gifts when a baby was born, when a family member died, and when I got Covid-19. But the generic "give one of these to everyone in the company" gifts? Nah.
    • jon-wood 4y ago
      When my son was born I was working for a company that did grocery deliveries from really good food shops, despite living way out of the area we'd usually deliver to they put together an order made up of things people knew my wife and I enjoyed, then sent a driver out to bring it to us - I was totally blown away, not least because I knew the value of the order itself was in the hundreds of pounds, plus the additional cost of pulling a driver from deliveries for two hours to drive out to my place and back instead. 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".
• jelliclesfarm 4y ago
  It is common in India to gift gold and silver. They can be sold(most jewelers will take it for cash value) and it is something that would go up in value. 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.
  • farseer 4y ago
    If someone gifts me bitcoin, sure! However getting an NFT would be an insult no?
    • jelliclesfarm 4y ago
      You will still be taxed. How does that make you feel?
    • andirk 4y ago
      I hear you but doesn't that simply mean you're not a collector of limited items? It's like baseball cards. With apes on them.
• yieldcrv 4y ago
  I hired an operations person to plan silly stuff like this because people that worked for me wanted a culture 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.
  • joe-collins 4y ago
    That's... a perspective I hadn't considered before, and now I hate it even more.
• magic_hamster 4y ago
  I understand the server is having difficulties, but this is the first time I see "406 - not acceptable" in the wild. I expected it to throw a 500 error or just timeout.
  • mcv 4y ago
    Maybe it didn't go down because it maintains a hard limit on how many requests it considers acceptable? Any request beyond that number is not a bad request per se, but still unacceptable to the server. That's the best logic I can discern here. I honestly have no idea.
    • account42 4y ago
      That would not be a proper use of the 406 code, which is specifically about the Accept* headers that the client sent. 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.
  • kapilkale 4y ago
    That makes two of us. We have a Cloudflare worker serve the content from Webflow (which is actually set up with a custom domain at https://webflow2.tremendous.com/ https://webflow2.tremendous.com/. Yes, it's a little convoluted. We still don't know what broke here - the Cloudflare worker or Webflow, or the combination of the two.
• kappuchino 4y ago
  Weird. Did noone else notice the obvious? A prepaid/gift-card company rooting via a (sketchy) survey based article for prepaid/gift-cards as the number one gifts. How convenient. I would love see the numbers behind the survey and the questionaire and the selection method of the sample.
  • iakov 4y ago
    Right? This looks like a straight-up ad, especially if you check out OP's account.
    • roflc0ptic 4y ago
      I gotta say I personally felt insulted when I was doing contracting and my hiring company bought me a 5 dollar starbucks gift card. They were making $25/hr off of me for the privilege of having introduced me to employer. Found it pretty galling.
  • mcv 4y ago
    By that logic money is the best gift. We still have tons of unused gift cards that we forget about or are only applicable to things we're not that interested in. Still, I prefer something more personal than money.
• rdiddly 4y ago
  It costs more than $5 in administrative time/squandered mental energy to own, store, carry, and use (or remember to use), a $5 gift card. Net value is negative.
• dr_dshiv 4y ago
  Is there a good gift recommendation website or service? Gifting is essential and so hard. I’m sure billions of dollars are left unspent yearly because people didn’t find a gift in time.
  • colechristensen 4y ago
    I love the tradition of gifting fancy fruit in Japan. Individual pieces of fruit which are objectively perfect and treated with an absurd amount of care and therefore priced at a silly level, but apparently also quite delicious.
  • happymellon 4y ago
    Considering most Americans are massively in debt, I doubt this.
• christkv 4y ago
  At least the last big corp I worked for would give us a nice gourmet Christmas hamper.
• omnibrain 4y ago
  This may be the first time, that I saw "406 Not Acceptable" in a Browser. As opposed to in Postman or an log file. How did this happen? Something between backend and frontend breaking under the HN load?
