Virgil

Santa Claus for a Day

I got to be Santa Claus at work these two days on returning after a two week vacation. Not literally Santa Claus, but I did give out awards to my team members, a framed certificate and the promise of a small monetary amount in their paycheck. This is the first time I actually gave out awards to people. In research and development, the budgets are usually really tight, and I always felt that it’s a luxury to siphon money away from the program. It was my feeling, if you’re thinking of a bonus, you should get on to a big program, especially one in production, or at least heading for production. At least that’s how it seems to have worked elsewhere. But I did have a small pot of money left over at the end of the year, and I had initially considered giving it out, but then I held back. Would management actually approve of me giving out money? I decided against it. But then at a yearend review, one of the managers said she noticed I had some left over money.

“Are you going to give out awards with it,” she asked, as if she had read my thoughts of a few weeks back.

“It crossed my mind,” I said, “but I wasn’t planning on it. Can I push the money into next year’s budget?” Normally anything left over at year end gets absorbed into a fiscal black hole, making the incentive always to burn up your entire budget. I was hoping she’d let me keep it for this year since it was to be even tighter this year.

“You should give it to the team,” she said. “You had quite an accomplishment this year.”

“Is it ok to?”

“Of course.”

“I thought management frowned on R&D giving out awards.”

“No, not at all. People should get awarded for a good job.”

“I thought the glory of accomplishment was enough,” I laughed.

Hmm. I hadn’t realized. Perhaps I was cheap. I’m chartered to manage the project and put to use the funding in the most conscientious way, and giving out awards in a program with funding needs didn’t quite seem conscientious to me. But rewarding people for a job well done definitely makes sense, and I whole heartedly would love to splurge on them, but it did seem a luxury.

Ok, so before the holidays I did. I think I had a list of about twenty something people who at least worked on the program a fraction of the time. The funding I had was hardly going to make anyone raise their eye brows, but I did what I could. The people who worked a quarter of their time or less on my program I gave a couple of hundred dollars and my three key full time guys I gave a thousand dollars, and the others somewhere in between, hardly Wall Street type bonuses. In fact after taxes they would only see half of it, so really it’s more the thought than anything else. I wasn’t going to give myself anything, but then I decided to give myself the smallest amount, just to cover out of pocket expenses I shell out here and there over the year being the manager. I had hoped to get it into their Christmas week paychecks, but I was shocked at the bureaucracy of getting it through the accounting system. Plus the secretary wasn’t thrilled to type up all the paperwork for each person, and she didn’t exactly push herself before the holidays, and so as of today only one person said he saw it in his paycheck.

But what was really the Santa Claus moment was handing out the framed certificate. In the past when I’ve received a framed mark of accomplishment it was on a white paper in block lettering in garbled grammar in a cheap frame that looked like it was more suited to be hung in a jail cell than an office. I got a hold of a really neat watermark design, a waving American flag, and I silhouetted some neat images related to the project, and I place the organizational logos in the corners and got the R&D Director’s signature, wrote up in a pretty font a statement of accomplishment and how that person was critical to the project’s success (I can be such a good writer when I put my mind to it ) and above that in large font, the person’s full name. I printed them up on a thick 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of photo paper from a color laser printer, and it looked marvelous! These color printers today are great.

And then I selected the best frame I thought prudent to buy. I sat down with my secretary and we looked through the office supply catalogue and we picked this beveled edge wood frame painted in silver. I think they cost about twenty dollars each and to my surprise the cost didn’t have to come out of my project budget; it came out of overhead. And when I put the certificate inside the frame the silhouetted tones matched wonderfully with silver frame and made the red from the American flag watermark gently stand out without swallowing up the person’s name. It looked beautiful! These were the best certificates of accomplishment I’ve ever seen around work.

And the reception was outstanding. I personally went to the building and desk of each person and gave them their certificate, shook their hand and told them what a great job they did. And it was true, almost everyone did a great job. You should have seen the eyes light up on some of the guys. Some of the comments went something like this:

“Wow, where did you get that?”

“Good God, in thirty-three years I’ve never received anything like that!”

“I don’t care about the money, my wife gets the money, this plaque is awesome.”

“This I want to keep to remember!”

“I may not be able to buy a car with the award, but maybe I could sell this frame and buy a car.”

It was fun being St. Nick.