Well, yesterday, out of the blue, an appointment popped up in my Outlook mailbox: Team Incentive Checks.

Well, that was a surprise. It’s no secret that last year completely sucked for us. I was pretty much expecting a whole lotta nothing in the way of a bonus check (if not, as I joked to co-workers, an invoice “for the pleasure of working here”). After all, the fourth-quarter division report last week started with a slide describing the preceding quarters: Ugly, Uglier, Ugliest.

So this morning, the head of the department starts to run down the numbers: this was plan, if exceeded plan by this much, we maxed out the bonus at X, if we were below plan by that much, our minimum bonus was Y.

In every case, we were so far below plan we didn’t even make the minimum bonus. When all was said and done, our total accumulated bonus is…0.00%. whee.

At this point, the department head launched into this whole cock-and-bull bit about how he fought to give is something, a token at least to reward us for all our hard work during the year (trying to set up, yet again, an us-versus-them environment within the department), and announced that everyone would get a check for $100.

I guess I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. On the one hand, a regular bonus would be great – in good years, that could about to several thousand dollars for me (not that I’ve ever actually seen such things). It’s understandable that last year sucked and we’re not getting a bonus, OK fine. This has the feeling of a sop almost, a shut-up-and-take-what-you-get kind of thing. Speaking on sheer principle, I’m not sure we wouldn’t have been better off with nothing at all.

All that notwithstanding, though, you bet your ass I’m depositing that sucker on my way home form work, ’cause I’ll take any money they give me, principles be damned 🙂 Hey, if nothing else it will go into our coaster trip fund.