  • vstm 4y ago
    Not even that server accepts me :-(
  • stevewatson301 4y ago
    There are a number of websites on HN where I've faced this while on a datacenter network; though I hadn't investigated the previous instances simply because I was using a VPN on my phone. 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.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • lostlogin 4y ago
    I thought it was a joke. Laughed then realised I didn’t really get it.
    • account42 4y ago
      So instead you came here to post about it?
• NibLer 4y ago
  I get "406 Not Acceptable openresty" when I try to open link. Am I the only one?
  • silverpepsi 4y ago
    Yeah it's a dead link, same here. Any mirrors?
    • NibLer 4y ago
      https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.tremendous.com/blog/5-employee-gift-ideas-make-people-feel-bad https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
  Shares, shares are never a bad gift. Until they are, but then they are a good gift. 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.
• TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
  People feel bad if the subtext is "We're cheap and we don't really value you." Or "We own you so here's something branded with our logo for you to display." 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.
• langsoul-com 4y ago
  406 error code is strange as 418 I'm a teapot, both make no sense.
  • account42 4y ago
    What error would you expect when making a non-teapot request to a teapot device on your network?
• dathinab 4y ago
  > Almost nobody wants company swag as an employee gift 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.
• knorker 4y ago
  The strange 406 is one thing, but what's the recommended chrome extension or something to get rid of the obnoxious page scrolling overrides?
• zasdffaa 4y ago
  One place advertised on StackOverflow jobs a while back. I followed to their job details. Under perks of the job they said free fruit, and that they used version control. That as a fat No then.
• h1fra 4y ago
  It's funny how different industry can be, in tech most people love receiving swag it even becomes their entire wardrobe ahah 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.
  • antihero 4y ago
    I really don't get why people in tech love swag so much. Is it because people's esteems are generally so low that they will become walking advertisments because it gives them a sense of pride to show that they work at whatever company?
    • technoooooost 4y ago
      Lol no, quite the opposite. Flexin' on them peasants with our big tech t shirts
      • antihero 4y ago
        Flexing is a sign of insecurity
        • technoooooost 4y ago
          Ok doc
          • antihero 4y ago
            If you’re happy with who you are you have no reason to make others feel lesser than you.
• kqr 4y ago
  The worst gift I've received from work was a $100 digital multi-store gift card. It probably seemed like such a reasonable thing to give (and I even liked it at first, too). Unfortunately, it turned out to be really difficult to redeem it in full for the combinations of things I would like at the places where it's redeemable. 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 $100 in cash. Put it in an envelope with a fancy card if you want to make it special. But eh, gotta feed the gift card business.
  • rtanks 4y ago
    Agree, something similar happened to me at my old employer.
  • ElfinTrousers 4y ago
    To be fair, perhaps your employer didn't expect it to be such a hassle either.
• 7ewis 4y ago
  Last year we all got a £100 gift card that could be used at a number of retailers, plus a choice of two hampers - one containing alcohol, the other not (contained chocolate, popcorn etc. and yes some company branded items too). Can't really complain, can see how gift cards go unappreciated though. Usually just top up my Amazon account balance and use it on everyday things or gifts for other people.
• jnsaff2 4y ago
  So I had a buddy, he was a junior-ish very talented dev in this big retailer where I was working as well. This retailer obv had massive campaigns for black friday, but also obv very shitty and inflexible systems. This buddy of mine found that the black friday promotions pricings import failed 5 min before midnight. Meaning that not only would there be no black friday pricing, there would be no pricing at all on the site for 24h until the next pricing run. He pulled some heroics and managed to fix the import in time and black friday was a success. So he saved the company 5M GBP in profits, singlehandedly. As a thanks he got a 25 GBP gift card to the same site.
  • matheusmoreira 4y ago
    Did your buddy continue to work there?
  • bootloop 4y ago
    I don't necessarily think he should have been compensated based on the (theoretical) loss of money. He was employed after all. And properly someone else would haved saved the day early enough anyway. But 25$ is quite an embarrassment. Nothing would have been better in that case.
    • ElfinTrousers 4y ago
      I mean, if you want to do it on the cheap, it only takes a few minutes for the dev's boss' boss' boss' boss' assistant to handwrite a note saying "Nice work saving the company, you are officially my hero" or words to that effect.
