I work in a department with really shitty management. About half of the employees have realized the depth of how bad things are because they have either experienced it firsthand or saw a coworker treated badly. The other half of the employees are more unaware of the fucked up things that have happened behind the scenes, despite the fact that people are quitting left and right. Everyone is remote which makes it a little more difficult to share what's going on. Chat and email are company managed.
A couple weeks ago, one of my coworkers suggested we do something for management because they felt bad that they didn't receive anything on Employee Appreciation Day. I was a bit baffled because that is more for bosses to show appreciation to their employees, not the other way around. They suggested sending gift cards and I pointed out that its not really ethical for employees to gift their direct managers. One of them reached out to the legal team at the company, who said it would be fine as long as it was from the department as a whole.
This week they sent out a card for everyone to sign and about half the department did. I assumed they were just doing this card and thought it was pretty corny but stayed out of it and didn't sign or say anything. Then this morning, the coworker who initially suggested it and the coworker who organized it had a meeting with management where they presented the card along with gift cards. The ethics are a bit hazier now because the company paid for the gift cards on the terms that they came from the department as a whole, but none of us were told that gift cards were happening and the entire ass kissing extravaganza was presented as the one co-worker's surprise for management.
I'm annoyed at the whole concept of it all, as well as the fact that management has had a bad track record with favouritism and this is only going to make it worse. Those of us who didn't sign are wondering if we're going to be treated even more badly now. There has been a pattern of retaliation in the past.
But I'm most annoyed with the fact that we have been slowly taking steps to make the heads of the company aware that our department is in need of new management and we're now set a few steps back because they paid out a gift card for a department who apparently just loves their management so much to do so, as well as the visibility of other departments seeing this happen. There was also starting to be progress with management realizing they needed to turn their shit around because of turnover and people reporting how bad their experience is, but I fear that has also been erased now that they've received this appreciation gift and think that they can sit back and continue to manage how they have been.
At this point there is probably no hope for improvement and most of us just need to quit.