Getting promotions, bonuses, and salary hikes is a standard way employers reward good work. But a restaurant owner in China went far beyond and surprised her top-performing employees with BMWs.
Ma Yanli, the owner of a beef hotpot chain in Jiaozuo, central Henan province, gifted brand-new BMWs to her top-performing employees because she hated seeing them commute to work in harsh weather on electric bikes.
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On September 24, she took some of her workers to collect their new BMWs. The cars, each priced at 300,000 yuan (Rs 43.2 lakh approximately), were bought by Ma two weeks earlier with full payment, as per the South China Morning Post.
One of the employees, Li Jie, told the outlet, “I am so thrilled! I dared not think about this before. On the way to the BMW showroom, Boss Ma just told me she would gift me a big toy.”
The cars were registered on Li's name that day, and she did not have to pay a cent for it. Ma also did not ask her to sign any agreement for the brand-new vehicle.
Why The Employees Were Gifted BMWs
Like most of her colleagues, Li Jie used an electric scooter to travel to her workplace during the harsh winter season. One morning, Ma saw Li arrive at the restaurant with her face flushed bright red from the cold. Her hands were stiff from the cold wind and her ears had turned purple.
Seeing Li's situation made Ma Yangli feel sorry for her employee, who had worked at the eatery for eight years.
She felt they had to endure much more than her. Then an idea struck her mind. Ma thought about why her employees could not travel in warm conditions like she did and decided to give them BMWs.
“I have achieved success in my career. But my company's prosperity is attributed to the collective efforts of all my employees. So I must let my workers also benefit from the success of my company,” Ma Yangli told SCMP.
The restaurant owner, who has two decades of experience in the catering industry, paid for the new BMWs in full so her employees did not have to deal with any loan instalments.
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Similar Gifting Story
Ma Yangli is not the first boss to give generous gifts to her staff in China. Another entrepreneur, Cui Peijun, has been nicknamed “the boss who loves distributing money most” due to his generosity towards his employees.
Cui, the chairman of Henan Kuangshan Crane Company, gave his staff 180 million yuan (Rs 260 crore) in bonuses before the Spring Festival last year. The amount is equivalent to two-thirds of his firm's profits from the previous year.
Moreover, Cui gives each of his 2,000 female employees 800 yuan (around Rs 11,530) every International Women's Day.
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