I Sold Every Swiss Watch I Received as a Reward for Great Performance at Work

Corporate loyalty is nothing luxurious

The carrot-chasing reward system companies establish for their sales teams is insulting. In the Swiss Watch industry, they will encourage you to steal your co-worker’s sale to meet a Christmas quota in order to win the big prize: a discontinued, unsold timepiece. It gets worse: they offer engraving.

Imagine you, thirty years from now, using a dated timepiece that makes you look like a time traveler (everybody uses smart gadgets with GPS’s and heart monitors then), etched with the words “Salesperson of the Year.”

Thankfully, I didn’t have to steal anyone’s sales to win the prize a few times: most of my team had already quit, and the new guys were never able to catch up fast enough. I won kind of easily.

I was given a couple of options to pick from, always ugly, masculine, dated-looking watches. I picked the ones I would be able to sell fast, which was against company policy. Yes, they “give” you something, but you are not supposed to sell it.

When filling the order, my manager asked what I wanted to engrave, and I was always adamant: no engraving whatsoever. I told him I was going to let my husband borrow the watch sometimes.

I never sold something so fast, for the best offer I could get, on eBay, just like all of my smart co-workers did. I didn’t feel good about winning this silly contest. I felt offended. A salesperson who gets commission will always try to meet and exceed their sales goals. A company does not need to treat them like kids in a competition.

But they can’t help it. It’s their way of disposing of inventory while pretending to reward their bottom-feeders for working harder and making less money than anyone else in their company.

I met a few silly men who felt so proud of their “collection” of watches they bought at a discount from the employee store. Giving their hard earned commission right back to the company was the sorriest thing I ever witnessed.

But there is something in this industry that will never die: their will to insist that you are part of a selected privileged club if you wear something that can be passed on to the next generation and then the next.

They will tell you that you are wasting money on your Apple watch because it will only last you a few years while your Swiss timepiece is forever. They fail to remind you that your oldie will need overhaul every four years. That means, it will be sent to Switzerland, where a watchmaker will take six months to repair it, for no less than a thousand dollars. I’ll take the Apple watch, thank you.

I want to live my life, pay my bills, and travel light. My watch is a practical item: it tells the time. When I left the Swiss Watch industry, I immediately bought a smartwatch. Not I have reminders that I want, including getting out of my chair to move around.

That is why I have no regrets about the times when I sold the watches I received for my sales.

More from This Woman: