In a generous and heartwarming gesture, employees of Gravity Payments pitched in this summer and bought their company CEO Dan Price a token gift of appreciation. It wasn’t a big can of kettle corn, or a case of wine. It was a car. They bought him a car, and not just any car. They presented Price with a Telsa battery-operated car with an average price value of $70k.
For a bit of background, in April of 2015, Price surprised his team by raising the minimum salary for each of them to $70,000 a year. A spokesperson for the Gravity Payment team stated on their YouTube post:
“...We recently released the early results related to that minimum wage decision, www.thegravityof70k.com. A year later, we turned the tables and give him a taste of his own medicine. We pitched in in some small way and bought Dan his dream car - a Tesla. This is just one small piece of what's happened in the past year.”
Here is the YouTube video posted by the Gravity Payment team:
x YouTube VideoBack when Price made the announcement to his employees that he was raising their salaries, the folks over at FOX News caught wind and called Price’s gesture a major “publicity stunt.” Republican shock jock Rush Limbaugh called the move “pure, unadulterated socialism.” But then, he doesn’t count. One FOX anchor went so far as to say the 130 employees of Gravity would soon be in line for welfare. Perhaps those folks should go read about the company’s progress after only months. After a year, there are lovely employee testimonies of how the pay raise helped the quality of their lives. I’d say given Gravity’s successful year, along with its employees wanting to give back to their “boss” in a such big beautiful way, it all equates to a pretty big “Fuck You” to FOX.
Congratulations and kudos to Dan Price who understands when you treat your employees with respect and pay them well, it comes back — in so many ways, and on so many levels.