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More accurate caption: Someone saw a movie about some people who expected a bonus and didn’t get one. And from that they got the weird idea that most people in the 80’s got bonuses.
I don’t know what movie that’s from, but sorry to tell you as someone who was there: No, most people in most jobs didn’t get bonuses in the 80’s or any other time. It was the same as today–only certain kinds of management types or financial sector types got bonuses. I’ve had some pretty decent jobs and never got a bonus and no one thought they’d get one.
Edit to Update: Yes, of course I know that some jobs gave bonuses. My point is that the post’s entire raison d’etre is the incorrect assertion that bonuses were something that everyone, or most people, routinely expected to get in the 80’s and that those people sure had it easy compared to people today. That is not the case at all. Most jobs didn’t give you a bonus back then either.
And BTW kids, this isn’t the first time there’s ever been inflation either… Look up inflation rates in the mid-late 70’s and early 80’s. A lot worse than now.
You don’t remember pensions do you?
Yes, I do remember pensions.
Lol, yeah, as another older guy I must always laugh when “the youth” paints this “rainbows and unicorns” picture of the 80s. It was fucking dark. Constant fear of total annihilation. Reagan. Thatcher. Mass layoffs everywhere. Housing crisis. Most unemployed ever. Mass demonstrations every month/week. Stop the bomb. Stop the layoffs. I want a place to live. I just want to live. Credit crisis. (15% on your mortgage? Yeah man, that’s just how it is.) Or lets talk about drugs. Or rather… … Let’s not. The police was losing control everywhere. That’s when carpenter thought “escape from new york” up. And that wasnt the only movie with that theme of complete anarchism in the streets.
Just really listen to the music of the 80s. Really listen to stuff like 99 luftballons. Dancing with tears in my eyes. Land of confusion. Really look at the movies. Why do you think that Terminator was so god damn popular? Mad max was thought up in that era. (late 70s and 80s) Don’t you think alien /aliens products of their time? Corps which literally kill their workers, fuck them over only for a better percentage? Gordon Gecko… When was he thought up? Ever red “red storm rising” ? Sure, great book. But… What’s it about? Red October? Same.
Movies and music are a window to that time. Sure you also had the bright colors of miami vice. But what was the theme of that series: criminals everywhere and heavy handed cops to get back at them.
No man. The 80s where bleak. Glad that’s over. We got a little taste of the 80s back in 08-12. Just a little.
Do we have problems now? A lot. Sure. But I don’t live under the constant fear of a Russian nuclear missile strike. There are almost no terrorist cells active anymore (RAF, IRA, Those basks and the Indonesian train hyjackers in Holland.)
I dare to say: these days are better by a mile then back then.
Be careful for what you wish for. And know the past so you can learn from it.
Glad to see someone else on Lemmy who knows how shitty it really was in the 70’s and into the 80’s, from economics to violence to corruption. I think it’s natural to want to believe that the past was a golden age where the previous generation had it so good and then ruined things for the younger generation. Doesn’t every generation think that? Mine did too, though of course we knew about the Great Depression and WWII that our grandparents went through and our parents were kids in.
There have been good and wonderful things, and also bad and terrible things throughout time. Which things are which vary over time, but it’s always a mix. There were always the rich assholes and the poor people struggling to get by in every generation. Read Ecclesiastes. There’s nothing new under the sun.
I get a “profit sharing” bonus as a factory floor welding press operator.
It’s, like, eighty bucks.
Don’t spend it all in one place kiddo!
Damn, even my shitty floor cleaning and sales jobs gave me a Christmas bonus. It wasn’t a lot, but it was a nice little surprise.
Not to call you a liar directly, but I don’t get how “you were there” but you didn’t recognize National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. The movie was no. 2 in the box office only behind Back to the Future Part 2. The various National Lampoon movies have been ran on TV countless times during the 90s.
I only saw the summer vacation one. I think it was the first of all of them.
Because national lampoons where bullshit movies which, if you had a brain cell or two didnt bother with. And weren’t that popular in the rest of the world. Like porky’s.
