Christmas Bonus

While I was still employed, I was a member of the company social club. The social club was the group that arranged employee social functions throughout the year; mainly the annual company picnic and the two annual Christmas parties (one for adults only and one for the employees' kids). The social club booked the halls and provided the gifts and refreshments for these functions. Since these things cost money, the social club was funded via payroll deduction; three dollars was deducted from each paycheck of each employee belonging to the social club.

At Christmas time, each employee would receive a free turkey courtesy of the company. This was the annual Christmas bonus, and it was provided not by the social club but by the company's owners. As the company is now being liquidated, there is, of course, no staff Christmas party (adult or childrens') this year, nor are there any free turkeys.

Since the social club had been collecting its membership dues for most of the year and didn't pay for any staff Christmas functions, it found itself with a surplus of cash on its hands when the company shut down. To their credit, the social club executive decided that the only fair thing to do was to distribute the remaining monies evenly among the remaining membership (those who were still in the company's employ when it finally failed). And so it was that I received in the mail earlier this week a check from the social club in the amount of just over five hundred dollars.

Ironically, it appears that the best Christmas bonus that I ever received came after the company had shut down. God bless us every one!