Is your bonus like a cartoon?

Yep, These cartoons are both based on reality. The Swell Company, about 50 miles up the road and a recent raider of some of our good employees, announced their bonus. It ammounted to several thousand dollars and a free computer to most of their employees. Boy were we jealous of everyone who had left us. Then one our customers announced a layoff. We knew they were in trouble so that wasn't a surprise. It didn't really make anyone feel better.

Now there were a number of years that our big birds tried to make the bonus based on some kind of performance. I should say that they always had that stated target. But everyone knew that the objectives were somewhat subjective and if there wasn't enough flexibility in the goals there certainly was in the financial measuring process. And everyone knows that 2+2=5 if the corporate bean counters say so.

So, one year we knew that the performance to goal was incredible, and figured that the bonus would be great. But itwas late. Now why would the bonus be late when it was so obviously good? If it were a bad year and they were just trying to come up with some more mone for the bonus, that we could understand. But in a good year?

The bonus was 6 weeks late and it was good, but did not meet expectations. There were several bad business to write off and so several million dollars hit the bottom line and had a severe impact on bottom line profits.

Oh, you guessed it, executive bonus formulations did not include business write-offs. The birds were flying high! We knew where our extra bonus went!

In this case, 2+2=3 AAARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!

Toady's Work R Fun Bonus Cartoon