June 28, 2010 at 8:22 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Breakfast Plan Goes Awry
June 29, 2010 at 12:45 am
It happens with us too, what is a gesture of goodwill becomes a right, more so when the older people who were around when the gesture was initiated leave and there in no one to explain the background.
June 29, 2010 at 2:00 am
And surely an $8/person/week is a taxable benefit 😉
Alex
June 29, 2010 at 4:39 am
Raju, that's a great comment! You're absolutely right.
June 29, 2010 at 4:40 am
Alex, I don't know if I want to answer that publicly! I don't think we were taxed on it, it all went on some credit account at the cafeteria (can't say I disagree with that, after taxes maybe couldn't have afforded the extra snack!).
June 29, 2010 at 4:51 am
Being an aging cynic, these two idioms come to mind:
1) No good deed goes unpunished
2) You can't please all of the people, all of the time
So, in summary: Eat the donuts, or don't. The choice is yours. But it's all you get.
James Stover, McDBA
June 29, 2010 at 5:27 am
This is what happens when creative ideas are sent to non creative people. The idea comes back without any more input from you and looking nothing like the original.
I've had similar experiences. I've even been called in to defend my idea!
There should be a declaration put at the bottom of any idea we submit.
"Implement my idea exactly as stated. If you change anything without my consent I want no part of it and most certainly do not give me credit."
stan
The more you know, the more you know you don't know.
June 29, 2010 at 5:30 am
Totally agree, eat the donuts or not, it's up to you!
Follow up thoughts on the blog at http://www.sqlandy.com/archive/the-breakfast-plan-goes-awry/
June 29, 2010 at 6:16 am
That wouldn't be the first time I've heard of a recommendation from the technical side get implemented completely the wrong way by management! At least they meant well. I do hear similar stories from my friend where she works. A manager brings in treats every Wednesday from his own pocket as a gesture of goodwill. If he misses a week, the workers get upset. They sometimes get taken out to dinner as well, but then will complain about the food.
If memory serves, I think the trick to conditioning humans is to make the rewards random. Slot machines are addictive because the payout is random, even though you lose over time but the chance of the payout is always there so people will do the mind-numbing task of playing it. If the managers had simply randomized which days everyone could go down to the cafe to spend $8, then the feeling of entitlement wouldn't be there and they'd more goodwill. However, getting a group of managers to determine a randomized schedule for something would be like herding cats.
June 29, 2010 at 7:35 am
We have a small shop, so we decided to do lunch once a week for "team building", it now has turned into the most negative experience, everyone just griping about their jobs. I try every week now to find some excuse to get out of it. And you are right, they think they are entitled to it...WHY! You already get paid to do your job. And to sit there and bash the boss and the job, I wonder if he knows that this is what his generosity is really buying him.
Moving to work remotely in 3 weeks, and I CAN'T WAIT to get away from these people here!
SQL Babe
June 29, 2010 at 7:47 am
The randomness here is that you might get bagels, breakfast tacos, or kaloches every Friday morning. Coffee is free and cokes in the machine are a quarter. Occasionally we have an offsite team builder some place fun. About the only griping I hear is when we go more than a week without breakfast tacos, but this is South Texas where the breakfast taco is king. It's a pretty cool group with a good team atmosphere because we need to move fast in many cases which drives the need to leverage your co-workers' help.
June 29, 2010 at 8:05 am
Very selfish and self cenetered Andy. As a diabetic I might be better off eating straight sugar than bagels and donots but you only care about you.
June 29, 2010 at 9:00 am
So I put some pen to paper. Well no I didn't. I keyed into the calculator.
$8.00 for 20 people = $160.00 per week.
Times 52 is $8,320.00 per year.
Divided by 2080 (magic number for calculating hourly from yearly) = $4.00
Spread over the 20 people that is 20 cents per hour rise in benefits.
If played right the company could frame it as "employee enhancement" and get a tax deduction. Back in the days before home high-speed we used dial-up. To serve our customer we put in a dozen lines on the toll-free with a modem on each. After hours we just put them on the local lines and let the employees dial in. They shared out large internet pipe. The rate for dial-up, at the time, was $24.95 per month. Since this was used for employee "training" we expensed it off. The tax deduction more than paid for our monthly cost for our high-speed pipe. 😎
We have had the "good thing abused" as well. When they found out that I had a way to transfer blocks of binary data to and from hand-held devices via SQL they turned that into a file transfer protocol. :w00t: Zip the data, encode that as Bin-64, stick that into a Text column. Now reverse the process at the other end.
ATBCharles Kincaid
June 29, 2010 at 9:16 am
Definitely want to make rewards more random, and given from mgmt, not expected as part of the job.
An interesting link from TED on motivation: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html
June 29, 2010 at 9:29 am
This is straight out of an Organizational Behavior 101 textbook.
Essentially any extrinsic motivation like pay raises, breakfast at the office, etc. is at best going to give you a temporary bump in morale until people get used to it, then it becomes the minimum bar for motivating people further. There is nothing insidious about it, or morally wrong with the people who exhibit this behavior. It is just a part of our psychology, and also the reason you don't feel rich despite probably making 2x as much as you did on your first job.
I'm also not saying that it isn't a good idea to do things like this that demonstrate appreciation for employees. I am just saying that you need to recognize that the morale benefits of these types of programs will be temporary at best. In the long term, fostering intrinsic motivation is the key. Some really good ways to do this are (1) Making people feel empowered; (2) Reinforcing for each employee how their contribution fits into the big picture and how important it is; and (3) Allowing people to use their strongest skills frequently and have opportunities to grow intellectually.
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