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Merry Christmas, Staff, Enjoy Your New ... Handguns

Wisconsin company is offering unique end-of-year bonus to its workers
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 14, 2018 12:48 PM CST
Merry Christmas, Staff, Enjoy Your New ... Handguns
Merry Christmas?   (Getty Images/Markus Schnessl)

The employees at BenShot could've received an end-of-year cash bonus as a Christmas gift from their employer. Instead of giving workers $500 to pocket, however, the Wisconsin company wanted to try something different by offering a "perfect" present to each of its 16 full-time employees: a handgun. It's the first time the company—described as producing "novelty glassware embedded with a bullet as if it had been shot," per the Appleton Post-Crescent—has done anything like this, an idea that co-owner Ben Wolfgram says was spurred by the desire to push team building and personal safety. "We are a small, close-knit team at BenShot," he tells WISN. "I want to make sure all of [our] employees are safe and happy—a handgun was the perfect gift."

Technically, the workers won't be unwrapping Glocks around the cafeteria water cooler; instead, the company is giving them gift cards they can then use to purchase their new firearms. "That way the background check [is] done by the store," Wolfgram notes. He adds that at least two workers balked at the offer at first, but they may be coming around after participating in a gun safety course that BenShot execs insisted workers take before they could get their Christmas gift. "Now, we have an entire armed staff," Wolfgram says. "I think that's pretty good." (There was controversy over an AR-15 being given away in a raffle.)

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