Woman’s Job Is Giving Employees A Potato Bar As A Christmas Bonus — And Taxing Workers For The Cost Of Their Potato
The "gift" of a potato alone is insulting enough, but taxing employees for it too? Scrooge could never!
Julia Manga, MDV Edwards, Joe Gough, topseller / Shutterstock.com | Canva Pro Well, we've officially reached the middle of December, and that means one thing: It's time for office Christmas parties, holiday bonuses, and corporate Christmas gifts.
If you're lucky, these are things you look forward to all year. If you're like all too many other people, you're instead irritated just thinking about it.
But no matter how bad your job may be about Christmas gifts and bonuses, rest assured, it's nothing compared to what one woman's job is doing.
The woman's company is gifting employees a potato bar as a Christmas bonus — and making them pay for it.
I truly do not even know what else to say because the concept alone is so hilariously infuriating it seems like a plotline from a workplace sitcom. Honestly, the writers of "Christmas Vacation" should have used this as the reason Clark Griswold attacked his boss instead of the "Jelly of the Month Club" membership.
A potato bar? A potato bar. I've turned those words over in my head so many times they no longer make sense. "Potato bar" now sounds like an ancient runic language discovered on an unearthed piece of pottery from an archaeological dig. A potato bar! As a Christmas bonus! Maaaaaan if you don't get the entire fu[redacted].
But it is in fact what a woman named Amanda said her job did to "celebrate" the holidays and "thank" their employees. And from the moment she shared the news on X (Twitter), it went mega-viral as a perfect example of the audacity some employers have nowadays.
"My work is doing a potato bar as our Christmas bonus," Amanda wrote in her tweet. "I'm literally getting a hospital potato as a bonus."
Photo: @amandajpanda / X
First of all, nothing is funnier than the phrase "hospital potato." Presumably, this means she works in a hospital, a place widely regarded as having the worst food on the entire planet. We've all had airplane food with better culinary execution than what comes out of a hospital.
"A hospital potato as a bonus" should be a phrase we can all laugh at so hard we pass out from cerebral hypoxia, but the astonishing cruelty of the gesture ruins the joke. And then this woman's employer took things to yet another level of audacity so galling it just might ruin Christmas itself altogether!
Not only are they giving employees a potato bar as a Christmas bonus but they are taxing employees for the potatoes in question, too.
"They also said it has a $15 value so it will be taxed on our next check. Does anyone need an assistant so I can just quit right now?" Amanda wrote in a follow-up tweet, adding, "This is my Charlie Brown villain origin story."
Honestly, if she were to burn the entire building down in a fit of pique there's not a judge in the land who'd convict her. Because apart from everything else, in what world does a potato cost $15?! I don't care if it is doused in the finest sour creams made from sacred cows flown by private jet to be hand-milked by Trappist monks in the back of a Neiman Marcus, even in our era of hyper-inflation on groceries, a potato does not, nay cannot, cost $15. Get out of here. Get out!
And of course, this being the internet, many immediately assumed Amanda was lying for internet attention, so she shared a screenshot of the email in which management notified everyone that they were being taxed on — I cannot stress this enough — a baked potato prepared in a hospital cafeteria.
Photo: @amandajpanda / X
She also shared that they are not permitted to opt out of said hospital potato, which seems like it can't possibly be legal, but then this is America where corporations are considered human beings with rights. So, there's probably a law lying around in Congress somewhere that says hospital potato bars can be considered mandatory conditions for employment or something. Ho ho ho.
Taxing employees for something as insulting as a potato bar isn't even legally required under IRS rules.
Every year we hear story after story of people getting truly infuriating Christmas gifts or bonuses from their jobs and bosses. It's practically become a Christmas tradition in and of itself.
And much like giving employees pizza parties instead of raises, it's a perfect example of the kind of unforced errors companies and bosses insist on making instead of just showing actual appreciation or paying a reasonable wage. This whole debacle of giving a potato bar as a Christmas bonus and then taxing employees for it isn't even legally necessary.
The IRS has rules — clearly posted on their very own website — about workplace gifts or gestures it considers de minimis, or too trivial to warrant taxation. This includes small gifts or awards that are something other than cash, common gestures like free donuts and coffee, and — drumroll please — holiday dinners and gifts. A hospital potato pretty much fits every single one of those definitions.
Personally, I'd rather you just punch me in the face while singing "Jingle Bells" than tax me for a hospital potato bar you're requiring me to attend.
Maybe in 2024, bosses and corporate leadership can make it their New Year's resolutions to not be such unappreciative, insufferable misers. Because even Scrooge had a heart bigger than a hospital baked potato.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice, and human interest topics.