My company gives out their annual bonuses in late March, usually, so no, not in my case.

the new owners figured out a way to improve the bottom line.

the bottom line doesn't have worker happiness in it, i'd think you learned that by now. that said, a gift card they probably got because of a bulk discount (and a pretty small one at that) seems awfully demeaning to me.

Same thing happened to me this year. The traditional Christmas bonus is a $50 dollar bill to every employee, (plus an unnamed amount added to the December paycheck). This year it was a 1 year membership to Costco (Retail value $55, with bulk discount, probably cost the company like $20 each.)

Then again, 'It's been a lean year,' (My company makes caps for milk jugs and 5-gallon watter bottles, that market is pretty stable, no real growth, but it's not like the demand drops off because of a poor economy. 'It's been a lean year' means 'We've been fucking up in the sales offices and losing clients to the competition, because the sales people are too busy pushing new cap styles that haven't even come out of the mold right yet, and not busy enough maintaining good customer relations with the client base, allowing the competition to come in with 'we'll sell you cheap caps, about 85-90% of them will fit on the bottle without leaking or jamming your equipment, and our customer service line is an answering machine that deletes the messages once you hang up,' and the clients jump at the chance.

For the last six years we got a two hundred dollar check, I don't think so this year...I could be wrong..