Not sure whether to be pissed or happy about that one.

Hey thanks for the booze… Don’t worry about cutting me a Christmas bonus check or anything, I’ll use this to drink my depression away!

I am a regional salesman, I should say that I was a regional salesman. I became disabled on the job and my company warned me against filing a workmans comp claim, as soon as I did I was fired for “other reasons” .
But…
While I was still employed they held a contest for sales represent Tequilla’s, some Gins, some vodkas and lots of wines. I won for the Vodka sales for the entire Inland empire. i had done the calculations and I made the company, $450,000 MORE than last year just in my jump in production over last years sales. By the way that is not $450,000 more in sales but $450,000 more in PROFIT.

At the awards banquet they had all kinds of items on the stage to take, because my “victory” was so big I got to pick any three items I wanted,

I chose a VHS-DVD burner/DVD player. A 27 inch Flat screen tv, and a digital camcorder.
I was very happy until my check came and it was for $472. I get paid twice monthly and at the time was making about $5000 a month so instead of $2500 I got $472

I was told that I was taxed on the Suggested retail price of the items. I never got my money back but when i looked on Buy.com I found all three items for a total of $1200. SO I paid around $2000 for items I could have bought for $1200.

Corporations used to give Christmas bonus’s now they giveaway coupons to their own products. This sucks

A high-up figure in the multi-billion dollar corporation I work for sent out a memo: to be prudent in the face of our faltering economy, there will be no raises and no bonuses this year.

Said CEO must think we all have amnesia, as two days later he sent out a memo lauding his company for remaining strong and setting such stellar profit records in the context of our economy.

Two jobs ago, I worked for the 3rd largest computer company on the planet, at that time. We all got a $50 gift coupon to a grocer for the family Christmas dinner.

Then, about 20 years ago, I changed jobs and was shocked when my first bonus check was about $9K. I giggled all the way home. Later on, when I became the boss, I was the one who handed out bonuses. My company was incredibly generous. My top couple of guys would regularly get $20K.

Well, back in 2004, we overhauled our entire global IT infrastructure. It was huge, but it was done by just a few people actually. The physical plant in 13 locations, on two continents, and the addition of three hosted colocation sites, all servers, all switches, all storage, all networks. All done by 1 lead and two engineers.

So I gave the lead his usual $20K bonus, and then was granted the privilege of handing him a $20K special bonus. So I gave him $40K in Christmas bonuses, gross pay.

He was certainly appreciative, to be sure. But there was no stopping the disappointment in both our faces when seeing that Uncle Sam had walked off with about $20K of that in Christmas taxes.

I don’t get those huge bonuses anymore, but I do get paid very well all year long and get regular quarterly bonuses that make up for them old Christmas binges.

One afternoon during the week before Christmas break, my first appointment, the (extremely hot) mom of a teen I was tutoring hands me a card with $250 cash in it.

Second appointment of the afternoon, the kid’s dad hands me a card with $500 in it.

Third and last appointment of the day, dad shakes my hand as I’m leaving and palms me a $100 bill

If you were a broke-ass college kid paying for his own schooling at one point in your life, can you imagine what I must have felt like that day?

Never had another job, before or since, in which I received a Xmas bonus.

Course my only two “real jobs” have been the United States Air Force and currently the National Park Service.

Got an inital enlistment bonus of 1K (which turned out to be 670 bucks after taxes) and Got a re-enlistment bonus of (1600) (only got about a grand after taxes)

But there were other perks of govt work……and I get a monthly check from the VA for injuries sustained while in service, and I got extra points while applying for my job here at the Lake for the Park Service……..so it kinda worked out for me….I cant complain I guess.

for being one of the employees of the year.

I was laid off 4 months later.

Note siggy.

…from 1990 – 2003. We peformed mostly retail construction for Robinson’s May (or May Co), Broadway (completely run-down shitholes), Macy’s, and to a lesser extent, Monkey Wards, Buffums and Nordstroms.

We cruised along for 4 years with fairly standard performance-based bonuses ($5,000 – $15,000/year). Then we had the earthquake in ‘94. BONANZA!
One of my projects was the RobMay at Northridge Mall that was totally trashed. The Rob/May PM told me , “We have 3 months to get this store back in operation…WHATEVER IT TAKES”. To a contractor’s ears, that’s music finer than anything ever written by Beethoven, Mozart, or (roll over) the Beatles. We worked around the clock and made their deadline. I was logging 80-90 hours a week…profit on the project was borderline obscene. After that I rolled into a couple of other repair projects. One for Macy’s and one for Rob/May. The profits were not quite as obscene, but substantial. My bonus that year was $35,000.
In ‘95, Macy’s bought the old Broadway shitholes and then realized they had an inventory of stores that needed a LOT of work. This was the start of BONANZA II. They didn’t get much done in ‘95, but we rolled like crazy in ’96…from one store to the next to the next. Macy’s was so poorly managed that it was impossible to not make healthy profits on their projects (They’d tell us their budgets, but had only a sketchy idea of what they wanted to accomplish. Might as well give the keys to the inmates). I completed 6 projects that year, and got a $40,000 bonus.
Ah, the glory days of retail construction…which are gone. The inefficienct retailers are gone, replaced by healthier competitors. How many of those retailers mentioned above are still around? It’s a brutal market that punishes harshly. And THAT explains;
1) Why I no longer perform retail construction.
2) If you happen to notice anyone praying for an earthquake chances are they’re a contractor.
3) Why my year end bonus is back to where it was in the early 90’s…or less this year. And I’m one of the lucky ones…

I’m a nurse…been working in the healthcare field since 82

small bonuses taxed at 50% on separate checks..no drama, no excitement.

That was pretty nice.

mr opie_jeanne only got bonuses when he worked in private practice for 8 years, and one year he was the only one who got a bonus, $2500 back in 1989, and we thought we were rich. They laid him off a week before Christmas in ’92, because he was their most expensive employee. He was the last guy they laid off, after bleeding employees for two years during that recession.