[quote=spdrun]If the corepiration for whom I worked gave me a gift, my first thought would be “f you, your momma, poppa, and your children – I’d prefer to have the money to spend as *I* wish.”[/quote]
That is you. Maybe because you’re more intelligent.
But human psychology is tricky. If you give an employee a $50 gift certificate to a favorite restaurant for a job well done, that’s more valuable than $50 cash. The cash he will pocket and forget. The certificate, he will go home and tell his wife and the two of them will have dinner. Something to feel proud about and result in more loyalty to the company.
If you give an employee some lousy antique looking clock for decades of service, he will proudly display it on his mantel and tell this grandkids.
A lot of people don’t know how to be happy. They don’t how to retire either. IMO, that’s why you see so many rote answer regarding retirement, “I’d like to travel” from people that largely haven’t traveled before or if they describe it what they really describe is the ability to float from one Four Seasons resort to another without having to worry about paying for it.
Basically, they’re looking for fulfillment outside of themselves in purchases. I think the thought of sitting around for a weekend with their own family without a slew of distractions pending terrifies a large portion of our ‘successful’ populace.
you give an employee a $50 gift certificate to a favorite restaurant for a job well done, that’s more valuable than $50 cash. …
If you give an employee some lousy antique looking clock for decades of service, he will proudly display it on his mantel and tell this grandkids.
How do you know the wife would like that particular restaurant? Unless the certificate is to all restaurants of a particular group, like Darden, in which case 90% of the restaurants that accept it will be crap. Gimme the cash or shut your yappa.
The clock? “I slaved for those idiots for 30 years and they fired me two weeks before I was eligible for a pension. I’d like to shove that clock up my old boss’s bum.”
