Never look a gift horse in the mouth; it may bite your nose off. Beware of Greeks bearing gifts; it might be a horse. (That’s what it was in the original Trojan wars as narrated by Vergil, the Roman poet who wrote Aeneid.) Vergil sure had the gift of the gab, and he provided the instruments of torture for a generation of Mr Chips (James Hilton). One of the fictional sufferers was Billy Bunter (Frank Richards) who copied the lines:

“Greek is a language,
Dead as dead can be,
First it killed the Athenians,
Now it's killing me.”

Perhaps, in today’s world, the original idiom would appear to be invalid; Greeks are in no position to bear gifts. Its economy is in a shambles. Its per capita government debt is $38,444. And, though the IMF and others have suggested Spartan measures, it doesn’t need a Rhodes Scholar to figure out that the Greeks (unlike the gift horse) will not bite. Far better, then, to talk about geeks bearing gifts.

In the new economy, many geeks have turned CEOs. They start as geeks and see their technology startups grow manifold. Some retire with fortunes. Others stay on to manage their companies, using techniques they never bothered to learn. (One of the minor qualifications for a geek-CEO is that he must be a dropout from a B-school.) Mukesh Ambani and Azim Premji have studied at Stanford. Among other Stanford dropouts are Andy Bechtolsheim (founder of Sun Microsystems), David Filo and Jerry Yang (founders of Yahoo) and Larry Page (founder of Google). Though whether Premji, who learnt enough of management cost-cutting techniques to keep track of toilet paper consumption in his office, qualifies is anybody’s guess.

One may be doing an injustice to Premji. After all, he is the country’s top philanthropist; gifting is in his blood. The US tech-CEO may have a motivation for gifting which we in India won’t understand. Bill Gates (founder of Microsoft) has a toilet challenge. Six organisations got $2 million at the “Reinvent the Toilet Fair: India” in New Delhi some time ago. Among the winners: the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee, which, in partnership with Fresh Rooms Life Sciences, will develop a single-household container that uses human faeces to incubate black soldier fly larvae, which can be processed into marketable products. And no, Narendra Modi wasn’t in the running nor was Premji in his paperless office avatar.

The geek-CEOs have integrated gifts in their employee-benefits packages. That’s why there is food round the clock at Google. They call it Breakfast of Champions (Kurt Vonnegut) though a more apposite title by the same author could be Welcome to the Monkey House. Now you know why jobseekers go ape over the highly-inflated (by insecure IITians; Google doesn’t talk numbers, it is more bothered about the Alphabet) salary figures. Elsewhere in Silicon Valley, they believe in baring gifts; the definitive work on technology oddballs (David Filo slept under his office desk) is the 1999 The Nudist on the Late Shift: And Other True Tales of Silicon Valley (Po Bronson). Imagine Po — perhaps god’s gift to womankind — introducing himself: “I’m Po; I’m Po.”

But Po wasn’t the nudist. His ablaut namesake Richard — the Virgin boss who posed naked with a dead fish to promote marine conservation — had more legit claims.

Far away from Silicon Valley, what gifts do ordinary companies give their employees? The zany (see box) seem prosaic. According to a US employers’ survey by Business & Legal Resources, the top choices are:

• A holiday meal, at work or at a party offsite (32.7 per cent);
• Gift card (15);
• A grocery store gift card (13.4);
• A take-home holiday meal, such as a ham or turkey (8.7).

Food dominates the list. That’s why employee gifts are also known as the gift of the grub.

PRESENTS OF MIND

The odd gifts bosses give their employees

♦ For one holiday party, a company threw a luncheon for its workers and gave them all mugs. When they got back to their desks, they had an envelope waiting for them. Inside? A bill for their share of the luncheon and the mug.

♦ One boss handed out two $1 bills with his official signature on them and a bronze coin with a picture of himself on it. Who wouldn’t want a coin with your boss’s picture on it for the holidays? And I can only imagine how much those signed bills are worth (my prediction: $2).

♦ For 15 years, workers at one particular military base got a turkey each year for the holidays. The trend persisted, despite three different contractors actually employing the workers at the base. However, it didn’t quite last past the fourth contractor. Once the new company got the contract, they wanted to keep the tradition alive, but without the part of actually paying money for the turkeys. So, instead of giving away an actual turkey for the holidays, they gave a photocopy of one.

♦ Gift cards are one of the most popular and most well liked presents received during the holidays. One dentist decided to give all of his employees a $30 gift certificate. Nice, right? Well, here’s the catch: It was a gift certificate to a fancy clothes store his wife owned, where everything was significantly more expensive than $30.

♦ Holiday parties after work are one thing. But have you ever heard of a holiday party before work? At one bookstore, employees were encouraged to come in at 8 am – an hour before they generally started work – for bagels and the chance to mingle with their employees. Shockingly, few employees actually showed up.

Source: Linkedin