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Friday, December 16, 2011

The Time of Giving and Getting

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Yesterday, after making a record $36 million this year, our powers-that-be spent $4000 and gave us, each one a valued employee, a $50 Wal-mart card as a Christmas/bonus. Surprisingly, some ungrateful workers had the nerve to complain about this generous gift.

You would think they would be grateful that there are only 80 of us instead of the 200 greedy souls that existed just a few years ago. Given the various "make the investors rich" decisions that our new owners have made during the year, would they have spent $10,000 instead of $4,000 on our gifts? Yeah, right. A snowball would have a better chance vacationing in the Bahamas unscathed. Besides, this show of generosity goes well beyond what our previous owners did in December.

The old owners owed this business until three years ago. During that time, they would play "lottery Christmas" with their employees. The president would put our names into a hat and draw 10 of them out. These lucky employees would get prizes ranging from clock radios to large screen TVs. You didn't even have to be present to win.

It was a wonderful event, provided you were among those lucky few winners. During the almost 20 years that I worked for the old company, my name never got called. In fact, there were several of us who had a better chance of being struck by a meteor. For whatever reason, Fortune repeatedly smiled on a handful who had their name chosen more than once across those years. I could only imagine that some of us didn't kiss Fortune's butt often enough.

Thankfully, when the new company took over, they put an end to this absurd celebration of Christmas. So, when our glorious overlords handed out gift cards this year, well, my ship of good fortune had finally arrived!

In fact, I am so happy that I don't care that the powers-that-be have given themselves bonuses of $10,000 each. That is my Christmas gift to them – 14 months of work for 12 months of pay. Happy holidays, y'all!

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