Voluntary Contribution With a Leaderboard

realistic

I’m still annoyed about this and need a sanity check.

This week HR started a “voluntary” group gift for our department head because he just bought a new house. Fine, whatever—but they set up a shared spreadsheet with everyone’s name on it and a column showing how much you’ve contributed.

Of course managers are already in there dropping $100+, and the rest of us are just… blank. Then during our team meeting, my manager casually pulled up the sheet and said it’d be “nice if our team didn’t look disengaged compared to others.”

So now it’s not mandatory, but also very visible if you don’t contribute. People are quietly adding money just to not be the only $0.

What really gets me is this is the same guy who signed off on cutting our bonuses this quarter.

I don’t want to pay, but I also don’t want to be the only name sitting there looking like I don’t support the team. Feels like a weird, unspoken pressure test.