Christmas bonuses. Anybody get one?

In construction we also got shed loads of plonk given by contractors and suppliers. For about 6 years the different departments kept their bounty and split it between themselves…. This suited us just fine. Then one year some do gooder from accounts, who funnily enough never got much complained so the MD ruled that all gratuity was handed in and raffled across the whole firm…… Not so good, especially as our dep brought in the lions share of stuff. Then to cap it all we discovered the management were keeping their gifts!! So in the spirit of Christmas we decided to arrange the receiving of gifts with site visits or even a car park meet and declare bugger all.

On the other side of the fence now working for a consultancy/contractor with 4 employees and we are now the givers…. It’s actually quite sickening to see how much we spend on the companies that give us work.

Thing is that getting a bottle or two from a contractor was great, but we would still use them if they gave us nothing

£25 in vouchers redemable in the companies on site stores, same as last year.
With my previous employer a chritmas hamper and or Tesco vouchers.
I don’t think they’ll be getting much this year as they’ve lost out on a huge resupply contract.

Not from work, but the drinks on the Christmas night out tend to be paid for by the manager and assistant managers (suspect they get a few quid from head office to cover it). However halfway through the last 2 weeks before the holidays I’ve collected about 400 quid in tips from customers, so that’ll be the spending money for our week in Spain over new year sorted

Mrs TG due about £100k, but not till the new year. Unfortunately not a regular thing, a few good deals come off this year. That said, she works her ass off, and was too busy to go the the Christmas dinner at the Ivy this week.

We used to get about £300 before the recession, then they re-jigged it into a raffle (amount of tickets decided by length of service, punctuality, amount of sickdays taken), then stopped them. The company was 10yrs old last month though and we were given a surprise bonus based on years served. As it’s unexpected/free money I treated myself to one those planet-x roadbikes that had people frothing about on here and gave the rest to charity to ease my consumer guilt.

In similar news, what’s the accepted practise for giving the postie an Xmas box? My one’s had to deliver a lot of parcels this year (and wait patiently for me to get up/get dressed/get keys) so I’d like to give her a thankyou. Are there value limits they have to declare (i think I heard of teachers or somesuch having to declare anything £10 or over) ? What’s the standard – money in a card, box o’ chocs, dog reppeller spray, bundle of laccy bands?

Nope. But we do give everyone the time off between Crimbo and New Year, which it is looking increasingly like I’ll be working during. That’ll mean I get to carry over 18 days leave…..

thomasgeorge – Member

Mrs TG due about £100k, but not till the new year. Unfortunately not a regular thing, a few good deals come off this year. That said, she works her ass off, and was too busy to go the the Christmas dinner at the Ivy this week.

Heart warming to read 🙂

Hoping to get my back dated CPD payment in this pay. That will be my “bonus” something I should’ve been paid for months ago. 🙄

I just bought my only employee a second hand mountain bike as a Christmas bonus or rather a loyalty thank you.

At our place last Xmas the residential governor came round with a tin of Celebrations. He came onto each wing, opened the tin & said ‘merry Xmas, have a chocolate’ ( said no thanks but was really thinking ‘stick it up your ringpiece). One tin of chocolates between about 20 staff from a bloke who’s on 40K a year + possible bonuses, talk about kicking prison staff while they’re down!
We’ve never had a bonus but they’ve even knocked the staff buffet on the head. (& that was done in house in the prison kitchen so can’t have cost a lot)

“Tell em their job is their bonus” is what the man from head office reportedly told our line managers (shop floor and top management got bonuses, nothing for the middle layer)

You give a little bit here, a little bit there, start a little bit early, stay a little bit late.
I was hoping to carry on, but i’m no poet laureate, to get to the point, most employers are selfish money grabbing self centered ignorant smile in your face back stabbing incompetent morons, who, come the day of reckoning will surely face the wrath of the working class avenger.
Yes, i have been drinking, no, i do not get a christmas bonus.

Never had one in consultancy and definitely never going to get one in the public sector. I’m surprised we’re not being asked to write thank you letters for keeping our jobs. I buy each of my teams chocolates for the office and buy the drinks in the pub.

It’s a funny subject this isn’t it..
I regard my ‘Christmas bonus’ as the part of my wages which is solely based on performance – it is calculated from various business metrics (including my annual appraisal result) and just happens to be paid into Decembers wages.

As I said above, the first 3 years I was a project manager I got nothing, because we missed all the targets (and my annual appraisal wasn’t included) – the last two years we’ve made/exceeded them, so happy days.

