A few decades ago, some business guy made up this very nice idea for a celebration in order to promote his book about keeping a healthy workforce. He proved that he can practice what he preaches, and good for him! And good for us, too, for finally noticing this holiday on our lists of reasons to draw attention to ourselves. Right before our seven year anniversary, too!

Employee Appreciation Day has been occurring every year since 1995 on the first Friday of March. It was designed to remind bosses and managers that they need strong employer-employee relations to keep workers happy. Feeling valued goes a long way towards a life of serene satisfaction. This feeling keeps your workers docile and disinclined to organize a pesky strike. By achieving an agreeable “connection” with your employees, they will not feel the need to unionize in order to defend themselves from the monster you appear to be. Simply offering praise, listening to their concerns, and paying for a cheap large one topping pizza or three whenever you hear dark rumblings will earn you Boss of the Year accolades on Boss’s Day in October — and better yet, you will be given quality product to use as you see fit.

But who is our boss? It’s certainly not me — I am a Manager at most, but generally I work far too hard on this site to be sitting at the top. It’s not Dollissa, who is essentially a figurehead, or cchris, who mostly just looms and lurks around the Sneer Offices in my mind. Why, of course the boss is you, the reader. We write to serve your interests and our salaried payment is praise and attention.

Wage labor, even when the wages aren’t traditional money, can be a mutually advantageous partnership between employer and employee — between audience and entertainer, reader and writer. However, writers sometimes feel exploited, under-praised, and infuriatingly unappreciated by their readers. I’m not threatening you with the formation of the United International Association of Amalgamated Sneerworkers on this day. I am merely here to guide you on how to avoid that inevitability for a few more years. You have my word that we would only ever Organize if conditions around here worsen…

We are ready to receive appreciation! When we feel appreciated, we perform at our best and are less likely to leave. Whoops! There I go sounding mutinous again! Instead, I will redirect my energy into providing you with hot tips on how to build a healthy relationship with us, your little factory of website entertainment. How is best to show us you care? We have already spoken to you of Love Languages, but we would rather have a more professional relationship with you today. Maybe the list below will be variations of the list of five from the other article, but we want formal overtones with this one! Please, as our boss, we do not want any inappropriate situations. We don’t want to have to form an HR Department which we will then have to consult.

Since we aren’t actually all physically working from the same place and therefore you can’t break into our offices to decorate with balloons and banners or hire catering for all of us, here are 10 ways you can thrill us and keep us motivated on Employee Appreciation Day and beyond!

1. Comment On Our Shares & Posts. It makes us feel popular. It makes us feel pretty.
2. Start A Chapter Of Sneer Society. In your own home town or amongst your friends or in school, feel encouraged to set up a fan club to us. Write to us and we will send you a starter packet.
3. Compliment Us. Tell us we’re popular. Tell us we’re pretty. Say it in public for everyone to see!
4. Write For Us. Hey we haven’t had any reader submissions in a while — have you lost the moxie required?
5. Donate To Our Chosen Charities. We have loads of places we love and types of things we support. Donate to bail funds, community gardens, food banks, homeless shelters, animal shelters, hospices, planned parenthoods, wildlife conservation societies — basically anything you can probably guess we would approve of. I think we are pretty transparent that way.
6. Give Us Awards. Present them to us on our stupid facebook page.
7. Give Us Time Off. If no one notices when we don’t post consistently, please don’t tell me. On the other hand, tell me that everyone notices, but that they understand that I need to rest sometimes. You might have to force me to rest.
8. Recognize Major Milestones And Small Triumphs. Is it our Sneeriversary? (It is). Congratulate us! Did the one thousandth Amandoll post appear? (Probably). Then buy me a gift I love gifts!
9. Thank Us. It’s not going to hurt you to just say thank you. It might hurt you a little to send some thank you cards, but go ahead and do that too.
10. Pizza Party! Order it from afar! Get us the cheapest one topping large pizza that money can buy! We will be mollified for several months at least. It’s the oldest trick in the book.

And in a closing note, I will let you know that I lifted the appreciative quotes in my thank you images directly from this nifty site, as they intended. They helpfully provide this service to allow management a greater ease in knowing what to say to their underlings. I figured you would have used it, too, if you had written this article for us.