Former job, I had to be the bearer of bad news to a team of 10+ employees that they all were not getting bonuses and no raises. I really fought upper management went directly to the CEO, who by the way all did get bonuses/raises. I got a raise and bonus as well probably to keep me complacent. This was one of our better profit years, so it made absolutely no sense to do a freeze.
So I decided since I couldn’t get anyone above to reason. I instead told my team it was bullshit and exactly why in each of there reviews, even though I was given a script and explicitly told not tell them more than that. I told them that they should start looking for a new jobs and I’ll help anyway I could. Told them honestly that this was probably a tactic to push some of them out without firing them and replace them with lower wage workers, I wasn’t told that but I knew.
Worst year of my life. I left as quickly as I could myself. When I left they offered me a significant raise to stay, they were literal villains so I obviously said no.
Some of my team unfortunately stuck it out and got fired over petty shit months after I left. 2 years later they were all gone and replaced with low wage college interns. I hated myself because I was their shield for over 10 years and finally lost, as soon as I was gone they had no one to fight for them.
I don’t know if there is a moral to this story, the bad guys technically won.
Guess a take away is unless your company is struggling and the management also takes cuts or freezes, no one below them should. Don’t stay.
You’re a good manager and human. Good for you for going to fucking bat for your team
Thanks, this helps to hear. Still eats me up inside. Unfortunately sometimes there is not always a reward for being good other than just not causing more pain.
You did everything you could in a shitty situation that you were powerless to fix; how does this weigh on your conscience?
If anything, I could see you holding on to rage that you were forced into this position. If that’s the case, then seek a psychologist who practices acceptance based therapy. It will really help you.
Regardless, I would wager none of your former teammates blame you for what happened. It’s clear from what little you have shared that you had their back the whole way.
Integrity like that is rare.
That’s the problem with humans, when given more they do not redistribute, instead they grow greedier.
I consider myself a proud misanthrope, not because I admit to cruelty on my part, but because I recognize it in too many humans.
Some humans. I promise there are better people out there, I promise. Consider that very very few every get enough money to truly escape the rat race, anything that doesn’t fully lift you out of it permanently is only a stopgap, and the system is designed to pit your livelihood against others constantly our whole lives while also erasing education on alternative exits from the game than becoming rich, and that is already rigged.
That hasn’t been my experience with working class people, especially if they grew up poor. Most of us have a hole in our pocket and can’t help but spend and share when the good times come our way.
Because poorer folks rely more on cooperation (because they have to), I think that kind of inoculates them against the isolating affects of wealth (like “oh I don’t need a support network, I can just pay for help”). Poor people know that when their chips are down again, all that goodwill they sowed is better than money in the bank.
The moral is that at most places you should completely disregard the company as a necessary evil to getting paid, pushing product, and meeting cool people.
From an employee level the contacts you make are the most important thing. They form a subculture within, and eventually between companies, all under their noses.
Worst year of my life. I left as quickly as I could myself. When I left they offered me a significant raise to stay, they were literal villains so I obviously said no.
these types of people are the worst. I once went to quit a horrid job, and they offered me another persons job he had been promoted to, when I questioned it they said “well, its not official yet”. absolute monsters.
Just got informed last week that we didn’t meet the qualifications to get a bonus this year.
The qualifications they didn’t tell us about.
The qualifications that we have no control over.
No bonus because people higher in the chain didn’t meet specific goals. (Pretty sure they are still getting a bonus because rank.)
I won’t meet the qualifications next year because I’ll be working somewhere else. The pay is low because bonuses make up for it (supposedly).
The pay is low because bonuses make up for it (supposedly).
Business lesson #1: a promise in writing is the only kind that has value. At least in this godforsaken civilization.
Reminds me of the hospital my boyfriend used to work at: his group of technicians didn’t get a raise one year because employee turnover was too high. So… the ones that DID stay were punished because of people that left???
My company said that we’d have to accept a 1.3% raise or nothing. The union just agreed to 1.3%. To keep up with inflation, it should’ve been around 8%. And this is in Denmark! I have no fucking clue why my union has no balls, but I, for one, am not happy with them. The CFO gave herself a 30% increase two years ago, but what the fuck do we get? Fucking pebbles, and we’ll be happy. When management heard about the complaints, the managers say “but you got a bonus this year, that should count for something”. Go fuck yourself. A bonus is NOT part of the salary, you greedy mother fuckers!! I’ll be at another job next year.
I had a job that gave us a 3% raise (when cost of living in our area went up 8% that year).
