Let's say thanks: Pizza for the factory employees

[andrewket]

Excellent work, Andrew! Well done!



I think a donation and a banner to arrive whenever, so that there is some sort of a lasting memento, would be appropriate.

As for the donation, how about this:

You ask Jerome for a contact in personnel to identify one or two Tesla employees who have had some particular hardship of late, and who would really benefit from the money we'll be sending. They may form a small committee of a few managers or something to pick the right person or people, but I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to find a worker or two in the Tesla plant for whom a few thousand dollars might make a real difference. We then just donate the money directly to that person or those people.

And I think that gesture will be remembered and felt by all the workers at Tesla more than a contribution to a somewhat nameless, faceless charity would be. Because whomever it is that winds up receiving the money, it will be one (or more) of them. It's more personal.

Also, Andrew, I'd like to offer to be a second set of eyes to help proof-read your letter. I can even help edit it a bit, if you like.

Interesting idea. You're right in that it would be more personal. My only hesitation is that if I were Tesla management, I'm not sure I would want to place myself in the position of making a judgment call on who is most deserving or in the most need. I would want the person(s) donating the funds to do that. It's a touchy subject. But I do like the idea. I'll ask Tesla what they think.

 

[gg_got_a_tesla]

Great work, Andrew. Thanks! I like the letter and charity options.

Andyw, that's a great thought but, spotting the "most deserving" employee(s) may end up being a very subjective exercise. Could the factory workers who suffered burn injuries a couple of years ago be candidates?

I'm going to be at the factory with my family at 11 am this Saturday so, if something comes together then, my wife and I can most certainly represent this group. You all know what Tesla has meant to us so, there.

If donating to a charity, both my wife and I can get matching donations from our companies so, we can get upto another $9,500 matched this year. That's a bonus if we want to go that route.

 

[Andyw2100]

Interesting idea. You're right in that it would be more personal. My only hesitation is that if I were Tesla management, I'm not sure I would want to place myself in the position of making a judgment call on who is most deserving or in the most need. I would want to person(s) donating the funds to do that. It's a touchy subject. But I do like the idea. I'll ask Tesla what they think.

I can see that it would be a little bit of a potentially thorny issue, but I think the benefit makes it worthwhile. Tesla management can insulate themselves from any issues by having a small committee of non-management people pick the person or people. I think all workplaces have people in the thick of things that would be perfect people to help selflessly pick the right person or people. Management could help identify a few of those few people, and then leave the selection of the actual recipient to a committee of those people.

Alternatively, that committee could submit a short list of 3-5 possibilities to a committee chaired by you, Andrew, with a couple of other members here, and then your committee could make the ultimate decision.

I know this is sounding complicated, but it's really not. And again, I think it will be worth it, as the amount of money we are talking about really could make quite a difference in one person's life.

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Andyw, that's a great thought but, spotting the "most deserving" employee(s) may end up being a very subjective exercise.

There's no question that it will be subjective. That's why we leave it mostly (or entirely) to the Tesla employees. Also we don't need to necessarily find --THE-- most deserving employee or employees. Just one or more VERY deserving employee or employees. As long as the money goes to a person or people who actually are deserving, I think we are fine.

 

[AlMc]

I can see that it would be a little bit of a potentially thorny issue, but I think the benefit makes it worthwhile. Tesla management can insulate themselves from any issues by having a small committee of non-management people pick the person or people. I think all workplaces have people in the thick of things that would be perfect people to help selflessly pick the right person or people. Management could help identify a few of those few people, and then leave the selection of the actual recipient to a committee of those people.

Alternatively, that committee could submit a short list of 3-5 possibilities to a committee chaired by you, Andrew, with a couple of other members here, and then your committee could make the ultimate decision.

I know this is sounding complicated, but it's really not. And again, I think it will be worth it, as the amount of money we are talking about really could make quite a difference in one person's life.

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There's no question that it will be subjective. That's why we leave it mostly (or entirely) to the Tesla employees. Also we don't need to necessarily find --THE-- most deserving employee or employees. Just one or more VERY deserving employee or employees. As long as the money goes to a person or people who actually are deserving, I think we are fine.

Andy, Love the passion and general idea of deserving employee(s) but itcould be fraught with problems in the selection process. I think a homeless shelter in San Fran area as the recipient or 'toys for tots' in the area would be a better idea.

Andrew: Thanks

 

[Beckler]

I dunno I'd say just keep it simple. What about a big box of gift cards, or even a giant crate of cash with some sort of thank you statement, and just say take whatever you want. Or whatever you need, I guess. The grandiose ideas might be well motivated but do they mean much to an individual worker? The simple stuff just gets straight the point - human greed.

Or another idea would be to just buy a Model S and hold a draw for one of them to win it. Maybe Tesla can throw in a second one. I'm going to guess many of them can't afford the car they're building.

