Boss hosts an Employee Appreciation Pizza Party to announce that all raises are postponed, but it backfires as workers realize the irony: 'Why's everybody leaving?'

He claimed to care about his employees' well-being above all else, but in the same breath announced that the salaries they relied on wouldn't be increasing anytime soon. 

I wonder if the boss's own paycheck was still going to reflect the annual raise? Hmm…

When an employee is counting on a pay raise to both offset inflation and survive the rising cost of gas for their commute, the news of a no-raise work year can feel like a punch to the gut. No matter how you frame it, bad news is still bad news, and the boss in this next story thought that he could smooth over the ill effects of the financial announcement with some cheesy snacks. 

But even if you've gifted your employees a sliver of pizza to soften the blow that their raise is never coming, they're still going to be extremely disappointed. They don't come to work for fun; they come to work for the payout. 

Bosses don't seem to realize that employees don't consider their coworkers "family" in the same way that HR slogans claim. While they may enjoy their favorite colleague's company or tolerate the hard-boiled jokes of the crusty desk-jockeys in the cubicle next door, ultimately, a job is simply a means to an end… With the end being a crisp, freshly printed paystub that can go straight to the bank. Yet as time goes on in any job, the salary that was won a few years ago starts to look meager, especially with the rising costs of… Well, just about everything. 

Raises are the dangling carrot that keeps workers motivated and interested in returning to the office every day. Consequently, when this boss announced that the carrot was no longer an option, the stubborn donkeys he was trying to lead into Q2 didn't want to go with him anymore. Burning the bridge between himself and his workforce, all it took was a lack of perspective, one extremely mistimed announcement, and a table full of cold pizza to send this workforce packing. 

With no prospects on the horizon, what's to keep these workers from jumping ship and applying to another so-called "family"?