    • kevinmchugh 4y ago
      It's tricky to reward outstanding work for salaried folks, since it can mess with intrinsic motivation or misalign incentives. Here it's probably appropriate to have a five figure spot bonus for the line employee who made the fix, and a promotion, if they still had the junior title. 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?
• euler_angles 4y ago
  When I worked for an aerospace company that is now, thankfully, defunct, our HR department gave us all a miniature Twix candy bar and a company ink pen. 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.
  • rwmj 4y ago
    To be fair, this makes it quite clear how much they valued you.
• hourago 4y ago
  TLDR; some people likes some things, other people other. It is not possible to make everybody happy with a gift.
• P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  Sorry, you hijack scroll I don't bother reading or ever going back.
• subpixel 4y ago
  In my first real office job, where everyone was paid a pittance, the employer offered free bagels on Friday mornings. 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.
  • boringg 4y ago
    I'm going to guess everyone was a lot older than you and already knew their finances quite well - so one free meal a week added up to something for them.
    • subpixel 4y ago
      Actually they were all young like me but it is fair to say that I was unable to recognize the benefit of a free meal because I was an entitled prick as well as a former New Yorker who knew from bagels.
• flarg 4y ago
  Every year my employer sends a fancy gift box to celebrate the new sales cycle, and it's full of shiny streamers, and tat. It's painful to see all that money ending up in a landfill. Just give the money to charity or something.
• lupire 4y ago
  Conclusion: People don't want cheap gifts, and companies aren't going to spend money on expensive gifts.
  • Someone1234 4y ago
    When considering the cost of recruitment, training, and negative productivity associated with low morale it is mind-boggling that companies paying $60-100K+ for employees cannot or will not find 1% of that employee's total to keep them happy once a 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.
• bluedino 4y ago
  One tone-deaf employer I worked for: 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.
• tablespoon 4y ago
  > “I got a $5 grocery card,” wrote a one employee. “Excuse me?? What the hell am I supposed to buy with $5?” 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.
  • paulgb 4y ago
    But only a little bit of help, evidently. Maybe they want you to treat yourself and splurge on an avocado.
  • agentwiggles 4y ago
    Ugh, when I was at accenture (briefly, after an acquisition), they had a similar "points" system where you could cash the points in for rewards. Most of it was absolute junk. I did manage to extract a bit of value when I found they could be cashed in for Nintendo eShop money - there's worse things than a free game - but still. Just ... give me money. 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.
    • couchand 4y ago
      > after all, it's pure sugar on top of your agreed upon salary no matter how you slice it 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.
• p0pcult 4y ago
  Woof. I once got a gift card to a meal kit subscription service, that forced me to sign up for a (cancelable) subscription to use the gift card, which wasn't even high enough value to get a single delivery. I think this hits 3 of the 5 criteria for bad employee gifts: -specific retailer -food -household(ish) item
• danwee 4y ago
  Sometimes I get bags, swags, coffe mugs with the company logo, gift cards in a store other than Amazon... 100% of the time I end up either throwing them to the trash or giving them away for free. Companies: just give money as gift. Period.
• cainxinth 4y ago
  What I like even less than unwanted, cheapo gifts are endless ‘not technically mandatory but it looks bad if you don’t go’ work gatherings like team building sessions, birthday parties, fall picnics, etc. 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.
  • germinalphrase 4y ago
    I’m fine with those events if they happen within my contractual work hours. If not? I’m going to choose time with my child 10/10 times.
• kayodelycaon 4y ago
  Top of my list: anything involving food. 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.
  • vorpalhex 4y ago
    It sounds like you are allergic to something else if every restaurant you go to has "cross contamination issues".
    • nerdponx 4y ago
      Butter is everywhere in restaurants, that could be a big issue, especially in higher-end restaurants. And "fast casual" places tend to have some kind of cheese at the counter. 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.
