A few years ago I worked in a shop. We had always been given cash bonuses at Christmas, often $500 or so.
The year in question they’d made a huge profit increase, they kept saying they were so impressed with our work and hoped we would be working even harder next year (slap in the face as we had been overworked already).
They chose this year to scrap the cash bonus and they gave us shares in the business. We weren’t allowed to sell these shares for a number of years and we lost them all together if we quit within 2 years. They were valued at about $200, they said having even more interest in the company will get us working harder.
It seemed to go from ‘congrats on the hard work, here’s a bonus’ to ‘thanks, work harder next year though please’
Didn’t think much of this at the time, but this community has got me thinking.
Edit: we were minimum wage employees living pay check to pay check