 

[ariporad]

Hey, just counted, you guys have raised about $3000 do far. I assumed that everybody who just said "I'm in" donated $100, I have no idea if that's right

 

[Andyw2100]

Andy, Love the passion and general idea of deserving employee(s) but itcould be fraught with problems in the selection process. I think a homeless shelter in San Fran area as the recipient or 'toys for tots' in the area would be a better idea.

Andrew: Thanks

I agree there are definitely issues with the selection process. But there are also issues with the selection process in choosing one charity over another, and any of those more established charities are further removed from our original goal of doing something for the Tesla employees.

Another possibility might be to use the money to establish a scholarship fund for children of Tesla employees. We'd have plenty of time later to work out the details of how scholarships are to be awarded. One benefit of the scholarship fund is that we could add to it each year. So every year, at this time, funds could be collected tor the scholarship fund.

Maybe this too is more complicated than anyone wants to get right now. Just a thought.

 

[gg_got_a_tesla]

Another possibility might be to use the money to establish a scholarship fund for children of Tesla employees. We'd have plenty of time later to work out the details of how scholarships are to be awarded. One benefit of the scholarship fund is that we could add to it each year. So every year, at this time, funds could be collected tor the scholarship fund.

Phenomenal idea! Don't have a clue as to what the modalities would be to start and maintain such a fund but, can't think of a better thing to do.

 

[HankLloydRight]

I'm just going to chime in here.. but picking an employee or employees, or their kids for a scholarship fund may sound great, but that's going to leave some people really resentful if they aren't the ones picked. It's also *very* complicated for the selection committee, and creates a lot of work for other people to manage, and then justify their selections. First, a "selection committee" would need to be picked. Who picks them? Then they have to meet, and take applications and deliberate, and choose, and then take any blowback from their choices. All that time, they could be spending building cars.

A local charity, or homeless shelter, soup kitchen, or my personal favorite, a pet rescue or animal welfare charity are all good picks, and very easy to just make a donation to in the name of the Tesla employees.

 

[Andyw2100]

I'm just going to chime in here.. but picking an employee or employees, or their kids for a scholarship fund may sound great, but that's going to leave some people really resentful if they aren't the ones picked. It's also *very* complicated for the selection committee, and creates a lot of work for other people to manage, and then justify their selections. First, a "selection committee" would need to be picked. Who picks them? Then they have to meet, and take applications and deliberate, and choose, and then take any blowback from their choices. All that time, they could be spending building cars.

I would envision the vast majority of the work involved with the scholarship fund being done by a few members here. The scholarship committee here would go through the applications and award the scholarships. No time building cars would be lost. All we would need is for personnel to periodically make sure news of how to apply for the scholarships was periodically included in the company newsletter, or put up on a bulletin board or something. It would then be up to the employees' kids to submit their applications electronically.

As for defending our choices, I'm not that on top of the process involved in giving away scholarships, but to the best of my knowledge, that just doesn't happen. People apply for scholarships. Some people get them, some don't. It's not a transparent process.

Also we could choose to give many scholarships, including small ones. So if we had, say, $5000 to give away in a given year, we could give one or two $1000 scholarships, a few $500 scholarships, and lots of $250 scholarships. Sure, $250 doesn't go very far towards paying college tuition, but there are lots of little scholarships out there. The more employees we can help, even a little bit, the better.

 

[HankLloydRight]

You'd also have to set up a 503(c)(3) for the fund and administer that as well.

All I'm saying is that an friendly and impromtu "hey, let's get pizza for the line workers" is now snowballing into a massive, committee run, bureaucracy, which you're now suggesting multiple people are going to have to manage and coordinate and fundraise for every year.. putting applications out there, getting them back, reviewing them, awarding the scholarships, filing tax forms, paying expenses, having audits, etc, etc, etc.

Let's just do the pizza and be done with it, or make a one-time donation to a local charity that everyone can feel good about.

 

[AlMc]

You'd also have to set up a 503(c)(3) for the fund and administer that as well.

All I'm saying is that an friendly and impromtu "hey, let's get pizza for the line workers" is now snowballing into a massive, committee run, bureaucracy, which you're now suggesting multiple people are going to have to manage and coordinate and fundraise for every year.. putting applications out there, getting them back, reviewing them, awarding the scholarships, filing tax forms, paying expenses, having audits, etc, etc, etc.

Let's just do the pizza and be done with it, or make a one-time donation to a local charity that everyone can feel good about.

^^This^^

 

[Beckler]

Let's just do the pizza and be done with it, or make a one-time donation to a local charity that everyone can feel good about.

Yup. However call me cynical but donating in someone's name to someone else who may or may not use most of it for something, would mean basically nothing to me. Giving something directly to me would. Just saying. Especially if that something was a $200 check that I could buy hard liquor with. :tongue: I don't drink but that's what most of them will do.

