In your mind is a holiday gift the same as a performance bonus?

So she is your assistant, but you are not her manager? Do you provide input on performance? Waiting until the end of the year to give input is less than optimal - are you addressing those issues as they happen?

Give her the gift. On the first week of January, start a performance improvement plan. Rogue admin assistants make life hell for everyone.

I'd gladly spend $50 on a tip if that keeps another person blissfully complacent of an interpersonal status with me for another year. Nothing is worse than unspoken tension.

You refer to it as a Christmas gift and Christmas tips, and then say that you don't want to give it to her because you feel she doesn't deserve a bonus. Those are 3 very different things... Is this a gift, a tip, or a bonus that you're talking about?

If it is a gift, it should be up to you to decide, not a company policy. If it’s a bonus, it should come out of the company fund, not out of your salary. As weird and nonsensical as this policy is, you should probably consider how it will affect your relationship going forward if she is the only administrative assistant to not receive a gift/bonus/whatever.

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Do you give performance bonuses to your children and grandchildren?

Never mind the gift. With so many people out of work... FIRE HER! Get someone in who can do the job. How hard can it be to find someone who can do the (I assume pretty basic) job? Why are you putting up with poor performance? From a strict business point of view, rather than saving you time, she wastes your time because you have to deal with her in your words enumerable mistakes.

@Repmat : If the company pays you significantly enough, chump change amounts like $50 aren't worth squabbling over policy (or law). Yeah, maybe I'm no big fan of the fact my employer doesn't pay me $380 for a reason that I think I should be paid for, but if they do pay me $7000 more than other employees, do I have a rightful basis for complaining?

@Bohemian maybe she does his proofreading too.

Note the differences between a tip, a gift, and a bonus. A tip is completely up to you to decide personally (not necessarily as her boss). A gift is more subject to social etiquette (and is related to the gift-giving nature of Christmas, not her employment). A bonus is generally based on her performance. Conflating these distinct things will lead to people making wrong inferences about the meaning of (not) getting something.

In my company, we have a tradition of "secret santa": you subscribe to a list and randomly a person gets picked for you, to whom you give a Christmas gift. The maximum amount is set to 10$, with some liberty. Like this, everybody is treated equally and nobody needs to bother about seeing the gift as a performance indicator (therefore the value is too small). Maybe you can introduce this in your firm?

What does "to stiff" in this context mean? My favorite dictionaries say it's colloquial language for killing someone, i.e. taking someone's life, i.e. making someone dead ("to stiff" -> "jmd. kalt machen" <-> "to make someone cold").

"... she has made enumerable mistakes..." I guess you mean the opposite. "Enumerable" means you can enumerate (i.e., count and/or list) them, so probably not very many; innumerable means that there are so many that you couldn't count or list them them.

@phresnel "To stiff" someone means that you do not give them a gift, payment, or tip that they are expecting. E.g. "I waited on that family of 8 through their two-hour meal, and they completely stiffed me on the tip!" or "Our date did not go well, and even though we agreed ahead of time to split the check for dinner, she left early and stiffed me for the bill."

@phresnel The 4th entry here, transitive verb: to refuse to pay or tip, cheat

(at)Beofett and @whrrgarbl: Thanks a lot. Added Merriam Webster's to my list of dictionaries.

Did you only start noticing the issues you described about the admin this year? Or has it been going on prior to your $50 gift last year?

I have edited in the US tag because 'obligatory' holiday gifts are very much US thing and people in other countries may not realize that. In Europe people find it very strange that these things are expected of you.

You should separate the performance review and salary / employment status etc stemming from it and holiday gift tradition. Its not a tip (your not in the restaurant), or a bonus (these tend to be larger that 50$). Get in the holiday spirit and spend a few bucks to make someone feel better and showing that you are a human being, once a year