On my next check the raise was less than 1% so I went to HR.
“The raise is quarterly. You actually get 4 raises this year!”
They thought giving .75 % increase every quarter counted as a 3% raise.
“At the end of the year you have a 3% total increase, which is what we said you would get. 3% minimum raise every year. We have met our obligation. Why are you being so difficult?”
I got a sizable (in comparison to my pay rate) holiday bonus when I interned at a regional bank, and my current job that I’m leaving with a national contract cleaning company has bonuses based on the company’s financial performance. The company is spiraling the drain so a pittance of a bonus was dished out this year to try to shore up morale after a bunch of layoffs (sounds like the 3 years prior the bonuses were several thousand dollars a person) and now they’re laying everyone off to relocate the HQ. So basically depending on where you work you might get pretty decent bonuses
In France we have the “thirteenth month” as we call it. I never had one, but in that latest job they announced having one, so I was rather chuffed to finally discover the practice and asked them about it during the interview. “so you gonna give me a full month salary bonus at the end of the year?” cue a long, convoluted explanation… which boiled down to “no, we just shuffle shit around so you get more in December, no extra money, really”.
But it just shows how ingrained that idea of a Christmas bonus is.
In Germany that exists as well, we get “holiday money” some time in late spring/early summer and “Christmas money” which we get in November. Both of them add up to a full month’s salary together, so it’s essentially 13 salaries/year
To be fair, usually you get that when you are already employed somewhere with good working conditions and an above average salary. Eg Daiichi Sankyo does that with technical assistants, but they already have a great starting salary of roughly 43k with no job experience. That’s much higher than other companies pay their TAs (Eurofins paid 22k to new TAs), and these companies pat themselves on the back for giving you a punch on a 30 minute Christmas themed extra break as a holiday treat.
Belgium, “13th month” also exists here. And it being a legal thing, i wonder if this is what people mean when they talk about work bonus on the other side of the world.
Its, afaik, the same as a pay before tax, but the tax is higher than with an actual paycheck. Doesnt mean it isnt a nice chunk of money ( 70-80% of a paycheck )
Je ne suis donc pas le seul à ne pas comprendre le principe faute de n’en avoir jamais eu. Ouf… Je me sentais un peu bête et très seul.
En gros dans ma boîte ils te modifient le salaire mensuel pour Décembre (et aussi un peu avant les grandes vacances). Mais c’est toujours le même salaire per annum donc c’est un tour de passe passe, quoi. Ça aide les gens qui arrivent pas à économiser, j’imagine.
En fait, en December tu as souvent plus de dépenses que les autres mois de l’année. Cadeaux de Noël, bouffes entre ami, vacances et aussi factures etc. Alors un deuxième salaire est bienvenue. Meme si il est en quelque sorte virtuel.
Il y a aussi certaines entreprises qui versant le salaire en avance en décembre. Alors quand j’avais que 12 salaire, celui de janvier m’était une plombe à arriver.
More accurate caption: Someone saw a movie about some people who expected a bonus and didn’t get one. And from that they got the weird idea that most people in the 80’s got bonuses.
I don’t know what movie that’s from, but sorry to tell you as someone who was there: No, most people in most jobs didn’t get bonuses in the 80’s or any other time. It was the same as today–only certain kinds of management types or financial sector types got bonuses. I’ve had some pretty decent jobs and never got a bonus and no one thought they’d get one.
Edit to Update: Yes, of course I know that some jobs gave bonuses. My point is that the post’s entire raison d’etre is the incorrect assertion that bonuses were something that everyone, or most people, routinely expected to get in the 80’s and that those people sure had it easy compared to people today. That is not the case at all. Most jobs didn’t give you a bonus back then either.
And BTW kids, this isn’t the first time there’s ever been inflation either… Look up inflation rates in the mid-late 70’s and early 80’s. A lot worse than now.
Not to call you a liar directly, but I don’t get how “you were there” but you didn’t recognize National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. The movie was no. 2 in the box office only behind Back to the Future Part 2. The various National Lampoon movies have been ran on TV countless times during the 90s.
Not all people watch movies. Some people had four kids and are lucky to have 5 minutes to themselves while they shower.
Clark is a well paid employee. Upper class. He approves and oversees food additives. He’s near the executive level but not an executive. He’s close enough to walk into the office of the company president and feel bad about the gift he brought with him. He’d be expecting a Christmas bonus.
That’s the movie.
I’m not making a point beyond Clark would be expecting a Christmas bonus at his job. Joke might be bad, the movie was accurate.
