Company introduces $75 wellness stipend that is so intentionally difficult to use that most employees give up

When convenience turns into inconvenience, something is deeply wrong.

We have all had the experience of realizing that something that might seem convenient actually adds more time and stress to our days. I'm often having this experience with ticketing apps. Some concerts, plays, or events will force you to download an app in order to use their ticket. They claim that this makes for a more streamlined experience, but this is almost never the case. You end up in line, trying to connect to Wi-Fi so you can download the app, frantically trying to surrender your information so you can make an account and access the ticket that you purchased with your hard-earned cash. You realize that a simple email with a QR code, or heaven forbid a paper ticket, would have saved you a whole lot of trouble. There is a kind of convenience that is even more nefarious, though, and that's what this story is about. This company wanted to appear like they were making life better for their employees. Part of their benefits package was a wellness stipend which encouraged employees to hit the gym and be reimbursed for it. This is the kind of thing that companies love to advertise when they're recruiting. But the way it works in practice is much more important than how it can be advertised. One employee learned that the hard way, and figured out that this stipend might have never been intended for use in the first place.

Nobody likes to do annoying paperwork, unless you're the kind of person who somehow thrives on it. But most of us don't like to be bogged down in the details of bureaucracy, especially when we don't deem the end result "worth it." It's so much easier to give up on this kind of stuff than it is to spend your precious time trying to bend to a system that doesn't want to be bent to. That's what happened here, and it spoke to a bigger issue about inconvenience in the workplace. Keep scrolling to read all the details of this faulty system and see what advice commenters had.

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My company introduced a "wellness stipend" but the process to claim it is so intentionally broken that most people just give up.

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Commenters gave their sympathies and quips.

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