the personalized coloring books, the shared Silly Putty, and other corporate gifts gone wrong
Earlier this month, we talked about corporate gifts that went terribly wrong. Here are 15 of my favorite stories you shared (and 15 more about coming next week — apparently there are a lot of bad company gifts out there).
1. The playing cards
One Christmas, we were all handed packs of playing cards with the company logo … not great but not terrible. Everyone can use a deck of cards right?
The we opened them. Instead of the normal hearts/spades/numbers etc., the cards had our “company values” printed on them. They were custom made for a special game, like Go Fish. You were supposed to build “sets” of matching values. Like “Go Fish,” you were supposed to ask, for example, “Do you have any ‘Innovation?’”
Of course everyone was pretty annoyed … the company could have spent the money on giving us actual playing cards. So we all used the cards to make long holiday garlands which we hung up around the office. They remained up through most of January, when we were asked if we could take them down, due to leadership being in town. Because god forbid leadership see our company values decorations!
2. The mobiles
My CEO had Christmas cards made up for the employees in 2008, when the Great Recession was kicking off. The card was a hanging mobile we were supposed to cut out, showing all the places he and his family had traveled around the world that year, with illustrations of his family getting out of the plane or sightseeing in Venice. A lot of effort went into this — all of the illustrations were hand-drawn — but the company was notorious for paying below-market wages, and it didn’t go over well. I remember a manager in the department ripping his to shreds and dramatically hurling it into the trashcan. I think I quietly recycled mine.
3. The Christmas hamper
One of our biggest vendors is in Italy and few years back someone in management decided to send them a Christmas hamper. So far, so unspectacular.
Unfortunately, they decided to send an Italian style hamper with food sourced in sunny old Dublin. From a local supermarket. They sent it to Rome. The vendor was probably baffled, and the following year management received a wooden crate filled with expensive wine, olives, pasta, pancetta, and and a cheeky little note from the vendor saying, “Vino & cibo vero!” (Wine and real food!)
4. The hospital socks
My husband is a physician at one of the state’s largest hospital networks, which is currently in the midst of a physician unionization effort due in large part to ever-increasing demands, while the CEO got an absolutely staggering salary and bonus. Last year, the physicians got socks for their holiday gift. And not just any socks: HOSPITAL socks.
5. The personalized coloring books
A relative of mine was working at a large corporate law firm. They decided to send out an appreciation gift to the support staff. Everyone got an adult coloring book with a small box of pencil crayons. At the time, those coloring books were very popular for stress relief. However, the pictures to color were not just flowers or landscapes – they were portraits of the senior partners at the firm. Truly odd and, well, off-color.
6. The wireless chargers
My old company had the bright idea to spin our in-house technology/software team into a standalone company. I guess they were worried about the change spooking us or our clients, so there were a lot of little bribes to get us on board. Some of these were great ($200 bonus for everyone!) but one was a free wireless charger with the new company’s logo on it. We got an email a few months later saying we should hand them in for disposal because a lot of them had started overheating and posed a fire hazard.
7. The pickle jars
My husband was working at an ed tech startup during the pandemic that generally had good branding – they’d sent him a nice fleece when he got hired, and some other swag we still have (it was 2021 so branded cloth mask, some makeup/ pencil bags).
They had a founding anniversary date they wanted to make a big deal out of, and excitedly told everyone to be home to expect a gift. We were more or less excited – it was still kind of depressing Covid times, and they really hyped this gift up and wanted everyone to open it together on an all-hands call. When it arrived, we noticed it was kind of small, but no big deal – on the Zoom all hands they announced, “Okay, everyone, open your gifts!!” Only to be met with stunned silence. The “amazing gift” we’d been told to expect was a Make Your Own Pickle kit – a single mason jar, with a packet of pickle spices inside, and a sheet of instructions. Also, you had to buy all of the other ingredients which included a large amount of vinegar and cucumbers, which no one had warned anyone about.
I seem to remember the person running the call thought everyone could make the picked them and there, but then realized literally no one had the required ingredients, just this empty jar with a spice packet so they had to abandon the plan. Apparently there was some inside joke among the founding members of the startup about … pickles? But none of the other 100+ employees had any idea what it was, and were just kind of quietly baffled at what they were supposed to do with this jar.
8. The tweezers
One year for Christmas, we got $25 gift cards to a nearby bougie nail salon. I’m not sure $25 would get you in their door, let alone pay for any of their services. We are also in the medical field and cannot have large gaudy false nails.
The next year, everyone got a single piece of a beauty care kit. I was the lucky recipient of a pair of tweezers.
9. The survival kits
When I started residency, the resident association gave out a little “on-call survival kit.” It was actually really cute: a little branded zip pouch with a branded sleep mask (which in retrospect was optimistic lol,) a toothbrush, a mini toothpaste, a toothbrush cover, and some candy. Except… the toothbrush cover was kind of strange. It was a silicone sleeve about seven inches long with a flared head for the bristle-end of the toothbrush … and, for some reason, it was a pale flesh color. It looked a bit … well, frankly, it looked like a dildo.
I was briefly horrified (WHAT do they think residents get up to on-call?!), then realized what it was, decided that I could never EVER be seen with it, and threw it away. Used a hard plastic toothbrush case instead.
10. The “payday”
I was new to this organization, but apparently, the company HR person about four years prior to me starting hyped up a year-end bonus for all employees, implying an extra payday. That extra “payday” came in the form of an actual Payday candy bar. One per employee. Now Paydays are delicious, unless of course you have a peanut allergy and/ or you’ve been essentially told that you were getting an extra paycheck. That HR person left shortly after.
11. The gendered gifts
A former employer loved to do Christmas gifts, but it was gendered unnecessarily and made me mad every year. In the years I was there, men received awesome gifts like a fire pit, a nice Yeti backpack cooler, and a pizza oven. Women, in their first year of employment, got a Tiffany charm bracelet and every year thereafter a charm for it, picked out by the owner’s wife. Why they couldn’t just offer everyone the option to choose between the jewelry or the other item, I don’t know. I hate bracelets and especially hate gaudy Tiffany charm bracelets, and I will forever be bitter about not getting a free fire pit or pizza oven.
12. The shared silly putty
For staff appreciation week, after a series of violent incidents and several team members quitting, our team of 56 was gifted a single egg (for all 56 of us) of silly putty to “destress.”
13. The air fresheners
We’re a retail chain. Among the many products we sell are a line of air fresheners that well pretty well. One year, the vendor sent us a Christmas gift of a branch of a pine tree in a pot, like a mini-Christmas tree, that had been sprayed with a new scent they’d developed called “wintergreen.” Which would have been great, except a) they sprayed way, way, way too much on it, and b) it smelled like armpit. Within minutes, the entire office acquired a stench that lasted for a couple of hours after it was (immediately) removed.
They did not send us any holiday gifts after that.
14. The candy
Public school teacher…
A note that said, “You are a LIFESAVER” with one individually wrapped lifesaver taped to the card.
A note that said, “Thank you for rolling through the changes” with a single tootsie roll taped to the note.
A note that said, “Thanks for going the EXTRA mile” with a single piece of Extra brand gum taped to the note.
I could go on but these were a few of the memorable notes.
15. The t-shirt
For his annual appreciation gift, my spouse received a t-shirt with only the name of his very niche department and the wrong year. Imagine if you will, it’s Christmas morning 2022 and you open a gift of a cornflower blue t-shirt with no logo or company branding that says “External Teacup Negotiation 2013” in white Times New Roman font. We laughed until we cried and it has become a legendary shirt in our family.
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