Christmas parties and bonuses

So we had our employee Christmas party last week and we all received a "thank you" gift for our hard work. Just curious what others' employers did for their workers. I'll start first.

We had pizza to eat and we each got a $20 gift card to a local grocery store. I feel like I made out like a bandit this year.

 

We had an on-site lunch with a wide variety of sliders! We were also each given $25 gift cards to places like iTunes, the Apple Store or iPic. Halfway through the lunch we were asked to start brainstorming an idea for a new work project...

We'll get a proper year-end bonus in February.

 

The company served a dinner that included turkey, roast beef and a few types of pasta. It was very good -- or so I heard. Because I work the latest shift in our department, the dinner had shut down by the time I arrived, so I got nothing and liked it. But it was nice that the company made the effort and that co-workers who come in a bit earlier got to have a good meal.

 

Year-end review is tomorrow, which is when raises may or may not come. Fingers crossed.

 

Meal, nothing else.

 

They put out a second cookie tray today. Unless there is a third tomorrow, that might be as good as it gets.

 

I used to give cash bonuses every year to all full-timers and a gift card to the regular part-timers. It used to piss off our president and CFO. They told me I couldn't do it because of tax purposes or something like that. So instead of asking for permission every year, I simply asked for forgiveness every year. Then again, I was the buffer between the hard workers and the penny pinchers.

 

We received a nice and plentiful meal, as well as a $25 gift card to a locally owned department store. I'm happy with it.

 

Christmas "party" the same night as my family Christmas party. And because no kids, most the office didn't show up.

And $30 in "chamber bucks." Basically, the Chamber of Commerce gets free ads in exchange for what amounts to a $30 debit check to spend at (most) shops in town that are chamber members.

Not happy with it at all, especially considering I designed the whole fuckin' newspaper and didn't even sniff a bonus.

 

We got a party thrown by the landlords who run the building we rent our office from. Coffee and pastries. Company owners announced a party last Friday that the company Christmas party is Thursday. When all of us already made plans to go out of town because we have a mandatory PTO day we were told to take Friday.

 

We had a potluck meal about a week before Thanksgiving (which is a longstanding company tradition that predates our current ownership).
For, I believe the third year in a row, we also got an actual Christmas bonus -- an extra week's pay -- that was handed out last week. We used to get that when we were family-owned and then it was discontinued when the financial situation went into the crapper in the early 2010s. Could've knocked me over with a feather when the corporate owners suddenly started handing them out again, but it was certainly welcome.