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I am not sure if there is any other thread similar to this one but I am just curious what is the most expensive, silly and /or least expensive gifts/ freebies you ever received from your hospital??
The most expensive gifts I ever got for my hospital is a bag with the hospital logo on it and the least expensive is those plastic fruits....they were just promoting health and well ness....I just wished they would give us lots of pen!!!
Lets see......
A pair of socks for Christmas
$20 Kroger gift card - another Christmas
A votive candle for Nurses day.....
And you know what my ex-husband's best friend got for Christmas from his company the year I got $20 - a 4 day cruise for 2 that he and his wife complained about for weeks afterwards.....Some people are so ungrateful!
Let's see. The best was a nice business casual collared shirt with the hospital name, logo, and department embroirdered on the pocket (we got to pick the color) for employee appreciation month. For nurses' week, I got a little portable hand-held battery operated fan with the hospital logo on it. Best of all.......the little blades lit up when you pushed the start button. Where do people come up with these ideas?
We got really nice messenger bags once... and the plastic slidey thing on the strap (you know, the bit that lets you adjust the length) snapped in half after two days, rendering it useless unless you were eleven feet tall, but the bags were sturdy. Got umbrellas at the beginning of last winter... and there was a brouhaha bc the orientees who happened to be working the first day they gave them out (including me) got them before some senior nurses who weren't there that day - even though they got them the next time they worked.
We just got sweatshirts last week... and people were complaining they weren't thick enough and made in Taiwan. I think we're fairly lucky at my hospital, judging by some of these posts. One of the nicest things, actually, was a full-page ad in the NY Times by the president of the hospital saying how much they appreciate us. I mean, more staff would be nice, too, but the thought was sweet.
A very very very ugly t-shirt. They only came is sizes XL or XXL. Great for someone like me who wears a M. I gave mine to a patient who said that he liked it.
For a holiday gift/bonus we got a $10 (or was it $5?) gift card to Starbucks. Wow-wee.
To top it off, we even have to pay for our ticket to go to the Holiday party and we're not allowed to bring a guest!
Heck, we even have to pay for monthly parking where I work. They could have treated us to a free month of parking, but no......I Take Care of Sick Patients And All My Hospital Got Me Was This Lousy T-shirt
My friends that are not Nurses get AMAZING gifts and bonuses from their places of employment. One got a beautiful laptop computer. Another got a 3 year lease on a new car + a gas card. Another got a vacation + $1,000 spending money. My best friend who is a Dental Hygienist got a certificate to a gym for one year + free teeth whitening. My friend who works at a counter of a deli got a $500 bonus + free lunches for a year.
All of these people seem to get great gifts throughout the year, too. Not expensive items, but things that are fun, like magazine subscriptions, beautiful candles, nice lotions and soaps.
Lucky Bums!
A set of supposedly "dishwasher-safe" glass mugs with the hospital's logo on it.
Unfortunately, I found out just how "dishwasher-safe" they were, as I had to spend an hour cleaning out broken glass from the inside of my dishwasher after they had been washed them for the first time. Thanks a lot!
pagandeva2000, LPN
7,984 Posts
I never received a crazy gift from anyone at my hospitals, but I witnessed some; one was a clerk gave a nurse a VERY used old pen that had no ink, and one of the social workers that sold Mary Kay found some old, molded samples of make up that she proudly gave as a gift. Sheeh...