A better joke might be pointing out Clark was a ditz in the movies but had a high paying job. However he was also very imaginative in the movies so that might be why he’s successful in research and development.
They are complicated movies lol
European here, I get a nice bonus every year. But then, my job is unionised, maybe that’s the difference?
I had a union job in the 80’s. We didn’t get bonuses. Possibly some of the upper management may have.
I imagine “is the position union or not” is far from the only factor deciding whether you got a bonus or not.
I get a “profit sharing” bonus as a factory floor welding press operator.
It’s, like, eighty bucks.
"Ya don’t get extra teefs just because it’s tha end of tha year, git! Get ta krumpin’, NOW!
Lol, yeah, as another older guy I must always laugh when “the youth” paints this “rainbows and unicorns” picture of the 80s. It was fucking dark. Constant fear of total annihilation. Reagan. Thatcher. Mass layoffs everywhere. Housing crisis. Most unemployed ever. Mass demonstrations every month/week. Stop the bomb. Stop the layoffs. I want a place to live. I just want to live. Credit crisis. (15% on your mortgage? Yeah man, that’s just how it is.) Or lets talk about drugs. Or rather… … Let’s not. The police was losing control everywhere. That’s when carpenter thought “escape from new york” up. And that wasnt the only movie with that theme of complete anarchism in the streets.
Just really listen to the music of the 80s. Really listen to stuff like 99 luftballons. Dancing with tears in my eyes. Land of confusion. Really look at the movies. Why do you think that Terminator was so god damn popular? Mad max was thought up in that era. (late 70s and 80s) Don’t you think alien /aliens products of their time? Corps which literally kill their workers, fuck them over only for a better percentage? Gordon Gecko… When was he thought up? Ever red “red storm rising” ? Sure, great book. But… What’s it about? Red October? Same.
Movies and music are a window to that time. Sure you also had the bright colors of miami vice. But what was the theme of that series: criminals everywhere and heavy handed cops to get back at them.
No man. The 80s where bleak. Glad that’s over. We got a little taste of the 80s back in 08-12. Just a little.
Do we have problems now? A lot. Sure. But I don’t live under the constant fear of a Russian nuclear missile strike. There are almost no terrorist cells active anymore (RAF, IRA, Those basks and the Indonesian train hyjackers in Holland.)
I dare to say: these days are better by a mile then back then.
Be careful for what you wish for. And know the past so you can learn from it.
Glad to see someone else on Lemmy who knows how shitty it really was in the 70’s and into the 80’s, from economics to violence to corruption. I think it’s natural to want to believe that the past was a golden age where the previous generation had it so good and then ruined things for the younger generation. Doesn’t every generation think that? Mine did too, though of course we knew about the Great Depression and WWII that our grandparents went through and our parents were kids in.
There have been good and wonderful things, and also bad and terrible things throughout time. Which things are which vary over time, but it’s always a mix. There were always the rich assholes and the poor people struggling to get by in every generation. Read Ecclesiastes. There’s nothing new under the sun.
I got $100 and a video from a bunch of dead-eyed execs I’ve never seen before in my entire life thanking me for all the hard work that I do. I’d almost have rather just gotten nothing at all.
Maybe you two can split it 50/50? Or give me a cut, and split it 33/33/33?
the video is so funny to me. showing a canned response to an employee they’ve never met has me in hysterics
It was so eerily dystopian. Telling me how much they appreciate me and how valued I am as an employee, as their eyes trail from side to side while they read the prompter.
My direct manager gives out lottery scratch-off tickets at the winter holiday party. Last year I won $5.
This is a classic tactic cause you can scan them without scratching them at the store and filter out any actual winners and just leave people with essentially nothing.
When I worked as a cashier there was a real estate agent who bought scratchers all the time and did exactly this. If one of them won more than like 50 bucks he cashed it and took all the worthless/low value ones. Then all his clients would get them in the mail for Xmas.
What? That’s not how a lottery ticket machine works. Part of the front has to be scratched off to determine if it is a winner, even with the machine. I know, because I remember having to scratch this part off myself for customers redeeming tickets back when I sold them. (The part the machine needed was along the edge, and many didn’t scratch there.) (This is specific to Tennessee, but I doubt any state used a system where you can tell if it’s a winner without anything being scratched.)
Was this a decade or two ago? There was a mathematician that figured out how to separate winners and losers without scratching them off back in 2003. But I suspect tickets have gotten more sophisticated since then.
Anyways, I trust my manager isn’t doing anything sketchy. She’s generally awesome.