Did You (Will You) Get/Receive a Retirement Watch?

[ErichPryde]

SC1

All piss & vinegar (understandably so by the way) aside...

it's true.

My wife, an RN going into her 37th year, has saved (along with coworkers and Docs) more ass than the bible on a Sunday but yet makes a fraction of what Docs & hospital admins pull down - and - during 36 years of Nurse's Weeks has received:
Plastic totes with hospital logos printed on them
Plastic pens with hospital logos printed on them
A couple balloons - yep, with hospital logos printed on them
A bag of of jellybeans -- again yes, hospital logo printed on the bag
and various other dime store bullshit bought in bulk and mass printed to save coin by billion dollar healthcare systems.
Cheap fuckers the lot of them.

Only upside, various surgeons shaking their head's in disgust when administrators & nurse managers hand this shit off to my wife and her coworkers like they should feel grateful and they've won the lottery.

Mad amount of respect to your wife, and the work she does. My brother is an RN in Portland, OR and would completely agree, this last year the nursing staff was given last gen Kindle Fires OR a $25 gift card to Amazon "in thanks of their hard work during Covid."

Slightly better than the plastic totes and jelly beans that your wife received... but upper management acted like it was this huge deal to do something like that for him.

Anyway, I greatly respect what your wife does for her community. Some of us not in the healthcare system understand how important what she does is.

 

[SC1]

ErichPryde

Mad amount of respect to your wife, and the work she does. My brother is an RN in Portland, OR and would completely agree, this last year the nursing staff was given last gen Kindle Fires OR a $25 gift card to Amazon "in thanks of their hard work during Covid."

Slightly better than the plastic totes and jelly beans that your wife received... but upper management acted like it was this huge deal to do something like that for him.

Anyway, I greatly respect what your wife does for her community. Some of us not in the healthcare system understand how important what she does is.

Is he at Kaiser Permanente?
We lived in PDX for a decade and my wife worked at KP.

 

[ErichPryde]

SC1

Is he at Kaiser Permanente?
We lived in PDX for a decade and my wife worked at KP.

Not Kaiser, Cascadia? I've got a neighbor that works at Kaiser in Vancouver as an RN.

Looks like it's Cascades Health now. All I know is that he regularly expresses frustration about... the culture. and what admin staff does.

 

[JwRosenthal]

My wife worked in the bakery of a large grocery chain for many years. When Covid hit, they were very cavalier about safety (not providing masks etc when the mandates came out), expected their employees to confront non-maskers (you couldn’t pay me enough to get in some strangers face on a hot button topic like that) and expected people to pick up extra shifts when people called out sick (not asked- expected), it was just an awful situation.
They offered an extra .25c an hour as hazard pay for working during the pandemic, and then took it away 6 months later claiming the worst of the pandemic was over (this was at the end of 2000).
They decided to offer a one time free lunch event as a gift to their employees and management had the bakery and deli departments prepare the sandwiches and cupcakes for their fellow employees- and of course themselves. The managers beamed at the incredibly kind gesture they had forced their employees to make for themselves celebrating their “essential workers” during such unprecedented times. Each employee also got a $25 gift card to the store where they worked. The managers all got $10k bonuses that year for record company profits.
She left a few weeks later and decided to finish college.

 

[ghce]

Watch Later

Why didn't this cross my mind, I was self employed.

I've been self employed for 30 plus years, these days I give myself a retirement watch at least once a week 😁

 

[vbrad26]

Walrus

Are you hiring? Edit, only feel like I got another three days of work left in the tank is that long enough for a Rolex

Always got work in our fabrication shop!
It's hot, dirty and can be slightly dangerous...you interested?

 

[STANDY]

I read about my jobs 45 years gift. A picture of your choice framed or a watch valued up to $100
$100 doesn’t even get me a cheap strap….

Government job so not expecting much…( The Aussie old gov pension is what has kept me there 😗😗 Can afford to buy a $100 watch every fortnight 😁😁 )

 

[Archer]

The place I worked at as an engineer would give you various trinkets with the company logo on them for 5 year anniversaries. Back when I started, the company logo tie bar was a big one, and as you were there longer they were embellished with small precious stones. Most people wore them to work corporate wide, so no matter where you were in the world at one of the facilities, you could tell how long someone had been with the company just by their tie bar bling level...

