Every year, my company (non-profit, medical field, about 1200 employees) used to send all employees a $10 gift card as a holiday bonus. Not great, but still something. During COVID lockdown, this stopped because revenue took a massive hit. All of Administration (C-Suite, department heads and their seconds and secretaries) went work-from-home. As the remaining employees were customer-facing, they were deemed "essential" and expected to step up with new policies and procedures and a rapidly dwindling support from Admin. Evaluations and raises were put on hold for everyone until they could be sure all outstanding debts and liabilities were covered. Admin pelted the essential workers with numerous appeasement emails about how we need to band together, be resilient, and pull through. All the while they were putzing around at home, not responding to requests for more supplies or direction on how we were supposed to handle COVID-related situations. Several rounds of mass layoffs occurred. Morale was at an all-time low, but the services we provided greatly helped the community, and the essential employees pushed ahead for them, not the company.

Fast forward 2 years later and we start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Evaluations were going to be re-instituted that year and we were going to be getting our bonus back. We were explicitly told that the bonuses would be bigger than before as a recognition of the hard work and dedication of the essential staff through COVID. Around the beginning of the evaluation period, the CEO sent an email to everyone in the company that destroyed any remaining amount of goodwill the essential employees had. All employees could only receive a MAXIMUM of 2% increase as a result of their evaluation. Most people would only get .5 or 1%. And that bonus we were getting? Was a $30 store credit to their newly announced company-branded apparel and equipment store. The kicker - the store credit didn't even cover the cheapest item available for purchase (a blanket with the company logo stitched on the corner). So no matter what, you were having to pay money out of your own pocket to get anything. Everyone went ballistic. We all had a feeling that Admin was putting massive amounts of pressure on the essential workers to get them to quit and not pay severance, but this pretty much confirmed it. The exodus still occurred and it totally worked out in Admin's favor.