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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/blueboy714 on 2025-02-21 12:13:15+00:00.
I'm retired now and have many MC stories - but this one is my favorite.
I was manager of a programming department with 2 dozen people reporting to me. Once in a while we'd have more work than we had programmers and my staff would bust their butts to get the work done.
I asked the division head if the company would buy lunch for my staff as a thank you for their hard work and was told no the company wouldn't do this.
I decided that wasn't right and decided to spend my own money on a dozen pizzas or a couple dozen subs. As management I received a nice bonus every year - thanks in no small part to my team's hard work.
Fast forward a bit and I scheduled a 2 hour meeting a couple times a year. The first part was training and the second part was lunch for my programming team.
The building I was in had about 200 people in it and they smelled the pizza/subs/lunch. When the lunch meeting were done people starting asking my staff where they got the pizza and they were told that I paid for them out of my own pocket.
I did this a bunch of times until the division head got an earful from other managers that my buying lunch for my staff was making them look bad. The other managers didn't think they should have to pay for lunch out of their own pockets (there were 8 departments and mine was second largest one).
After a couple years of this the division head made the "brilliant" decision to set aside money to be used by each department manager as they see fit for thank you gifts, lunches, etc.