Comment On L.T.'s Bonus

It's amazing how little concept some people have of morale.

I suggest these people take the same route as the game industry did with the "easpouse" debacle, which led to a class-action lawsuit against EA for unpaid overtime hours.

WTF, omg... that is the worst bonus ever. Some one tell me me what this hell hole of a company is so I can commit seppuku if I deal with them at any point in my life.

That's a quality wooden table you've got there.

IQpierce:

It's amazing how little concept some people have of morale.

I suggest these people take the same route as the game industry did with the "easpouse" debacle, which led to a class-action lawsuit against EA for unpaid overtime hours.

Oh for chrissake, in context of the note, it was clearly a joke.

Also, full article is 666 words. How evil.

"Bonus" ?

What are these "bonuses" that you speak of?

Something tells me that the CEOs and all the layers of upper management were just upset that they didn't get their usual multi-million dollar bonus.
On a brighter note, the company I work for uses this same bonus system, and when done morally really keeps everyone motivated. Most of the time our annual bonus makes up 20-25% of our annual pay.

Regardless on how the state of thecompany actually was, this boss has the single best motivation strategy ever...

The real WTF is to quit before you know what you actually get (if at all).

captcha: onomatopoeia - is that even a word??

wow, you should let us know who that company is so we can dump any stock. Any company that ties 25% of employee compensation to stock price is going to see some serious illegal stock manipulation.

Thanks for not calling her letter/code/whatever "cute". Must have been difficult to hold back.

anne:

Thanks for not calling her letter/code/whatever "cute". Must have been difficult to hold back.

I didn't think it was cute.

I t'aut it wuz awdooowable.

... you count the words in each article?

Could be worse. The net bonus for all non-management employees where I work has been $0 for the last 4 years. I have dime envy.

Ahnfelt:

... you count the words in each article?

You're so oblivious that you don't notice the automatic word count under every article on the main page?

Ahnfelt:

... you count the words in each article?

return to the home page in "Summary" view

find the bottom bar of any article

see the "Full Article" link?
see what's next to it?

Maik:

The real WTF is to quit before you know what you actually get (if at all).

captcha: onomatopoeia - is that even a word??

In rhetoric, linguistics and poetry, onomatopoeia is a figure of speech that employs a word, or occasionally, a grouping of words, that imitates, echoes, or suggests the object it is describing, such as "bang", "click", "fizz", "hush" or "buzz" and not "moo" "quack" or "meow", since animals do not create those sounds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onomatopoeia

Zylon:

Ahnfelt:

... you count the words in each article?

You're so oblivious that you don't notice the automatic word count under every article on the main page?

noehch:

Ahnfelt:

... you count the words in each article?

return to the home page in "Summary" view

find the bottom bar of any article

see the "Full Article" link?
see what's next to it?

I'm not Ahnfelt, but I don't read in summary view, so I don't see those. I know I'm not the only one.

Zylon:

Ahnfelt:

... you count the words in each article?

You're so oblivious that you don't notice the automatic word count under every article on the main page?

You're assuming Ahnfelt is using "Summary" display.

"Full Article" display doesn't include the word count.

(...on the subject of oblivious...)

on the subject of the actual WTF, how does anyone hand out pocket change for a bonus and not expect people to snap? The WTF is that no one really snapped in that meeting... I have certainly seen people snap over less greivous errors in management than handing out change for a bonus!

Really, it is all our fault. We keep forgetting that
the correct spelling of the word is "boneus"

EvanED:

noehch:

Ahnfelt:

... you count the words in each article?

return to the home page in "Summary" view

find the bottom bar of any article

see the "Full Article" link?
see what's next to it?

I'm not Ahnfelt, but I don't read in summary view, so I don't see those. I know I'm not the only one.

My post was intended to be a step-by-step to explain how the word count is found.

I'll agree, in context, I sounded like an ass...but, that wasn't my intent.

At least you got the dime. Everyone else got 9 cents to split between them.

noehch:

Zylon:

Ahnfelt:

... you count the words in each article?

You're so oblivious that you don't notice the automatic word count under every article on the main page?

You're assuming Ahnfelt is using "Summary" display.

"Full Article" display doesn't include the word count.

(...on the subject of oblivious...)

Well you do start out in summary display, right? Unless perhaps you're just guessing the title of the latest article and appending it to the URL...

That said, I hadn't really paid much attention to it before. I guess now I can stop copy/pasting the articles into word and running the word count feature.

