Employee rewards program offers a 6-night trip to Disneyland, but you’ll have to work 300 years to earn it

A six-night Disney vacation at the Disneyland Resort in California is among the gifts and prizes up for grabs as part of a reward program for employees that was supposedly created to highlight achievements and boost morale, but there’s a catch. If an employee has his sights set on the Disney trip, he’ll have to work for more than 300 years at the company in order to earn enough reward points to purchase it.

Credit: Disney

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But that’s not the case with every employer or with every job, so many employers and companies include an employee reward program to incentivize and motivate workers to be at their best. Employee reward programs are also widely used when a company seems to have misplaced its morale.

And it’s a very simple idea: a point value is assigned to certain achievements within the workplace. Employees earn points along the way, sometimes even for celebrating an anniversary with the company. They can then use those points to purchase an experience or item offered as part of the reward program. It can be a great boost to morale.

And some employers offer reward programs for employees with a range of rewards, sometimes including movie tickets, restaurant gift cards, and hotel stays. (Wouldn’t it be nice if they all offered programs for employees with rewards like a trip to the Walt Disney World Resort, a Disney cruise aboard a Disney Cruise Line ship, a couple of nights at Disney’s Grand Floridian, Disney gift cards, or a Disney Vacation Club membership? (Ok, we were dreaming way too big on the membership.)

Credit: Disney Vacation Club

And in a post upvoted 19,000 on Reddit, a user shares information about the reward program for employees at his workplace that offers a Disney vacation at Disneyland for six nights, but the program looks to have the potential to squash morale for employees once and for all.

A user who posted as legend_runners shared a screenshot of his company’s “points and rewards platform,” which is part of the reward program offered to employees in his office.

Credit: Reddit/legends_runner

According to his post, employees at the firm receive 200 points per month of work, which might sound like a lot of points–until you learn how many points are needed to earn many of the rewards offered in the program.

The screenshot seems to depict many reward offerings. Of those, one of the most notable–and coveted–reward offerings is a six-night family Disney vacation at the Disneyland Resort, but in order for employees to purchase the Disney vacation, they’ll have to amass more than one million points.

The point value associated with the Disney vacation is 1,028,872, per the screenshot. We’re not sure what kind of success employees would have to achieve to earn such a high point value, especially since employees only earn 200 points per month.

Credit: Travel Channel

The Redditor explained that there are additional ways to earn points.

“You automatically get 400 points on your birthday,” he wrote, adding that “Every 10 years of loyalty you get 8,000 to 10,000 (the range depending on your department).”

But even after those point values are included, employees will have a tough gig ahead of them. Well, maybe not a tough one, but a long one for sure. In fact, we’re betting that long before those kinds of points could be earned, most employees will be gone. Actually, all of them will be gone–not to other jobs, but to the Great Beyond.

That’s because even if employees earn those additional points, they’d have to keep up the pace for more than 300 years before they could purchase the Disney vacation. The Redditor posted that employees in higher positions have the potential to amass a higher point value. Regardless, his post sent other Redditors into orbit.

User Paulsoleo posted, “I would 100 percent call them out over this on day one, and be promptly fired.”

WhyYouYelling posted about his own workplace, saying if employees work 100 hours of overtime over a quarter, they earn a bonus paid day off. “And this is for salaried employees,” he said.

Another user, tdomer80, aired his frustration with schemes like this one, saying “I’ve seen programs [for employees] like this where top salespeople get showered with ‘points’ but office people get jack. The incentive trips are for the salespeople. Everyone else gets ‘trinkets and trash.'”

Credit: Disney

If a reward program for employees is to motivate and incentivize them, why would a company organize a program that offers a reward list that is largely out of reach for employees, no matter how hard they work?

Redditor Seannj222 seems to feel similarly, as he posted, saying that these kinds of schemes can hurt employees and the company in the long run, as they can make “employees perform less because they know it’s just not attainable.”