I guess the company funded Christmas lunch yesterday was more of a bonus..

That said, she works her ass off, and was too busy to go the the Christmas dinner at the Ivy this week.

I know that feeling. The other day we were that busy by the time we got our first break Gregg’s had closed, I had to the 24hr garage for a sausage roll. 😐

Not read the whole thread….

I’m self employed, so no – have a couple of subbies do a bit for me now and then on site, but they aren’t permanent – occassionally take them out for some beers/food, but not a Christmas bonus.

I also have a shop and employ a woman who does a cracking job – to reward this, I’ve given her a 10% pay-rise this year and will be taking her out on the piss next Saturday (maybe with some other local business owners/staff too) and she will be getting a bonus of around £150.

No. as I’m freelance and get lots of different sized bonuses right through the year.
By the looks of things a lot of salaried people look at them as a derisory token payment that acts as a milestone for enduring another year.
Cheer up it’s Christmas! 😀

Nope, just a special pile of marking. Still, less stressful with no January exams this year.

Bonus? What’s that?

A year of frugalness from us but at least the big boss was able to upgrade his supercar

Something just woke me, I thought I’d check the bank.
Mine has landed, I’m so very glad I bought the gaffer a very decent cognac this year.
A very nice surprise for Christmas Eve.
Merry Christmas you lot!

I own a few shops and have a few staff in my team, we take them out for a little soirée and then provide the goods needed for their Christmas dinners.
Every little helps

I get 1% of revenue that I generate.
I might pitch that to my boss, it would be about 75% of my salary!

It’d be 600%+ of mine. Not sure how I feel about that…

We’ve had a bottle of red and a bottle of prosecco every year for the past 7 and think a buffet is being put on today. They are also trying out a profitshare program based on company performance but that will be worked out in jan.

Never had one.

My boss gave me £1000 (exc. Vat) to spend on any IT equipment I wanted. I bought a MacBook Pro Retina.

I was the only one, though, as I managed to make a good profit on a project I was running.

time to look for a new job..

Nowt. First year I think, we normally get £100 or so chucked in to our wage packets.

Ours was stopped as apparently it was some issue for HMRC or too much admin overhead to manage (our HR is centralised globally). So they added the £40 or something to base wages which was even more pointless really.

Company wide £400 Christmas bonus here.

We as a small company had a really tough few years since 2007, teetering on the brink several times. However the last couple of years have a been brilliant. We have all worked our arses off though. Boss has thanked the ones who stuck with him this year. So got a great pay rise and a brilliant bonus. Made up!

jam bo – Member

tomhoward »
It’d be 600%+ of mine. Not sure how I feel about that…

time to look for a new job..[/quote]

Surely that depends how hard to sell the product/service is – if it could be sold by a trained monkey then a bonus that’s a large percentage of the sales figure makes no sense, does it?

I work in transport and it’s crazy busy at the moment! Just had £3800 Crimbo bonus 🙂 Well happy.

Couple of days off.Something to do with the cheeses, apparently…

We did.

Just found out yesterday….but boss has now said that because nobody said thank you to him by 12.30 today, we are now working a normal day with no early finish.

Oh how i laughed – just made himself look a complete dick in about 30 secs there 🙄

I took a carton of milk. If you don’t treat your staff well anarchy will prevail.

Bit of a dick move on your office if no one said thanks.

No bonus for us this year, I work in a factory for a well known German company 😉

First time in 11 years, saying that, profits were down this year, they only made 60+ Billion profits this year!

Still, happy to have a job and they have been good to me this year for other reasons.

Self employed, I didn’t give myself a bonus as I though I’d been a lazy bastard this year & didn’t really deserve one.
Then I relented & bought myself a new frame.

Yes thank you, have done every year I’ve been with the company. It’s a nice little extra, and this year I owe the tool van men nothing, so it’s all mine, well it’s soon going to the LBS as I’m sure they must have something shiny I would like.

a “bonus” that staff are always paid by their employer is little more than those employees giving their company a nice interest free loan throughout the year.

Bizarrely, although ive done my job well this year, I’ve had the misfortune of being on transactions that have lost us just shy of €1bn of work. Despite this I got a payrise and bonus in July…only to open a letter yesterday to find that ive had another (much smaller) payrise for no apparent reason at all.

It’s the worst year I could fathom from a work perspective, but I’ve been rewarded more than any year previously.

Not complaining, actually think I might try to keep losing work 🙂

A tin of heroes between the six of us

Building trade has been good this year. On seeing the bonus this morning at 3am ish it seemed to promote a spending spree. Good times are back for now….