Now airplane on the other hand… Or kentucky fried movie… That we did see in the EU.
Not all people watch movies. Some people had four kids and are lucky to have 5 minutes to themselves while they shower.
European here, I get a nice bonus every year. But then, my job is unionised, maybe that’s the difference?
I work part time at a non unionized bakery and I got €100
I had a union job in the 80’s. We didn’t get bonuses. Possibly some of the upper management may have.
I imagine “is the position union or not” is far from the only factor deciding whether you got a bonus or not.
Based on the comments, living in Europe seems to be a more important factor. But here in the US I think it’s more related to whether you have a salaried or hourly position.
How dare you come here with your happiness, social safety net and psychological safety, you dirty European. What is the GDP per capita of a European?! Can’t you see they’re having a much worse life than we Americans are?!
"Ya don’t get extra teefs just because it’s tha end of tha year, git! Get ta krumpin’, NOW!
To be fair, the krumpin’ is the year end bonus to an Ork.
Clark is a well paid employee. Upper class. He approves and oversees food additives. He’s near the executive level but not an executive. He’s close enough to walk into the office of the company president and feel bad about the gift he brought with him. He’d be expecting a Christmas bonus.
That’s the movie.
I’m not making a point beyond Clark would be expecting a Christmas bonus at his job. Joke might be bad, the movie was accurate.
A better joke might be pointing out Clark was a ditz in the movies but had a high paying job. However he was also very imaginative in the movies so that might be why he’s successful in research and development.
They are complicated movies lol
I’ve been part of a workforce in one way or another for over 30 years and I’ve never gotten a year end bonus. Not that I can recall ever getting at least.
They used to be pretty common in tech (at least where I’m at).
Rather than paying a larger salary, the company makes part of the annual comp a bonus. Then if they do poorly that year they can say “sorry folks, times were tough this year. But hey, you still have a job!”
People do tend to expect them after a few years of receiving them regularly. The taxes on them are generally worse (or at least feel worse since it is a lump sum), but otherwise a little money in your pocket around the holidays is nice.
The taxes get made up on the back end.
Bonus money is taxed at the rate that applies if that was your regular salary. In other words
If you make $1,000 a week that’s equivalent to $52,000/year salary. And it’s taxed at that rate.
If your bonus works out to a $2,000 a week rate that is taxed as if you make $104,000/year.
However, once it is time to actually do your taxes the IRS will see you made $52,000 in salary and $2,000 in bonus. So your actual taxes owed will be on $54,000.
So whatever extra taxes you paid at bonus time get returned when you do your taxes.
I used to work entirely on commission, and occasionally I’d have such a good week I’d hit a ridiculous tax bracket. Most weeks were ass though, so tax season was always great because I’d get that money back
Thanks for the info! I definitely just put my numbers in the tax software and pray the tax gods are kind to me every year.
They’re pretty common in municipal governments where I’m at, but they’re pretty small at first.
They call them “longevity payments” and you get like 8 bucks for every month you’ve been with the city.
So the first year you’ll get 96, the second you’ll get 192, third 288, etc. But by the time you reach retirement ages, if you’ve been with the same city it gets to be a few thousand. It’s good for people like secretaries and parks workers who don’t make as much, but also don’t tend to jump cities as often.
Someone like a planner or engineer may only be with the city 3 years before moving on, so they never get a big bonus, but they also tend to make a lot more money.
Removed by mod
30 years ago was the 90s. They probably got rid it of by then. I remember a Christmas episode of Dinosaurs (an eary 90s TV show if you never heard of it) that also had a year-end bonus being withheld.
I remember that show.
I don’t remember that episode.
To be fair, I was probably in grade school when it was on TV.
I bet you remember the episode where the boss man murdered and consumed those endangered adorable sentient muppet friends of Robbie.
To be fair, I don’t remember much of any episode, including that one. No idea what you’re on about.
I wasn’t exactly a fan of the show, but I didn’t hate if it was on TV when I was watching.
I remember some of the characters, but the plot lines escape me now.
