How to Become Employee of the Month

At Big Brown in the building I work at they give out an Employee of the Month award. I call it the New Hire of the Month award because it is usually given out to the newest employee in any given work area once they have actually been there a month or two. It is sort of a Please Stay, Don’t Quit award really. We have a lot of turnover. Quitting after just a couple of days is not unheard of.

So the first way to get awarded the Employee of the Month is to get hired and actually stick around a little while.

The second way is when you have worked there for a while, usually less than a year or so. If you have not received the award recently and there isn’t a newbie that has been around for a month, then the award is all you.

Yet last night a new way to become Employee of the Month was uncovered. A coworker who I will call RG because it is a lot easier than trying spell his name was awarded the Employee of the Month for our work area.

In our building on our shift we have about 125 people give or take. The building is broken into about nine different work areas. An Employee of the Month is chosen for each area and an overall Employee of the Month is selected for the entire shift. It is handed out after break before the whole shift on the first Friday of each month.

In my work area we have around 12 people and RG was picked as the best of them for the month of July. He has worked for Big Brown for about two years now. Right before our supervisor called his name, I asked him who he thought it would be this month. He had no idea. Then his name was called and he went and accepted his paper certificate and at some point will get a $5 gift card too.

When we started back to work he said, “I bust my ass here month after month and they give me this for last month. I was on vacation for two weeks and called in sick twice.” I said, “And you left early that one Friday night.”

So the third way to get the Employee of the Month award is to:

• Go on vacation for the first half of the month.
• Then when you get back, miss a couple more days.
• And lastly you leave early on the heaviest night of the week. Which also happened to be the day that about 20% of the shift decide to not even show up in the first place.

I was on vacation for the entire month of June and I didn’t get the award on the first Friday of July. So I can only surmise that the other two criteria above are just as important as the vacationing part for getting the award.

I am still not sure if choosing RG for this award was to show how good he is or how bad everybody else was last month. If the best performing guy in our area was actually in the building for less than half the possible work days, what does that say about everybody else?

If you try this out in your work area at Big Brown or wherever you work, please let us know how it worked out for you. Do you have a good Employee of the Month story? If so, leave it in the comments for all to enjoy.