I've never had to participate in any of those 'fun' activities but I remember hating the grade-school equivalent of them. At the last company I worked for, the boss would take everyone in the company out to dinner every few months. It was purely optional, of course. Most people seemed to enjoy it, although not everyone (I was fairly neutral towards it).

Despite the fact that I think free time is great, I don't really like the idea of telling everyone to go home after lunch. I'd end up spending the rest of the day in the office being in a bad mood because I don't commute alone, so I don't have the option of leaving early. I'm willing to bet you'll find several other reasons people won't appreciate something like that. Also, I'd much rather choose for myself how to spend my free time, which is why I dislike scheduled holidays (at my last job I could work through holidays in exchange for extra vacation days). I like to take my time off in large enough chunks to go somewhere, or do something big. If it's something I can fit into half a day, I can certainly fit it into a weekend. For these reasons, I know I'd appreciate it more if my boss gave me an extra half day of holiday for me to use when I wanted. Otherwise, it's no nicer than a gift certificate for the lousy resturant down the street, or the cookbook I got as a farewell present (although I appreciated the thought, I can't say I cared for the cookbook, but since it was plastic wrapped I blame the cookbook editor, not my co-workers).

You know, I haven't worked for that many companies, but of the ones I've worked for, only one ever gave out 'motivational goodies', and I have to say that was the company I was least inspired to do hard work for. I think the best motivation for me is to enjoy what I'm doing and to have a good boss. A decent location is also nice--at that uninspiring job my desk was at the end of a corridor near the fax machine and blocked the fire exit.

In reply to (kudra: free time is nice if it is really free) RE: Motivations by kudra
in thread Motivations by jcwren

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