iStockphoto / AH86
Our annual BroBible holiday party was last week. We flew all of the ‘remote’ employees in from across the country (Florida, Los Angeles the Midwest) to NYC where we met for a day of eating and drinking on Wednesday. Thursday, I was so hungover I could only be described as the shell of a living man but that’s on me for switching from beer to Bourbon (neat) at around 3pm in the afternoon.
There are similar stories happening right now throughout our country. My wife’s holiday party was also in NYC last Friday. I count this year as a 100% WIN for me there because I woke up Saturday morning feeling great.
With Christmas and Chanukah next week, most companies who haven’t held their annual holiday parties yet are doing so this weekend and that means there are A LOT of Secret Santa/White Elephant gift exchanges going on out there. And the good companies are handing out bonuses to employees as a show of thanks for their contributions over the past year.
You might’ve received a bonus already. I hope you did. You deserve it, bro. But I’m almost certain that the bonus you got this year doesn’t compare to what went down at this Maryland-based real estate firm. The boss at St. John Properties in Baltimore, Edward St. John himself, surprised his 198 employees with a cumulative $10 MILLION IN BONUSES.
Each of the employees was given a mystery envelope to open at the same time and those envelopes held bonuses ranging anywhere between $50,000 on up to $270,000. In every case, that’s straight-up life-changing money. Watch as the employees lose their minds.
and
what exactly led up to an outrageous bonus pool of $10 million for this Baltimore real estate company? Edward St. John had this to say:
To celebrate the achievement of our goal, we wanted to reward our employees in a big way that would make a significant impact on their lives.
I am thankful for every one of our employees, for their hard work and dedication. I couldn’t think of a better way to show it.
Honestly, I’m just not that nice of a person. I cannot envision myself committing an act this charitable for the holidays. My hat’s off to this man.
As you can imagine, employees lost their damn minds:
I remember opening the envelope, seeing the number, blinking my eyes a couple of times because I thought my vision was off and then hugging my coworkers.
I think I said a few times, ‘I can’t breathe’ – I felt a little nauseous and then just celebrated.
I felt like I finally lived out my own Hallmark movie. (via Unilad)
That’s life-changing money for these employees and it’s pretty good press for the business too. News outlets worldwide were talking about the generosity of this boss and how he rewarded people at the company. I’d never heard of them until this week and here I am talking about them right now. They could’ve spent $10 million on a Super Bowl ad and nobody would’ve cared but this is GOOD press right here.