Sweet, an American coin! I'd be the envy of all other Canadians if I had one of those!

But seriously (not really), don't poo-poo a nickel, Lisa. A nickel will buy you a steak and kidney pie, a cup of coffee, a slice of cheesecake and a newsreel. [Lisa looks unimpressed] With enough change left over to ride the trolley from Battery Park to the polo grounds.

noehch:

My post was intended to be a step-by-step to explain how the word count is found.

I'll agree, in context, I sounded like an ass...but, that wasn't my intent.

Ah, gotcha.

(Though, for the record, I don't think you sounded like an ass.)

shadowman:

Well you do start out in summary display, right? Unless perhaps you're just guessing the title of the latest article and appending it to the URL...

That said, I hadn't really paid much attention to it before. I guess now I can stop copy/pasting the articles into word and running the word count feature.

I have it remember for me. ('course, I also have it keep me logged in.)

In fact, I can't even switch to the summary view... clicking that link has no effect. WTF?

shadowman:

Well you do start out in summary display, right? Unless perhaps you're just guessing the title of the latest article and appending it to the URL...

Unless you're linking in from an RSS reader, which leads directly to the main article page. Seriously, before you give somebody grief for not knowing about a given feature, you might want to make sure you're not guilty of the same thing yourself.

At least L.T. got a bonus. All we get at my job is the satisfaction that comes with knowing that the code is now slightly less awful than it used to be.

uh.. sorry to burst your bubble, but to quote the article you linked...

Onomatopoeia' (occasionally spelled onomatopœia) is a word or a grouping of words that imitates the sound it is describing, suggesting its source object, such as “bang”, “click”, "buzz", "pop", or "untz" or animal noises such as “moo”, “oink”, “quack”, or “meow".

That coin looks awfully lot like a Swedish krona. If that's the case, she got around 0.11 euro.

This sounds much like what Nokia was going to do at one point. Record sales but the result was not quite good enough. Not sure how that ended, though.

Was that dime on your W-2? Someone is just begging to be ratted out to the IRS for paying bonuses under the table...

finn:

That coin looks awfully lot like a Swedish krona. If that's the case, she got around 0.11 euro.

There are any number of Swedish kings who may bear some resemblance to President Roosevelt, but that's definitely a U.S. dime, worth about €0.07.

This is the first WTF that is actually Worse Than Failure. I hate the new name but this is totally Worse Than Failure. They should have just not given anything out. Throwing pocket change at your employees is a sure fire way to get them all to quit or go postal or both.

rbowes:

But seriously (not really), don't poo-poo a nickel, Lisa. A nickel will buy you a steak and kidney pie, a cup of coffee, a slice of cheesecake and a newsreel. [Lisa looks unimpressed] With enough change left over to ride the trolley from Battery Park to the polo grounds.

I love that quote. Speaking of Simpsons, I keep thinking of "LT Smash" when I read "L.T.'s Bonus" :)

mr. boss, i think the bonus we discussed does not meet the parameters that we originally agreed on ...

Yal:

Was that dime on your W-2? Someone is just begging to be ratted out to the IRS for paying bonuses under the table...

That dime kicks him into the next tax bracket. That dime cost him $500.

If you take the job with an expectation of gettting x% bonus, and you hold up your end, it's reasonable to expect the company to hold up their end. If they play games, most folks will stop putting out, and those that can will likely attempt to walk out (or at the very least, spend more time reading WTF than doing their jobs).

bonzombiekitty:

Yal:

Was that dime on your W-2? Someone is just begging to be ratted out to the IRS for paying bonuses under the table...

That dime kicks him into the next tax bracket. That dime cost him $500.

Do people really believe this is how tax brackets work? I know you were joking but I see comments like it all the time. When you move into a higher bracket, your entire income isn't all of a sudden taxed at the higher rate. Only the portion higher than the cutoff is.

$ wc -w todays_wtf
666 todays_wtf



(sweet)

K:

bonzombiekitty:

Yal:

Was that dime on your W-2? Someone is just begging to be ratted out to the IRS for paying bonuses under the table...

That dime kicks him into the next tax bracket. That dime cost him $500.

Do people really believe this is how tax brackets work? I know you were joking but I see comments like it all the time. When you move into a higher bracket, your entire income isn't all of a sudden taxed at the higher rate. Only the portion higher than the cutoff is.

most people have no idea what "marginal tax rate" means because they have no idea what "margin" means

K:

bonzombiekitty:

Yal:

Was that dime on your W-2? Someone is just begging to be ratted out to the IRS for paying bonuses under the table...