 

[stevezzzz]

Yup. However call me cynical but donating in someone's name to someone else who may or may not use most of it for something, would mean basically nothing to me. Giving something directly to me would. Just saying. Especially if that something was a $200 check that I could buy hard liquor with. :tongue: I don't drink but that's what most of them will do.

I know you pasted a smiley on that last zinger, but you do realize how condescending that sounds, don't you? :frown:

 

[Andyw2100]

You'd also have to set up a 503(c)(3) for the fund and administer that as well.

All I'm saying is that an friendly and impromtu "hey, let's get pizza for the line workers" is now snowballing into a massive, committee run, bureaucracy, which you're now suggesting multiple people are going to have to manage and coordinate and fundraise for every year.. putting applications out there, getting them back, reviewing them, awarding the scholarships, filing tax forms, paying expenses, having audits, etc, etc, etc.

Let's just do the pizza and be done with it, or make a one-time donation to a local charity that everyone can feel good about.

I'm just throwing out ideas. Some are definitely easier to accomplish than others.

But let's not forget how this whole thing started, and how ridiculous it seemed at first.

Andrew tossed out the idea:

So who wants to go in on sending some pizza to the factory with me? Don't get me wrong, I think Tesla could have avoided a lot of this. But I am feeling bad for the people working their butts off right now. Instead of darts, let's buy 'em lunch. Anyone?

And then Bonnie, our esteemed moderator, basically mocked it, in a good-natured way, because it seemed ridiculously far-fetched. She wrote:

There are 4000 people in the factory from purchasing to stamping to wet sanding to painting to automated assembly etc.

Most like pepperoni and sausage, but there are a few 'all cheese' folks. I'll arrange for delivery if you collect the money.

Andrew was undeterred, and took on the challenge.

So here we are, just a few days later, with the entire factory getting pizza, courtesy of Tesla, and with a few thousand dollars in contributions pledged --to do something for the employees.--

The couple of ideas that I have floated stay true to the original idea of doing something nice for the employees, so in theory most of that money should still wind up being donated. If this idea morphs into "giving the money to a homeless shelter in San Francisco in the Tesla workers' names" I think it is likely that at least some of the people who were planning on donating to the "Tesla Workers' Pizza Fund" will choose not to donate. On the other hand, if we move forward with either a scholarship fund or plans to donate directly to needy Tesla workers, I'd expect donations to actually increase.

 

[HankLloydRight]

But there are also issues with the selection process in choosing one charity over another

Simple. Since this thread was andrewket's original idea... he gets to choose the charity, plain and simple. And he can take everyone's input in choosing, or not.

 

[bonnie]

Can we just keep it simple this year? Pizza or tons of flavored popcorn or something that says 'we wanted to say thanks in some small way'. And then AFTER we do this, then go crazy on making it into something bigger for next year.

If you make it complicated now, it's not going to happen.

 

[Andyw2100]

Simple. Since this thread was andrewket's original idea... he gets to choose the charity, plain and simple. And he can take everyone's input in choosing, or not.

I maintain that no matter what charity Andrewket chooses, the amount donated will wind up being less than it would be if the money were going to go directly to Tesla workers. The donation becomes much more of a symbolic gesture, and much less concrete.

 

[HankLloydRight]

The couple of ideas that I have floated stay true to the original idea of doing something nice for the employees,

Correction: One or a very select employees. The thousand of remaining employees get warm and fuzzies. Or not.

so in theory most of that money should still wind up being donated. If this idea morphs into "giving the money to a homeless shelter in San Francisco in the Tesla workers' names" I think it is likely that at least some of the people who were planning on donating to the "Tesla Workers' Pizza Fund" will choose not to donate. On the other hand, if we move forward with either a scholarship fund or plans to donate directly to needy Tesla workers, I'd expect donations to actually increase.

This an meaningless assertion, since there's no way to ascertain both. I unequivocally would *not* give to a scholarship fund set up just to help a few people, if the original idea was to do something nice for thousands of factory workers. All of them. The pizza *is* happening, thanks to Tesla Motors, so the original idea is fulfilled. It's up to us to do something nice in return. Handing a few hundred or thousand dollars to a few select workers (or their kids) is not within the spirit of the original idea, especially with the management headaches setting up and maintaining a scholarship fund would entail.

 

[bonnie]

Yup. However call me cynical but donating in someone's name to someone else who may or may not use most of it for something, would mean basically nothing to me. Giving something directly to me would. Just saying. Especially if that something was a $200 check that I could buy hard liquor with. :tongue: I don't drink but that's what most of them will do.

Do you see the irony? No? This is a thread about thanking the people who have worked long hours to get cars done ... and you make a condescending (and completely untrue) comment about them.