Pic Of The Moment: Romney Pays Top Staff $200,000 In Bonuses

[Vox Moi]

13. My big, fat non-profit bonus story

Here's two I got while working for a leading non-profit Boston Hospital, no less.
I got $600 for nothing I did, in particular. We all got a share of the loot.
The hospital needed to increase it's overhead in order to avoid showing a profit that year. It worked.

The second bonus was more revealing. I was traveling with a group of Harvard MDs for a conference, at hospital expense.
We all got bumped from a flight due to weather and the airlines gave us each a $300 voucher. We were re-scheduled and actually arrived at our destination before the original timetable.
The docs were all grinning over this windfall but I suggested that since the hospital was footing the bill, the hospital owned the vouchers. The MDs seemed to think that this was quite naive. They kept the change.
When I got back I went to the travel office and offered to give my voucher to the hospital. Nobody had done anything like that before and the office explained that there was no accounting procedure to accept the voucher and I ought to keep it.
It occurred to me that with all the travel that MDs and senior administrators do, there must have been many instances like this and nobody had ever offered to give up the voucher. Maybe it was one of those little perks that best go unmentioned.

In both cases I had done nothing to deserve something extra; I was simply drifting on money stream that is health care in the USA.

When getting a bonus is detached from any measure of merit, it's not a bonus. I'm not sure what word to use but 'dishonesty' comes to mind. Any suggestions?