'I would rather get no recognition': Worker goes beyond call of duty to save company millions of dollars, is rewarded with a $30 gift card

Author image for JR Atkinson
JR Atkinson • Writer and Editor
Jan 22, 2024 4:00 PM EST

Let's call gift cards what they are: a cop-out gift. Sometimes it's a greatly appreciated cop-out, but a cop-out nonetheless. It screams, "I don't know you and I have no idea what you like so therefore I'm making you make the decision." In certain cases, that's the exact right move. If every gift I've been given that I didn't want was replaced by a gift card, I might be a rich person. But I'm also one of those special people who gets paralyzed by gift cards and waits months (maybe even years) to spend them because I want to spend them in the exact right way. It's a psychological minefield for me. A first-world problem, yes, but a problem nonetheless. 

But sometimes a gift card can be a slap in the face, like in this recent Reddit story where a worker did not get what she deserved. Read on for details. 

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  • 01
    r/antiwork u/Inebriated reaction - 18h ● You identified a mistake that could have cost us tens of millions? Thanks here's a gift card.
    via u/Inebriatedreaction
  • 02
    Wife works for an insurance carrier as an auditor and a few weeks ago realized someone had made a mistake and the company was in the process of printing and mailing duplicate checks. The last time this happened it cost several millions of dollars when customers cashed those checks. She alerted the appropriate teams and her manager and the scope of this error before it was resolved could have potentially costed the company tens of millions of dollars.
    via u/Inebriatedreaction
  • 03
    Her manager is a solid dude and is always about recognizing his crew and apparently did a formal recognition which had to be approved by HR. Her appropriate award per HR was a $30 gift card, which counts as taxable income. corporate America.
    via u/Inebriatedreaction
  • 04
    EDIT1: I am not going to give out her actual position as I would like for this to stay as anonymous as possible. Suffice to say she is in finance, was performing her duties within her scope and she happened to notice a pattern. She then went beyond her scope by taking additional time out of her normal duties to connect the dots on several items, documenting several errors and contacting the appropriate teams so that this could be resolved in a timely manner.
    via u/Inebriatedreaction
  • 05
    I also don't understand why people are arguing that if someone completed work within the scope of their duties, they do not deserve a bonus or raise. A $30 gift card is a slap in the face when someone goes above and beyond their position. Especially when the CEO makes over 300 times her salary and the company spends millions of dollars on stock buybacks.
    via u/Inebriatedreaction
  • 06
    ehzstreet 15h The company I used to work for had a policy where you got a bonus of 10% of the value of the amount of money you prevented the company from losing... I reported to my manager a potential loss of $5000. I thought I had a payday coming. Turns out my manager snaked it from me. I quit shortly thereafter.
    via u/ehzstreet
  • 07
    rojimbosweetpick • 11h ● But that's theft
    via u/rojimbosweetpick
  • 08
    Ben_snipes 10h ● Yes, but no. The manager reported it as their find, not OPS
    via u/Ben_snipes
  • 09
    Magnahelix 17h ● I would rather get no recognition than a half-assed attempt.
    via u/Magnahelix
  • 10
    HalfaManYouAre • 13h Yup. Sometimes I'd rather live in the "what if" world, rather than knowing I got
    via u/HalfaManYouAre
  • 11
    Kitchen-Arm7300 • 11h She should pay it forward... Make an announcement that she's going to buy $30 worth of donuts for the office. LOL!
    via u/Kitchen-Arm7300
  • 12
    yeahbatman • 15h My husband builds a certain kind of instrument for a living. Products kept coming up out of spec and sent back from QC. He was the only one who was able to identify the issue and fix it. The only one in the whole building of a couple hundred employees. He was given a gift for saving the company thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars. It was t- shirt that said "(Boss's Name)'s Hero" that he never wore.
    via u/yeahbatman
  • 13
    fasterecho 15h I don't blame him for not wearing it! I'd have a hard time touching that shirt to use it as a rag with that written on it. So sorry for your husband!!
    via u/fasterecho
  • 14
    fenriq. 17h And the next time she sees it happening, tell her to think about that sweet $30 gift card she'll get by saving them again. Or maybe just don't report it next time and let them eat the losses. Yeah, that second one!
    via u/fenriq
  • 15
    Wiccagreen 15h That sweet TAXED gift card that gets taxed again if she uses it!!!
    via u/Wiccagreen
  • 16
    shapeofthings • 11h I developed a software solution which saved a certain retailer about 20 million per annum. they refused to give me a raise. I quit, and it mysteriously stopped working the next day. they developed an alternative in house, but apparently that took 9 months and was nowhere near as good. oh well...
    via u/shapeofthings
  • 17
    johnnydlive. 17h Saving a company millions of dollars is something that should be rewarded with a promotion and a raise. It would have been better to have just given her a pat on the back rather than a $30 gift card, which is tacky and unprofessional.
    via u/johnnydlive
  • 18
    Inebriatedreaction OP 17h Agreed at the very least they could have padded her performance bonus even more as she's been going above and beyond.
    via u/Inebriatedreaction
  • 19
    bentnotbroken96 - 17h We had an unusual (for here) winter storm here last week. I noticed that the fascia on the side of the building - a giant concrete slab, had cracked on two sides and down the middle and was swaying rather radically in the wind. The boss' truck and one other employee's car was parked directly under it. I got everybody notified so they could move their cars, then stood around to warn people not to park there until we got it barricaded off... Nobody said thanks.
    via u/bentnotbroken96
  • 20
    jjz . 11h I saved the company I work for $70K a year after I found another site was overpaying for services that had nothing to do with me. Boss approached me, I thought I was up for some recognition. He said " I have to go out for a meeting, when I get back I want to you explain to me why you didnt do it sooner" I learnt a valuable lesson that day.
    via u/jjz

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boss antiwork employee work stories toxic-workplace workplace stories reddit reddit story employees toxic-boss workplace subreddit reddit thread Reddit toxic-work-environment
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