The most expensive, silly or cheap gifts you received from your hospital

Nurses General Nursing

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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!!!

i have received a coin purse with a logo for nurses week, a lunch bag with logo for nurses week. this was at a hospital i worked at. i don't recall being given any type of christmas gift/bonus. i am working LTC now, and last year we got a very nice catered luncheon, the residents donate money for the holiday gift fund, so we got a bonus check from the residents and we also got a 20 dollar gift card to a super market. it is going to be very interesting what we get this year. we recently had a change in management and it has been U-G-L-Y! the administrator isn't even a nurse, so she has NOOO clue what goes on in patient care, the floors etc. our DON used to be a floor nurse and she has forgotten where she came from so fast. in addition, we had a big fire at our place and the entire kitchen burned down. so i know we are having a lunch and we will be given the bonus checks, but other than that is yet to be seen. DH who works for the largest telecommunications company...gets NOTHING!! they will bring in food but everyone has to pay a small amount to eat the food!!!! how cheap!!

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One year we got a fleece cut off, one year a scrub top, both with hospital label, I really liked those. This year we all got a $10 Starbucks card for nurses week. The RNs only! The LVN who has been there over 30 years almost stroked! The managers then gave her a card too, but it came too late. For Christmas several years in a row we got those little plastic covered day planners, the size of a check book, mine gets tossed. Sometimes we get a freaky pin. For 5, 10, 15, 20,25 years etc they have a nice party. We used to get pins for 1, 5, 10, 15 years, those are gone now. At 20+ years, every 5 you get to pick a gift out of a catalog, worth about $150, I got a convection over/broiler, got over 4 years till the next gift. And after 25 years of service, free lunch every day, but rumor is they are going to cut that out too, which pisses me off, cause I only got 4 years to go! Well they say there is no such thing as a free lunch!:balloons:

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Specializes in Intensive Care and Cardiology.

Best gifts have been a bag with hospital logo on it that is for a laptop (I don't have a laptop though!) and a $20 gift card to HyVee that was put on our paychecks to be taxed!

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The worst was last year, my boss wrote on the dry erase board, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.:lol2:

Now THAT'S cheap!!!:icon_wink:

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Specializes in Government.

Cheapest gift I ever got was a 3" square piece of green paper telling me I was entitled to a FREE cup of ice cream at the gift & snack shoppe. I worked 8 hour nights and the "shoppe" was open 11 AM to 4 PM!

Top of the season to ya! :D

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a very stupid sucky ink pin with a ping-pong ball face on a spring on top - with orange fake fur strands of hair - hospital logo - stuck in a suction cup base so it would stand up straight - with blue ink!

who would think that was a neat gift??

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Best gifts have been a bag with hospital logo on it that is for a laptop (I don't have a laptop though!) and a $20 gift card to HyVee that was put on our paychecks to be taxed!

I think that takes the cake...sure they spent the $20....but trying to TAX you on it? Cheapest thing ever. Totally negates the point of the gift. I'd be PISSED...you mean that gift is actually going to COST me money? And, what if the giftcard is to someplace that you don't even like? I don't care if it only reduced my paycheck by a dollar, I would be SOOO pissed if that happened to me!

As far as christmas bonuses go: When I worked at Starbucks I got a $3 starbucks card once...really THREE dollars? You couldn't round that up to FIVE whole dollars, huh? I got $10 cash from a mom and pop pizza place that I worked at; $10 giftcard working at a ski resort and free donuts and coffee for working christmas day doing hotel housekeeping. (plus time and a half....woo hoo $9 an hour!!)

I've been pretty lucky so far working in dentistry. I've gotten from $200-300 CASH bonus each christmas as well as little cash and non-cash gifts throughout the year. A cake and card on your birthday paid for by the boss. A nice christmas dinner at a posh resturaunt spouses included. Once he sent us all to a day spa and we got massages, manicures and pedicures! (THAT was the best!) If we reach the financial goals for the year we get trips; He took us to Mexico for 4 days last year and we got $500 spending cash each! He took us to FLorida for CE courses once; but that was sort of like "working" too....still I'm not complainin! That will be one thing I definitely miss when I make the change from dentistry to nursing...:o

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Specializes in CARDIAC.

I think I can top everyone for the cheapest gift ever! At the last hospital I worked, we received "stocking stuffers". This was a brown paper bag full of junk! There was stale pretzels, "brown" chips that were old, greasy and the smell was awful, Adkins diet bars, old McDonalds happy meal toys, and the best of all - plastic hair rollers. All the male nurses were ever so pleased with those.

As for the best gift, I received from my current hospital. It was a very nice duffel bag with a very nice saying embroidered on it. No hospital logo, so we were not providing free advertising. I felt it was a very thoughtful gift.

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I think I can top everyone for the cheapest gift ever! At the last hospital I worked, we received "stocking stuffers". This was a brown paper bag full of junk! There was stale pretzels, "brown" chips that were old, greasy and the smell was awful, Adkins diet bars, old McDonalds happy meal toys, and the best of all - plastic hair rollers. All the male nurses were ever so pleased with those.

As for the best gift, I received from my current hospital. It was a very nice duffel bag with a very nice saying embroidered on it. No hospital logo, so we were not providing free advertising. I felt it was a very thoughtful gift.

that has got to be the most DISGUSTING and DEGRADING "gift" i have ever heard of. what were they thinking??? i hope everyone left them in the garbage so they could see what you all thought of their "thoughtfulness"!!! :nono:

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Specializes in Recovery (PACU)-11 yrs, General-13yrs.

A few of you have had some amazing gifts over the years, and have obviously worked for appreciative and fabulous bosses, but the rest of us.... oh my goodness how cheap and mean are the people we work for? (hmm, come to think of it, I knew I knew that anyway)

Can you honestly imagine someone shopping for some of this stuff and thinking "I would love to have that pen/badge/paper bag of rubbish myself, so I'm sure that the staff that work in our hospital would love that too!"

Some of them seem to have plumbed new depths of thoughtlessness, insensitivity, penny-pinching meanness. But I suppose that is an example of their whole attitude to their staff (ie mindless zombies who would love another cheap plastic pen with the hospital logo on it, or if they're exceptionally talented at management, the free pens from the drug companies disbursed with largesse)

As you can see, I've NOT been rendered speechless by their insulting attitudes, but it really beggars belief that they have absolutely no idea that they've caused any offence.

Never mind putting the offending gift in the bin, why not wrap it nicely and return it to the person who thought you'd like it, along with a list of some of the gifts that others have received over the years, just in case they need some new ideas for Christmas.:devil: And I actually meant the cheesey stuff, not the good ones, 'cos I don't think they're going to break with tradition and start spending large amounts of money ($2.50?) on their staff.

Yup, that note of sarcasm's still there!

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Specializes in Peds; Peds Oncology.

I really like where I work...but gifts are definitely lacking.

Nurses weeks...usually those tiny plastic bag with some candy in it.

2 weeks ago for Christmas, we got a wall calendar (never bothered to take it home) and then last week we got the "we're bleeding red ink" speech and was told we had to clock out exactly on time (because we all finish up on time:uhoh3:) and there was to be no extra anything.

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I got £200 in gift vouchers when I had been there for 20 years, which was nice. Bought myself a good espresso/capuccino coffee maker. The worst, and we get them every Christmas, is a small, cheap, flimsy diary. We all throw them out immediately.

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