I worked in the London office of a large, respected and well known international US-based organization who liked to profess/believe/pretend they were a caring, sharing, benign and PC employer who truly cared about members of the corporate “family” and only had our best interests at heart while they shafted us.

(The usual. Years of pay freezes for us proles, job vacancies unfilled doubling our workload, essential equipment left obsolete, etc etc while the bosses gave themselves increasingly huge bonuses, fancy titles and perks.)

They are really shameless.

They were particularly proud of their corporate employee service recognition awards scheme which had its own dedicated catalogue, and latterly website, where on achieving so many years of serfdom, a choice from a new cornucopia of appreciative gifts would be lavished upon you, with due ceremony along with a poorly mimeographed certificate of service.

I failed to keep a hard copy which I regret, but certain items we could select remain seared in my memory.

15 years service for example could be rewarded with a ring containing a 0.01 carat black diamond.. (aka coal).

This one is even worse.

Another option at 25 years could be an orange cast iron skillet. You get the picture.

Another was something only available to our US colleagues for whom there was no mandatory retirement: 60 years service could earn you the ultimate, a cheap Chinese made 16 speed racing bicycle.

Given that that at an absolute minimum you’d have to be 76 to get this and the joke was that you were encouraged to ride it in heavy traffic in order to rid the company of their pension obligations.

The satire is writing itself.

It took the company several years to cotton on, but when a home gymnasium setup strangely became available as a 25-year service award it immediately became the go-to choice of all my worldwide colleagues.

Why? Not for any desire for fitness. But because all these things had to be sourced and shipped from the States.

Shipping for a terrible, but hugely bulky and heavy weight frame, dumb bells and all the weights to Sydney, Delhi, Ulan Bator or wherever probably cost the company at the very least 20 times the value of the item, not to mention the customs duties and import fees.

I think this went on for about five years before the bean counters clocked it.

I missed out, and had to settle for the orange frying pan to remind me how much they valued my 25 years of servitude. It’s mounted on the wall for my grandchildren to revere.

It’s terrible that they don’t have a better way of honoring their hard working employees.

Here is what people are saying on Reddit.

What an insult.

At least music is fun.

Some companies are really that shameless.

That’s just sad. I hope things get better for you.

Is it a coincidence that both can inflict paint?

Why Tiffany’s, I wonder? Ugh.

When people make fun of boomers, they imagine people like this.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.