Two Red-Letter Days

I was perusing one of the more-than-a-few blogs I read regularly and happened upon this company called Red Letter Days, over in London. Basically, they organize all sorts of cool experiences -- you can buy them for yourself or as a gift for someone else. Helen over at Everyday Stranger received a gift certificate for her choice of a range of experiences from her employer as a thank-you for her good work on a significant project. Take a look -- the experiences are pretty cool. Everything from a full day at a two-Michelin-star county restaurant to a Wedgwood master class to a day of jousting to a two-night teepee retreat to a day of spy training -- and that's not even the so-called "VIP Experiences," which are just cool.

Reflecting on the niftiness of Helen's reward, I got to thinking. Working as I do in financeland, I receive the lion's share of my compensation in a single bonus check at the end of the year. This tends to be a little nerve-wracking, as the base salary is insufficient on which to support my family -- bonuses are multiples of base salary, not a percentage thereof. I myself had an okay year for an organization that itself had a decent-but-not-mindblowing year, and as such my bonus was all of the above -- okay, decent, and not mindblowing. (I should note, however, that it was an improvement over Prior Employer, and thus should be regarded as a success.)

I bring this up as background to what was a more interesting turn of events: on the day of our office holiday party, the head of the company handed out envelopes to every single employee -- envelopes containing a not huge but certainly noteworthy amount of cash. I was thrilled. I immediately called Mr. Metropolitan, who was equally thrilled with the news.

Thinking about it later in the day, I decided it was kind of weird to be so excited about the cash relative to my level of excitement about my (rather more significant) bonus. I think it's because it was an entirely unexpected windfall. I know what my bonus is being used for -- mortgage, school, nanny, insurance, other living expenses, some savings -- but this little pile of money had no designated purpose other than to make me happy. And so it did.

Helen's Red Letter Day and my envelope tell an important workplace lesson, I think: doing random nice things for one's employees gets one all sorts of brownie points from said employees. I think it speaks well of both our bosses that they understand that. Speaking for myself, a bit of cash got my boss much more in the way of employee goodwill than would an additional 5x that amount in my bonus check. And Helen? Well, Helen's going to ride the Orient Express. I think that warrants a warm fuzzy or two, don't you?