Closest I ever got to having one is having Christmas as a paid day off
Edit: And I’ve been told that Christmas Eve is a working day this year, and Christmas is now only paid as a reward for those who work 30 hours in a week, and this comes on the heels of “Btw, we’re cutting your hours and if you work over this amount, you are fired.”, meaning it’s an unobtainable prize.
Wow where do you live?
NC
New Canada?
Dude doesn’t even look like he lived in the 90s.
Bonuses are typically tied in as a salary expectation. If you have a job good enough that you expect a bonus then its dictated in the terms of your employment. Its usually some amount like 10-15% of your salary based on performance review along with a multiplier for the company’s overall performance. Companies use this as incentive while giving dirt annual raises. Not getting a bonus when its expected as part of your salary is definitely getting the shaft. Clark has every reason to be pissed.
Yeah but a lot of ‘good’ jobs these days don’t even have bonuses. There has been a change since the 80s with this practice in a lot of industries.
This is why I never count the bonus as salary. More and more companies are shafting their employees like that.
My GF’s bonus is tied to something she has no control over, and the company uses the bonus to justify a lower salary. Fuck that noise.
Exactly. I was hired into one job with a decent salary plus a 10% bonus, paid quarterly. Pretty exciting, right? What I wasn’t told until after I started was that bonuses were on a freeze for the foreseeable future, at least for a year. Next job!
That’s worst haha. It’s straight up lying.
I worked at a company that explicitly said that there was no bonus and that the salary was increased to reflect that. They were paying 17k over similar posting, so it was true
What changed? Monopolisation? Increased population? Globalization? Or the tensions with the USSR leading to companies keeping workers appeased?
CEO compensation since 1978 has increased 1330%.
Median income has increased only 18% in the same time frame.
The rich are making themselves richer at the expense of the average person and they use some of that wealth to lobby governments to protect themselves further against any backlash
And the cop was on his side too.
In France we have the “thirteenth month” as we call it. I never had one, but in that latest job they announced having one, so I was rather chuffed to finally discover the practice and asked them about it during the interview. “so you gonna give me a full month salary bonus at the end of the year?” cue a long, convoluted explanation… which boiled down to “no, we just shuffle shit around so you get more in December, no extra money, really”.
But it just shows how ingrained that idea of a Christmas bonus is.
In Germany that exists as well, we get “holiday money” some time in late spring/early summer and “Christmas money” which we get in November. Both of them add up to a full month’s salary together, so it’s essentially 13 salaries/year
To be fair, usually you get that when you are already employed somewhere with good working conditions and an above average salary. Eg Daiichi Sankyo does that with technical assistants, but they already have a great starting salary of roughly 43k with no job experience. That’s much higher than other companies pay their TAs (Eurofins paid 22k to new TAs), and these companies pat themselves on the back for giving you a punch on a 30 minute Christmas themed extra break as a holiday treat.
Je ne suis donc pas le seul à ne pas comprendre le principe faute de n’en avoir jamais eu. Ouf… Je me sentais un peu bête et très seul.
En fait, en December tu as souvent plus de dépenses que les autres mois de l’année. Cadeaux de Noël, bouffes entre ami, vacances et aussi factures etc. Alors un deuxième salaire est bienvenue. Meme si il est en quelque sorte virtuel.
Il y a aussi certaines entreprises qui versant le salaire en avance en décembre. Alors quand j’avais que 12 salaire, celui de janvier m’était une plombe à arriver.
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So I’m not the only one who doesn’t understand the principle because I’ve never had one. Uff… I felt a little stupid and very lonely.
En gros dans ma boîte ils te modifient le salaire mensuel pour Décembre (et aussi un peu avant les grandes vacances). Mais c’est toujours le même salaire per annum donc c’est un tour de passe passe, quoi. Ça aide les gens qui arrivent pas à économiser, j’imagine.
In Brazil we call it “décimo terceiro” meaning “thirteenth”
Belgium, “13th month” also exists here. And it being a legal thing, i wonder if this is what people mean when they talk about work bonus on the other side of the world.