• _wolfie_ 4y ago
  > One respondent received “a $10 gift card to Starbucks. When they know I don’t drink coffee.” 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.
• chaps 4y ago
  At my first "real" job they gave us a $5 gift card to starbucks. It wasn't enough to buy a regular latte.
• Test0129 4y ago
  I think the worst one I've ever seen was a nurse I know was given a pen (of bic quality), a $10 giftcard to fast food, and a lanyard as a gift from the hospital during COVID. She was pulling double shifts and exposed to all sorts of hazards (the union didn't come to save them on PPE for a long time). This hospital, by the way, is insanely profitable. I'm not sure how you could insult people more. Even no gift would be less insulting.
• LightG 4y ago
  Example 68: a Company T-Shirt.
  • mrguyorama 4y ago
    I don't know, free T-shirts kind of have unlimited value for me. There's just something about a free shirt.....
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• boringg 4y ago
  Question for the thread - maybe giving out gifts from the company is just a bad idea right alongside forced birthday celebrations?
• manesioz 4y ago
  The obvious issue is that giving employees $25-$50 in cash (which is what most of those things cost per person) is too little and can be considered insulting.
• heratyian 4y ago
  crazy idea. let's just give our employees money.
• kayodelycaon 4y ago
  My favorite: being asked to pick a company-branded jacket out a few available options and then never receiving it because I work remotely. 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.
  • tomjakubowski 4y ago
    You could have just taken one in the size you reserved. If you're the helpful type, you could leave a note.
    • kayodelycaon 4y ago
      I couldn't actually. There was a counter and three people between me and the boxes. They actually wanted to help me but weren't allowed to. I'm not going to ask a retail employee to risk getting fired over a jacket.
• g051051 4y ago
  I guess no one noticed the horrible custom scrolling behavior? Of all the thing to waste time customizing...
  • joshmn 4y ago
    Both of the founders are in this thread. Another commenter mentioned it and one of them said they agree and they're working on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33451972 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33451972
  • celadin 4y ago
    It's abominable.
• system16 4y ago
  At my company when we celebrate something like Christmas or a big project milestone, we have a short celebratory huddle in the office / Zoom where our CEO will relay some anecdotes and thank us for our efforts, and then just tells us: "take your family out to dinner at your favourite restaurant and the company will cover it." 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.
  • Tokkemon 4y ago
    That's nice!
• lamontcg 4y ago
  Employees usually like actual raises and bonuses, pretty much all the time.
• MysteryChessBox 4y ago
  We got "free pizzas" for something I don't even recall anymore this year at my company, sent to our home. Problem: It was a gift generalized to two whole regions, and of course I was in the "wrong one" for this. My pizza was sent at 4pm with no input from me, same with some colleagues, while we were working our asses off at the office studio recording on-demand content (we stayed up to 9:30pm). Needless to say I arrived to some cold soggy pizza at home. A gift (pizza) of choice voucher would have been much better and less embarassing for leadership.
• zaptheimpaler 4y ago
  i am pretty sure money would suck just as much when considering the amounts. if a company is giving you a pizza party, gift card, water bottle etc. worth like $5-$10, the cash equivalent is $10 extra on a paycheck.. that sounds equally juvenile as any of those other gifts because the actual insult is the _amount_ . 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.
• jdpigeon 4y ago
  For me the best company gifts are small mundane things printed with company-specific inside jokes. Coffee mugs with quotes from the team, references to past projects or humorous incidents, that kind of thing. I'm not going to bring that stuff outside the office, but it does a lot to make me feel like a m member of the team in an "I was there" way.
• Yhippa 4y ago
  I don't want a holiday party, extraneous dinners, random gifts, or any kind of thing where the employer thinks "yeah, that will make them happy or improve morale". I just want the money. Take all that money and redistribute it back into my paycheck when you can. Nothing beats seeing extra money show up in your paycheck.
• noveltyaccount 4y ago
  My sister once got a SINGLE branded drink coaster from the medical clinic. Lol she still cringes about it years later. One single coaster!!
• GuB-42 4y ago
  The conclusion (give money) is obvious. 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.