When we went "business causal" the tie bar thing went away, and they started giving us a catalogue of cheap shit with the company logo on it. I have a desk clock (cheap quartz round clock set into a piece of wood, with the company logo stuck on it in the form of a brass plate), a set of company logo coasters, and stuff like that. When our specific plant hit our 50th anniversary, I got a print from a local artist, and a company jacket.

They didn't give you a watch for retirement, but for 25 years service. I was gone after 23 years, but the watch was a cheap quartz gold tone thing. I wasn't going to switch from my Blancpain, JLC, GO, etc. to wear it, so no great loss...I didn't own any Omegas at the time...

 

[p4ul]

Archer

I didn't own any Omegas at the time...

Dark days @Archer but you came through!

Please accept an imaginary gold watch of your choice for Service to OF, hoping your day is brightened.
👍

 

[BradleyJ.]

Archer

Back when I started, the company logo tie bar was a big one, and as you were there longer they were embellished with small precious stones. Most people wore them to work corporate wide, so no matter where you were in the world at one of the facilities, you could tell how long someone had been with the company just by their tie bar bling level...

That's how the Empire did things in StarWars.

 

[Trog]

Nothing says contempt for employees when companies outsource 'loyalty' to a catalog company.

 

[vbrad26]

Trog

Nothing says contempt for employees when companies outsource 'loyalty' to a catalog company.

Nothing says they have to give you anything (in addition to the compensation that both parties already agreed to) at all....

 

[Archer]

vbrad26

Nothing says they have to give you anything (in addition to the compensation that both parties already agreed to) at all....

Yes, very true, but running a business that way is an ideal formula for creating bitter, unproductive employees.

In my experience that way of thinking, that you are only entitled to what weas agreed to, doesn't go both ways. Working for a large company (Fortune 500, billions in annual sales) you are expected to go "above and beyond" on a daily basis. It was so engrained in the corporate culture, that when they did performance reviews, and your performance was "meets company standards" they had the audacity to tell us that since company standards were higher than other places, it was actually an above standard review! Of course compensation only reflected "meets company standards"...🙄

Companies like to create the illusion of loyalty, but in reality there is none - again in my experience.

 

[vbrad26]

Yeah don't get me wrong. I was just playing devils advocate.
As an employer of a small company (80 people give or take) we really do make an effort to go above and beyond to make sure our co-workers (and yes, we specifically don't refer to them as employees), feel that they are appreciated and that the work they do is valued.
We have decent benefits, very flexible and lenient PTO and end of year bonuses based off of profitability.
But, being a smaller company, we have the luxury to be able to focus on all that. I could see how in a corporate environment, that can get lost in the mix.
I haven't been doing this long, but in the time I HAVE been doing it, it seems there has been a shift. Before, the employers seemed to hold all the power. Now, it's the employees.
Gone are the days of "loyalty". People job hop all the time for various reasons. I think it has created some friction.
Upper mgmt doesn't feel like they should go out of their way to do anything out of the ordinary for their employees, and the employees feel like they don't have to do anything out of the ordinary to impress upper mgmt and will jump ship at the drop of a hat. Now it is just a vicious circle of contempt, to quote @Trog
I don't know, that's just sort of my perspective on all of this...since no one asked haha.
I just happen to see both sides of this on a daily basis.

 

[Archer]

vbrad26

As an employer of a small company (80 people give or take) we really do make an effort to go above and beyond to make sure our co-workers (and yes, we specifically don't refer to them as employees), feel that they are appreciated and that the work they do is valued.
We have decent benefits, very flexible and lenient PTO and end of year bonuses based off of profitability.

Good to hear.

vbrad26

Gone are the days of "loyalty". People job hop all the time for various reasons. I think it has created some friction.

Well, I'll just say this - I was head hunted constantly while in that job, and always stayed with the company I was with. When times were really tough, they cut me. At the time I was the most senior mechanical engineer, top performer every year, had touched every square inch of the plant that I worked in over the years I was there, and had a historical understanding of things that none of the others had. But I was more expensive, so they kept on the guy who had been there for 5 years, and would say yes to any crazy idea that anyone asked him to do, no matter how bad the idea was. That plant closed a few years later, and now the property is a series of strip malls - 60+ years of manufacturing there was gone.

