How I am an ingrate for my low rent MAJOR AWARD

This is going to be a little tense, trying to tell this story without revealing my employer to the interwebs search engines. Despite the ungrateful tone of this entry, I do actually mostly like my job and want to keep it. So I can buy nutritious foods and watch cable (the order of importance is actually reversed).

A little background: I work for a corporation. It's like any normal corporation, it's got it's good and bad points. The corporate bullshit has been ever increasing, especially in regards to anything involving compensating employees for their work. When my employer does not want to give people raises or promote them, they take to giving them one time awards. The awards used to be part of the pay, but they would get taxed at the bonus rate, so one would end up with like $15.43 and it was hardly worth anything (except for maybe an awesome run at Taco Bell - I mean, that's like 47ty thousand bean burritos or something). But they decided to update the process, and make it MUCH more cumbersome by adding a third party and gift cards.

So my boss writes me an e-mail last week that I have won an award. A "Guppy"* award. Well, color me wowed. It's an award for going above and beyond and doing great things, etc., etc. So I dub this my MAJOR AWARD and quickly imagine receiving a leg lamp in the mail. But really, the recognition is wonderful - because my job is a thankless one and most people think it involves being a pain in their ass. Which it does. So it's very nice to be recognized and to maybe get a plaque that I can put in my cube to validate myself. And $15.43 will now be MINE.

But lo, we have a new system. I have to log on to a site called "ShloboForce"* and retrieve my gift card from one of thousands of "global merchants." I quickly notify one of my cobloggers and merriment ensues about the craptitude of the aforementioned "global merchants."

So I get 4 e-mails from SchloboForce this morning. . .4 of them. Because they do it in increments, so they sent me 4 separate e-mails with a different tracking number for a portion of the monetary award. Which possibly could be handled better, but whatever. The whole point of the exercise was about making the process as cumbersome as possible. Because they could have just given us American Express Gift Cards. But that would have required ONE step rather than 60. So now I have to go online and choose a merchant for my gift cards.

The first store that came up: AJ Wright. In case you are unfamiliar with this store, here is the website with a picture: http://www.aj-wright.com/locator.asp. AJ Wright's website shows a mob assembling outside a closed AJ Wright, waiting to get inside for its gloriousness. The only locations for this store are in Oxon Hill, to which I have never been (it being in PG County and all). The mob in front of the store did not look promising. I mean, why didn't they show the inside of the store? Or is it open and the people can't figure out how to get in? I am sad for these people who cannot get into the store. I spend some time thinking about the sadness that is in the land of the Hills of the misspelled Oxen.

However, I don't know if there will be a plaque. I want a plaque. So I may have to use some of my SchloboForce gift card for a plaque in my honor. Or a lot of newspapers to make myself a papier mache guppy to put in my cube.

Some other stores on the list: Jiffy Lube & CVS

Recognition = good. AJ Wrights = sad place. Me = ingrate.

*I am disguising the name of the award, even though it's part of the awesomeness. I mean, they have a theme and as you go up, the award gets more important. So the lower one is a Guppy, then there is a shark, then a whale, only not an aquatic theme. Which made me wonder, if you suck, do you get a Mariana Trench award for sucking the life out of the seabed and causing instability and chaos in the oceans?

*I am also cleverly disguising the name of the company who is the third party handler.