That dime kicks him into the next tax bracket. That dime cost him $500.

Do people really believe this is how tax brackets work? I know you were joking but I see comments like it all the time. When you move into a higher bracket, your entire income isn't all of a sudden taxed at the higher rate. Only the portion higher than the cutoff is.

Well, maybe the next tax bracket was taxed to 5000%?

Well, for cheesiness a dime beats our annual bonus of a $10 Walmart gift card, which we are then invited to donate to the company's interior charity. This is for the folks in the trenches. It's different in the manageriosphere.

At least I'm salaried; a friend who is hourly told me that if they worked any overtime beyond an hour or so they were hauled on the director's carpet about it because "Our budget is too tight to be wasting money on overtime pay." One of her jobs used to be to process paychecks. She worked on the bonus checks and happened to see the one for her director. "It was more than my annual salary," she told me.

At my previous employment, I didn't recieve a bonus for four years. The fifth year, to my great shock, I got a bonus of $5000.

tiro:

Also, full article is 666 words. How evil.

Ahh beat me to it, I also wanted to call the article trully evil.

K:

bonzombiekitty:

Yal:

Was that dime on your W-2? Someone is just begging to be ratted out to the IRS for paying bonuses under the table...

That dime kicks him into the next tax bracket. That dime cost him $500.

Do people really believe this is how tax brackets work? I know you were joking but I see comments like it all the time. When you move into a higher bracket, your entire income isn't all of a sudden taxed at the higher rate. Only the portion higher than the cutoff is.

Indeed. As I understand it, your after-tax income is non-decreasing with your taxable income. I've always been confused about the idea of making charitable donations for tax reasons...I think the tax break effectively increases how much you can donate, but you'll never save more than you spend. People and corporations donate to charity because they're charitable or they want the PR. It's as simple as that.

anne:

Thanks for not calling her letter/code/whatever "cute". Must have been difficult to hold back.

I didn't realize how cute the letter/code/whatever was until you pointed out that L.T. was a chick. Thanks.

That letter/code/whatever sure is cute.

d:

Could be worse. The net bonus for all non-management employees where I work has been $0 for the last 4 years. I have dime envy.

In the article, it said some folks got pennies...are you envious of those too? :P

tiro:

IQpierce:

It's amazing how little concept some people have of morale.

I suggest these people take the same route as the game industry did with the "easpouse" debacle, which led to a class-action lawsuit against EA for unpaid overtime hours.

Oh for chrissake, in context of the note, it was clearly a joke.

Also, full article is 666 words. How evil.

Actually 666 isn't evil at all, it's a common mistranslation of the original text which is "6 by 6 by 6", which makes 216 the actual Number of the Beast.

The idea is that you'd pay (for example) 40% tax on this $1000 that you earned. So you'd only keep $600 of it if you decided to keep it. If you give it away, you can give away $1000, but it only costs you $600, effectively.

Cryptnotic:

The idea is that you'd pay (for example) 40% tax on this $1000 that you earned. So you'd only keep $600 of it if you decided to keep it. If you give it away, you can give away $1000, but it only costs you $600, effectively.

Right... the other poster got this. But that's not donating for tax reasons, it's just saying that you can give away more than you have in some sense.

You would still have more money if you did not donate, which means that you're still being charitable or whatever to give away that $600.

And we all know trustworthy wikipedia is. <snicker>

At least she got a bonus.

The last company I worked for didn't have a quarterly bonus, but introduced an annual bonus dependent on a) four profitable quarters in a row, b) stock being at or over a certain point and c) sales reaching a specific level.

By the end of the third quarter we had had three profitable quarters, sales were going well, and our stock price was well over the threshold. Then in the middle of the fourth quarter the CEO announced a re-org and put a multi-million dollar charge on that quarter's balance sheet, which meant we had a loss for the quarter. Hence no bonuses despite being profitable for the year.

As for LT's story, there was probably no way the company could legally change the stock price threshold during the bonus period, especially if it's an American company, even if the stock price was just one cent below the threshold. It sucks for the workers, but there's a close eye being kept on employee compensation these days.

I've never seen a definition of Onomatopoeia that would exclude moo. Cows go "moo" as much as an explosion goes "bang"