Donations in the Workplace

[purplecat41877]

Where I work, if a family member of an employee has passed away, a donation envelope is set up for the employee in memory of the family member. Any other workplaces do anything like this?

[JLRodgers]

Everyplace I've worked at did. At the same time, many of the companies would send flowers or something to the family as well.

Although I never did give money or anything. Nothing against the people -- but when they were making 2-3x the amount I was and once one commented about how their partner left them with enough money to retire -- I didn't think they needed some extra cash.

[powerboy]

Once I donated $6.00. And what was sad, I was the one who donated the highest amount.

[Anriana]

We have too many employees to do something like this, but when we had an employee pass away we set up a donation fund and sold dress down passes to raise money for their immediate family.

[Boochan]

We have too few employees to do this.
When my fill-in manager died of a car accident, we couldn't do very much unfortunately. We were just thankful her insurance covered it all for her family.. as her mother struggled for many weeks. It also ruined the rep of our store as one staff member leaked it to many regular customers.. and it seemed to spook them. Only now are we starting to recover from our huge dip in sales after the sad, sad event (She was only 29).

[Eric the Grey]

We've done this a couple of times since I started here 3.5 years ago.

One individual broke his neck. There were several different drives for him, as well as posters up for more than a year. I believe he's back to work now, but I could be wrong.

Another member of our IT staff passed away from a certain type of brain cancer. We didn't collect for him, but instead, on his family's request, the donations and all the money collected through aluminum can recycling was donated to a hospital where they study it.

On the other side of the coin, when I worked at IBM, one of the wife of one of the upper managers died in the fall of the World Trade Center. I never heard of anything except for well-wishes being collected for him.


Eric the Grey

[Peppergirl]

Personally, I have no problem tossing a 5 into a collection tin for a co-worker who's spouse has passed away or is ill or whatever.

Regardless of their income, to me it's the thoughtful thing to do. And if I'm broke that week, I'll just skip a trip to the fast food place and it evens out.

Makes me feel good, and I like to think it tickles the karma gods a bit. Everyone wins.

[Becks]

Sometimes there are collections, sometimes there are not.

I guess it depends on who it is and what department they work in.

[Hello Kitty]

My first job, part time at a fabric store, the boss would actually HASSLE people to contribute to The United Way (yes, I'm sure it was illegal but she didn't give a rat's ass). The last time she hassled me about it, I said "No! My contribution went to Planned Parenthood!" I don't think she ever asked me again.

[smileyeagle1021]

I like what my company does... at least once a month they will allow us to "purchase" another casual day with a donation to the company's honor fund... they've also started auctioning off the primo spaces (we have 600 employees and one realy big parking lot) with all proceeds going to the honor fund... then the honor fund is to be used solely for helping employees in need (ie, due to medical problems, death in family, natural disaster damaging their homes, etc).
Pretty good program...

[edible_hat]

when I got engaged my co-workers gave me a gift card. That's about it.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

In these cases we'll have a card at the service desk for people to sign and throw in some money as they wish.

When my grandmother and grandfather died I didn't get a card though. Mostly because I didn't tell anybody.

[BookstoreEscapee]

We never donated money directly to the person but usually someone in management would take up a collection from whoever wanted to contribute to send flowers (or in one case a fruit basket to the house).

Usually they do something for other big events...babies, weddings, people leaving (assuming we like them ), etc...