Sometimes You Realize You Had It Good

Metro used to work at an oil recycling shop, driving around in a 5-tonne truck picking up 45-gallon (205 litre) drums of waste oil, oil filters, antifreeze, and other products.

The work was hard, the products we handled, slimy. Surfaces underfoot were treacherous due not to the surfaces themselves but the massive quantity of oil absorbed by the "oil-resistant" soles of our steel-toed boots. Injuries were not unusual. Backs twisted, bruises, cuts.

But every year the boss went crazy with appreciation. He'd spend roughly $23,000 on the Christmas party, where he gave away flat-screen TV's, DVD players, and once, a novelty motor scooter. The first year, Mme Metro and I got a portable DVD player, the second it was an iPod video--both valued at about $300 at the time they were given.

Accompanying the gifts were bonus cheques and various company-related merch. I still wear to work the jacket I got last year. But things have changed. For one thing, I'm not doing the truck-driving thing any more. I've gone white-collar, and make my money by sitting behind a desk stealing other people's best lines and filing the serial numbers off 'em until they look like mine.

So this year I was surprised when the office sales & marketing apparatchik appeared with an envelope. It was labelled "editorial dept".

"Here's the envelope for Stan's gift," she announced chirpily.

It was explained to me thus: for some reason, each department gets its own envelope. "There's no obligation" to contribute. The money is collected and used to purchase our boss Stan--one of the company co-owners--a gift.

I have massive problems with this. For starters, why not simply put a box up in the canteen? Why is it necessary to have each department contribute separately when we all work in the same building? The woman in charge is a smarmy goit who works in sales. She may just think it's good organization, but the perception is that she likes to keep score.

Also, my department has about one-fifth as many employees as hers. If each person puts in $5, her department will produce about $100. Ours will come up with about $25. So to look half as good we each would have to donate twice as much.

And another thing: we've just put behind us the biggest sales month in company history. For the second time, at least. Our work has probably put this guy into a higher tax bracket.

But we should be getting him a present? £μ©λ that!

The first time we broke the sales record, he ordered in 20 pizzas and we had a company lunch. It was a good lunch and we got to talk to people from foreign lands (like marketing, which is more a strange and alien world where YOU GET MORE!!!!).

Anyway, that was nice. The second time, he passed out $2 scratch-and-win lottery tickets. People were overheard to say that they'd have preferred the pizza again. But we were okay with it. Until the television. He gave the sales department, among other little trinkets, a flat-screen TV.

Seeing as sales would have bugger-all to sell without our efforts, we felt just a wee bit resentful. So when I see an envelope marked "Stan's gift", I am, to say the least, ambivalent.

Or am I out to lunch here? Mme Metro has suggested that the situation is aggravated by my change in type of work. But I know very few people who work in a white-collar situation outside my company. Is this usual? Do the well-heeled get presents just for being rich enough to employ other people?

I see this as being totally bass-ackwards. What do you think?