Christmas Bonus: Oh Boy, It’s a Dishtowel

Miss Crankypants can hardly believe it! Her poor long suffering spouse, Mr. Crankypants, has worked at Walmart for what only SEEMS like aeons. No, he’s not a door greeter. He puts together bicycles.
Contrary to what most folks think, it’s not that easy to assemble virtually every bicycle that appears under just about everyone’s Christmas tree. He does a bang-up job. So you’d think the powers-that-be at Walmart would reward its employees at Christmas. And you’d also think we’d be holding our breaths, pondering exactly what wonderful Christmas bonus WM will hand out to its diehard employees. And you’d be exactly WRONG.
That’s because last year’s Christmas bonus consisted of (and in the immortal words of Dave Barry, I am NOT making this up)–drum roll please!–a cheesy dishtowel and a cheesy matching potholder. 
We interrupt this rant to say Thank You and We Are So Grateful Mr. Cranky Has a JOB!
Meanwhile, the dishtowel was so thin it could double as a see-through negligee. And the cheesy rooster pictured on both dumb items couldn’t crow if the world was ending.
If one more sap tells Miss CP to be grateful she just might regift the dishtowel and keep the pot holder for when she burns down their house.
Walmart owns half the world (the other half is run by Nike) and they give you a dishtowel as a Christmas bonus? The potholder is a nice extra, but come on. A jillion bikes assembled in the bowels of Walmart’s back room and you get a dish towel with a rooster on it? What a prize. What’s next? A roll of used paper towels?
If you think a dishtowel is bad, consider Holiday Pay Roulette. This is the fun game Walmart (and probably other big box companies) play as we near a holiday. The game works best with those paid minimum wage, which is almost everybody. Oh they give you holiday pay all right. Time and a half and all that.
But what they don’t tell you is that the very next pay period, they cut your hours so they can take that holiday pay and put it back into the company coffers where it belongs.
Sadly, Miss Crankypants is not making this up.
Oh but she’s grateful. And thankful. And for a price (say equal to the holiday pay snatched away from Mr. CP), she’ll gladly sell you one slightly rumpled Rooster dishtowel and matching hot pad. You never know when a Walmart employee or his wife is going to spontaneously combust.

About Linda S. Clare

I'm an author, speaker, writing coach and mentor. I teach both fiction and nonfiction writing at Lane Community College and in the doctoral program as expert writing advisor for George Fox University. I love helping writers improve their craft and I'm both an avid reader and writer of stories about those with wounded hearts.

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