Your say: Corporate Christmas presents
Stuff wants to hear about the best and worst Christmas presents youve received from your boss. Out-of-date magazines? Alarm clocks? Bum-bags? Send us your feedback and well publish your comments.
RE: Kiwi companies generous at Christmas
Feedback (latest posts at top):
My worst Christmas present from an employer was when I was working at a Warehouse while I was at school. They gave us all plants from the Gardening department in the store and they were all clearance stock with 20c price stickers on them! That went straight in the bin when I got home! - Kylie Tunnicliffe
As a high school teacher, I get no Christmas gift from my boss - not even a card or box of chocolates! In fact, if we want to go to a Christmas party, we have to pay for it ourselves. And from the students - I didnt even get thanks miss Although we did get a 4 per cent pay rise, this wasnt back paid to when our contract expired so after inflation, I got a pay-cut this year… Although it beats the year the principal announced hed replaced me on the stage at the last day of term! Bah Humbug! - Kerensa Robertson
I remember one year when the company had had a good year and the directors gave themselves a great big pay out and the rest of the staff recived two wine glasses with the company logo on it. Miserable. - Sharon Ferris
At a company I worked for in Wellington in the mid-1990s we had a Christmas work lunch that was pot luck, and every year we would get a company diary for the following year (which we needed for work anyway). One year, with a great flourish, the ancient head of the company handed out an envelope along with the customary diary. Was it a gift voucher? Was it some sort of lucky prize draw? Nope, it was a piece of paper entitled Are you living the life you deserve?. It asked all of us to really look at how we were spending our lives and decide whether it was really how we wanted it to be. Needless to say, once the Christmas break was over an avalanche of resignation letters hit the bosss desk… funny that! - Claire
The worst christmas present I received from my now ex boss was a hamper that had lots of different nuts, I am deadly allergic to nuts. Needless to say I changed jobs pretty quickly after that. - Mandy
I was working at a plant nursery in Nelson last year, and for Christmas we were shouted on a jet boat wildlife tour of the Mapua estuary, then had a lovely picnic at a nearby reserve with delicious food and wine, then as if that wasnt enough we were also given special hand cream and fudge. It was awesome. - Lucy
I work for a web development company (www.blacksheepcreative.co.nz) and read your story on bosses giving their employees presents. This is the first real job Ive been in (started in March just after graduating from a degree in IT), and for Christmas my bosses are giving my co-workers and I a ticket to webstock (www.webstock.co.nz), a web development/design conference in Wellington next year. The tickets cost $900, and they are paying for our food/accommodations, so this is a present in excess of $1000. I feel I am very fortunate to have such nice employers, and work harder for it because I genuinely want to see this company succeed. - Andrew Ferri
When I was working for Consumer Magazine, we got all got a goose-down duvet inner - I though it was a fantastic present! I was over the moon! - Eve Williams
The staff at a friends company were last year each given a little green plastic apple. Kinda like a Chrissie tree toy but also kinda like the corporate logo. The staff discovered they didn%26acirc;%26euro;%26trade;t even break when thrown at an office wall. Someone reckoned these plastic apples were too cheap for the $2 shop to sell. - Melanie Brigden
I work at a bank contact centre and while the bank gave us great presents last year (bottle of wine, Christmas cake and a gourmet recipe book), the recruitment company that the bank was outsourcing to at the time were pretty thoughtless. The gave us a skipping rope (I assume for exercise) and these little tiny exercise weights that wouldnt give a good workout to a 3 year-old. Did they think we were going to skip home thinking; yay, Im getting fit? - FG
The worst Christmas gift Ive ever heard of actually came from Fairfax. A friend of mine was working at the Southland Times and was presented with the previous months issue of the NZ House and Garden. Thus the generous gift was actually an old magazine from the companys own stable. I dont think it inspired too much company loyalty to be honest… - Sophie
