Work Week of Overly Competitive Giving

"TysMagic" (twjeffery)
10/04/2018 at 06:57 • Filed to: donate or die

I am enjoying my job. I’ve been at this new company for around six months and I have no regrets about leaving my old company (especially for as much crap that’s happened since I left, good ol FoMoCo is wack). Anyway, this week we’re rallying about donating for a good cause and have a bunch of events going on. It’s a blast, I even did a magic show (side hobby that has weirder people than us oppo folk). We are in teams and it’s point driven by things we do. By participating and raising more than last year we get three more vacation days. Further more, the winning team gets a fourth day of vacation, s o the incentive is strong! Very strong it seems. T urns out, I was severely unprepared for the week of giving.

There are regular groups chatting in whispers around the office about strategy. I’ve had people come in to my office to close the door and still talk in whispers about this or that. If you’ve got an aggressive strategy people are complaining to the higher ups about the rules being bent, unless it’s their strategy in which case it’s a why are you telling on us kind of thing . Apparently last year an IT supervisor guy donated his entire pay check to get points. We’re collecting food donations and someone brought in a 25 lb bag of corn meal (part of the points come from the weight of the food). He is proud of his accomplishment, but I feel like totally missing the feasibility of the donation to a single family aspect. It’s a strange overly competitive mood in the office and it wasn’t something I anticipated.

It’s also coupled with a top boss who has taken to asking us how many hours we’ve worked this week and overly supporting those who have worked greater than 60 hours each week. I have no fault with working and I work somewhere in the 50 hours per week range. However I’m not sure that vibe i s the work life balance I want to hear so much support for.

Not sure where I was going with this, but I’m struggling with how strange it all is.

DISCUSSION (9)

TheRealBicycleBuck > TysMagic
10/04/2018 at 08:55

We had a similar drive in our company. I am currentl y w or king on a contract outside of my home office, so I haven’t participated in our drive this year. A friend of mine working on the same contract decided to win some friends in the local office by donating here as well as his home office. The local office lost the competition. The local office leader noted that if my friend had given here instead of his home office, the local office would have won.

That’s not right on many levels.

TysMagic > TheRealBicycleBuck
10/04/2018 at 09:00

Completely agree. I’m 100% for donating, but it feels weird to make it so skeezy.

Ash78, voting early and often > TysMagic
10/04/2018 at 09:21

I absolutely hate these. Our family gives far more to charity than we save every year, to put it in perspective. Yet my employers (all of them for the past 10+ years) seem like they want to compel us all to have paycheck withholdings for charity so we can maximize participation. It’s the laziest form of personal charity and the employer reaps all the reputation from it. Such a weird concept.

TysMagic > Ash78, voting early and often
10/04/2018 at 09:51

Similar, we support some initiatives outside of the work focus that I have more of a passion for - so my participation is now forced here and it feels odd for sure

Ash78, voting early and often > TysMagic
10/04/2018 at 09:56

Yep...and I always feel weird volunteering on behalf of my employer. It’s well intentioned, but it feels like unpaid marketing/PR work to me. If you’re in the marketing field for the company, that’s a different story.

However, some stuff I’m okay with — my friend’s smaller, local employer sponsors a lot of charity runs and gives their employees as many free entries as they want, provided they actually show up . They even have corporate workout shirts for the events. That seems pretty cool...we don’t do any of that at my modest employer of just 270,000 people :D

merged-5876237249235911857-hrw8uc > Ash78, voting early and often
10/04/2018 at 11:32

Agreed. The only way the corporate charity thing works is if it’s on the company’s dime. And you get paid for it by the company. Otherwise, no thank you and I’ll continue the giving on my own time and money.

TysMagic > Ash78, voting early and often
10/04/2018 at 11:35

Here is a surprising twist : donating cash/check I make it out to someone in the office who goes shopping for us versus donation of the money direct to the charity - that’s a hard stop for me. Not that I’m donating thousands of dollars, but I’m in to put that on my taxes and making a check out to an individual doesn’t really fly.

Ash78, voting early and often > TysMagic
10/04/2018 at 11:38

Absolutely HELL NO. That’s a red flag for an audit, either for you or for the charity, and hopefully for the person “collecting” the money. The reason being that the person collecting the money can then make out a single donation in their own name, which is double-dipping on taxes.

(I’m vice chair of a church finance committee and have heard some war stories)

TysMagic > Ash78, voting early and often
10/04/2018 at 11:40

Yes, as soon as I asked and they said yeah make it out to X I was a little shocked so I just went back to my office to ponder.