AIBU to think workplace collections are getting excessive?

[user456876]

I work in retail in a team of 15 in the last 6 weeks we have had collections for -

Leaver
Wedding
New baby
Leaver
Manager's Birthday
Retirement

Everyone is expected to put in £5. I've chosen not to participate (I don't expect a collection and have never received one) but I have heard the two staff who organise the collections slagging me off.

AIBU to think the amount of collections and the amount people have to contribute is excessive? Also AIBU not contributing?

Ours do an online collection pot and it's anonymous, it's entirely up to you if you want to contribute. It's mostly just leavers and babies. Not birthdays.

Big birthdays are done within your own team if you want to, but that means some people get and some don't.

If someone if off sick, surgery, bereavement, flowers are arranged by the company and not contributions.

I only give to close colleagues who I actually like. I've never actually had a workplace collection myself.

Ridiculous.

What's wrong with just signing a card?

One place I worked, a senior manager I didn't like was leaving. A large brown envelope to put your cash in was handed round for his leaving present. I pretended to put some money in. Wasn't giving that arsehole my cash.

This!!

We just do a card (that company pays for).
The company pays for gifts for certain big events eg retirement, new baby.

I do donate, and we've had several recently - 60th birthday, retirement, maternity leave. It's not that much money overall and I've always received generous gifts when leaving workplaces myself, so I should pay that forward in my opinion. There shouldn't be any pressure though.

Agreed OP, it puts a strain on everyone financially and in organising and ends up unfair. Our organisation will get a gift/flowers for big events - retiring, maternity, major illnesses, close family bereavement and consider that as an HR expense. There’s 25 of us plus 20 or so freelancers so we ignore birthdays and just sign cards for the others occasions. One of my colleagues said in a previous post that the birthday person brought a cake in to share on their day, if they wanted to, which sounds like a good idea.

I've never heard of collections in minimum wage jobs where the turnover is usually high. I wouldn't contribute.

I stop years ago. It makes no difference. I don't really care what others think about it.
I am fine not recieving and I had nothing for all the years I took part anyway.

Endless isnt it. Daughters sports team. One travelling, a wedding, flowers for funeral, one had sports injury and goes on and on. She got nothing for her 18th so she mutes chat now. I have it in work we do school bus 5 us. They wanted include drivers i said no. Im not get into it. Its got out control now

Birthday collections aswell

"Sorry, no" is a very useful two-word phrase that so many people are terrified of using.

My current workplace doesn't do collections although we do run a few events during the year for charity and I'm happy to contribute to those. However, I'm 5 years off a big birthday, no children and no plans for them, been married for over 20 years, nowhere near retirement and no plans to move house for 15 years. No way would I put into collections when I know damn well that there won't be any collections for me for a very long time. Collections should be banned at workplaces.

I dont mind too much the ones for new babies, weddings and leavers. Our department PA takes charge these days and is really quite astute at circulating the request only to people who have worked directly with the person. Our department covers teams at different sites so for example I'm in London but have two direct reports in Liverpool but some others in my London team won't know those people from Adam!

In the past it has not been so carefully organised. I found it quite irritating to be asked to contribute to collections for Equity Partners who earn 4-5 times as much as us minions. The other niggle was the "big birthday" collections. I really don't think people need a present from their colleagues for turning 30, 40, 50 etc. But worst of all these seemed very inconsistent. I had my 30th a month after someone else's. They were thrown a lunchtime surprise party in the boardroom with champagne and a card and gift. Mine came round - fuck all. The birthday ones and EP ones seem to have died a death now thank god. One of our department EPs retired recently and he took us all out to dinner and was insistent that no contribution or collection was required. We all signed a card and had a jolly good evening. That's how it should be.

The latest thing that has crept in is clients asking us to sponsor them for raising charity money for doing a marathon, mountain climb etc. I've done 2 this year but I don't really feel it is my place to spend personal money on a work client. Our manager kept sending us the Linked In page and saying have you done it yet. I suggested that perhaps one larger donation from the firm itself would be more appropriate but was ticked off for my "attitude".

It really is your choice. It’s not much of a team spirit, but it depends how you view your work colleagues. Perhaps if any are more important to you, it would be nice to put money in for them. But it really is your choice, your values and I would respect you for that.

Urgh. YANBU

At my workplace, myself and another colleague opted out of this stuff. Got fed up of it. And now we don’t do any whip rounds for things like birthdays. Only for people when they’re leaving or very specific special occasions/circumstances.

Not to mention, that the amount you could put in was optional. So some colleagues would get more given to them than others for their birthday gifts. I got a bit fed up of seeing a couple of the same colleagues always getting great gifts worth £70+, compared to the £20 voucher I would get.

You can't extrapolate from the fact your workplace collections feel unreasonable to you that all workplace collections are excessive.

I have to say, looking at your list that it seems just very unfortunate that you've had 3 people leave, a new baby and a wedding all at the same time. That has to be highly unusual in a team of just 15.

The only one that could be unreasonable is the birthday.
Where I worked, people got some flowers for a 'zero' birthday, but that came out of the 'collections fund' we all put into once a year, so there wasn't the faff of collecting, or people only needing to put a couple of pounds in for those occasions.
Nonsense to mark everyone's birthdays each year though.

Having put £££ into collections since I started work, no one bothered to do one for me for my 50th birthday so I’m never contributing again. To anything.

When I ran a department I eventually asked my manager to arrange for funding for leaving presents. It was particularly hard to raise money for that as people realised that they'd never see them again and didn't want to bother. I previously deliberately didn't collect for one woman who'd gone on maternity leave before actually doing any work, and then gone off again within three months of coming back. We didn't have many weddings or babies, so not much else to collect for, though we did the odd big birthday or event. It was pretty unusual for somebody to give as much as £5, and there is very little you can get for a collection when you have less than £100, but the bosses agreed to give us £100 whenever somebody left.

Org rule: only zero birthdays and major life events like wedding, baby, retirement.

The thing that stresses me the most is when somebody hands you the card and collection and you've then got to find some other person to pass it on to.

Normally 99% of the other people on the list have already signed it and the person you need to return it to doesn't work Thursday afternoons. So then I am stuck with a card and envelope full of cash I don't know what to do with.

It can easily waste 20 minutes of my day!

I’m 50 in a few weeks and not telling anyone I work with as I don’t want anyone organising a collection for me. I contribute to pretty much every collection though.

I've opted out of all this as there was something every week, or even twice a week! And while everyone has a birthday, only some people's birthdays were celebrated/ collected for.
And it was always to transfer money into the collector's personal account with now clarity on how much was collected and how much the gift was. No transparency.

Also just an irritating extra task and costly when it all adds up.

I expect I am slagged off about my lack of participation but I am too busy and tired to care!

*no clarity

I'm amazed anyone's putting any cash into all your collections. In my workplace everyone says they don't carry cash anymore and the envelope comes back empty.