Its, afaik, the same as a pay before tax, but the tax is higher than with an actual paycheck. Doesnt mean it isnt a nice chunk of money ( 70-80% of a paycheck )Canada, I had it
If the company was profitable then they divided it up as extra paid days to employees
Japan has this actually
A company I worked for laid off an entire site a week before Christmas. Assholes couldn’t wait 2 more weeks, they had to ruin their holidays.
That was my place last year. Huge layoff of people who have been there 10 years or longer mostly. 3 weeks before xmas… my boss was one of them and he still doesn’t have a job 1 year later. It’s crazy because he was honestly really good. My new boss is terrible compared to him.
Gotta reach those end of year goals
Those in the Executive Suites need their year end bonus.
Reminds me of 2019 when Trump cut serious funding to a lot of food programs for elderly people. Just in time to ruin Christmas.
I mean… In some sectors that’s still the case…
Have literally never gotten a holiday bonus
Eh, Clark was rich, even by the standards of the time. He had a posh executive position. He was easily in the top 10%, probably more like the top 5%. You saw what kind of neighbors he had. He was well off enough that he was going to spend his entire annual bonus on a swimming pool in a place that snows half the year.
Oh, boy. So much wrong here. First off, I live in the Chicago suburbs. Clearly you don’t. Plenty of people have swimming pools “in a place that snows half the year” (note: it doesn’t). These are middle class people. You don’t need to be wealthy to own a pool, and the fact that we actually have all four seasons here is irrelevant to the cost.
Second, who are his wealthy neighbors? Todd and Margo? They’re clearly yuppie wannabe snobs. They act rich, but that’s the joke. They’re really no better off than THEIR neighbors, the Griswolds. They also have a smaller house and fewer possessions with no kids. So they can afford some expensive things like the stereo, but that doesn’t make them wealthy. And the Shirleys (Clark’s boss) don’t even live in the same neighborhood.
Lastly, Clark isn’t using the bonus to pay for the entire swimming pool. He needs it to pay for the deposit. He specifically says he doesn’t have enough in his account to cover it otherwise. The Griswolds have a “big” house (even that is debatable), but otherwise don’t have a lavish lifestyle. Someone in the top 5% who isn’t a spendthrift wouldn’t be kiting checks to pay for a pool.
So sure, the Griswolds are upper middle class. But they’re not rich.
Watched Home Alone tonight trying to figure it out. 1990. Were they rich?
Plane tickets from New York (?) to Paris in 1990 at Christmas time for an entire family would have been expensive as hell
I thought the rich uncle paid for that. Haven’t seen it in a while, but anyway yeah, they weren’t hurting that’s for sure
It was Chicago. Nearly all of John Hughes’ movies take place in Chicago.
Flew so many people to the other side of the world they didn’t even notice their own kid missing? How rich you have to be for that?
The really rich uncle paid for it. In the opening you learn their niece lives with them and her parents are in Paris. I believe it’s their ridiculously expensive house in the second movie that is being renovated in NYC as well.
Holy shit yes, I don’t care about relative anything, have you seen that house? That’s rich.
So, the house it was filmed in and suburb they were supposed to be from is “Winnetka” which is a northern suburb and where a lot of exceptionally rich people live. Houses in that area go for millions. Though, it’s possible they were a house broke family. The mom was also supposed to be a fashion designer and it was the uncle who paid for the Paris trip.
Edit: house is currently pending sale for over 5mil, and pictures show there’s a full basketball court and home movie theatre inside. Wow
I was supposed to get bonuses on the 80s?
Not only a bonus, but a bonus big enough to get a pool.
Back in the 80s I thought that a bonus that big and wanting to spend it on a pool is something only rich people can do.
I mean, have you seen their house? It might be bigger than the home alone house.
I just assumed that the family in the movie was rich and that all of the drivers of the plot were rich people problems. Kinda like Home Alone.
Pools are cheap. You can offset the price if the water by selling all the dirt.
Lmao have you ever owned a pool? Unless you are out of touch with reality and don’t know what cheap is.
People always pay so much money for pools. It’s literally a lack of stuff!