I moved on to be a full time watchmaker, even though I had job offers at another place to go right back into engineering. But I had lived the corporate experience long enough - it can be soul crushing (not that I believe in souls, but you get the drift). I was no longer willing to be an "FTE" on some company's books.

vbrad26

it seems there has been a shift. Before, the employers seemed to hold all the power. Now, it's the employees.

Personally, I see that as a good thing. Now companies are going to have to work at keeping the people who are valuable to their operations. With the lack of unions, employers have had all the power for too long IMO...

 

[rcs914]

vbrad26

Nothing says they have to give you anything (in addition to the compensation that both parties already agreed to) at all....

I'll agree with that to a point - at my last job, where I was for 18 years, every few years there would be some new corporate push of "Change management" and each time it was always about how THIS TIME things would be different.

One of the last ones was a real doozy - literally every single email we sent needed to be written in a way that whatever we were talking about accomplishing could be tied to the overall company profitability.

Here is a real example, mostly redacted for identifiable information:

"To me, this achievement embodies three of our cultural beliefs - Think Solution, Drive Results, and Stand Tall, and has directly impacted our key measure of Profitability by reducing the amount of time that it will take analysts to connect to the site. This time saved has the potential to lead to approximately $57,000 in cost savings across the department!

That’s X-Factor directly contributing to our Key Result of Profitability at $136.6M!"
____________________

Here's the thing though - increasing the profitability of the company had zero impact on us - there was no profit sharing, no bonus structure, absolutely nothing other than a pat on the back. If the company made 25 million profit or 125 million profit, this would not affect us in any appreciable way. If your employees are having it shoved in their faces on a daily basis that their actions are leading to hundreds of millions in profit, but by the same token are offered a 2% merit raise at the end of the year (which was approximately $1000) it can lead to some resentment.

 

[MRC]

vbrad26

Always got work in our fabrication shop!
It's hot, dirty and can be slightly dangerous...you interested?

As bad as this place?







If it's better I'm in!

 

[vbrad26]

rcs914

I'll agree with that to a point - at my last job, where I was for 18 years, every few years there would be some new corporate push of "Change management" and each time it was always about how THIS TIME things would be different.

One of the last ones was a real doozy - literally every single email we sent needed to be written in a way that whatever we were talking about accomplishing could be tied to the overall company profitability.

Here is a real example, mostly redacted for identifiable information:

"To me, this achievement embodies three of our cultural beliefs - Think Solution, Drive Results, and Stand Tall, and has directly impacted our key measure of Profitability by reducing the amount of time that it will take analysts to connect to the site. This time saved has the potential to lead to approximately $57,000 in cost savings across the department!

That’s X-Factor directly contributing to our Key Result of Profitability at $136.6M!"
____________________

Here's the thing though - increasing the profitability of the company had zero impact on us - there was no profit sharing, no bonus structure, absolutely nothing other than a pat on the back. If the company made 25 million profit or 125 million profit, this would not affect us in any appreciable way. If your employees are having it shoved in their faces on a daily basis that their actions are leading to hundreds of millions in profit, but by the same token are offered a 2% merit raise at the end of the year (which was approximately $1000) it can lead to some resentment.

Hah yeah that's ridiculous. It is unfortunate how out of touch some of these big companies are.
To them, it's just business, nothing personal, nothing else really considered except profitability and a healthy bottom line.
Of course, I get that. They are a for-profit business as are we. But at some point, some one needs to step back and REALLY think about the optics.
If you don't have happy workers, you'll end up with no workers at all.

MRC

As bad as this place?
If it's better I'm in!

Yeahhhh. I've never been a whistleblower, but yeah. I'm calling OSHA.

 

[rcs914]

MRC

As bad as this place?







If it's better I'm in!

I'd say that place is a stack of OSHA violations a mile deep, but I'm not sure that OSHA or the mile are applicable where you are. Maybe the mile 😉

 

[BradleyJ.]

MRC

As bad as this place?







If it's better I'm in!

As a person with OCD, I could not work in those conditions haha.