[Oldexpat]

The way I read it..this was a rewards trip for salesmen in a unit not related to mortgages. This is a common way that big companies reward the MIDDLE CLASS salesmen and their wives for meeting goals. They are arranged months in advance. It wasn’t for the CEO etc.
The timing is bad..but the people who were rewarded are just like us.

[dfwgator]

Less than a week after the federal government had to bail out American International Group Inc. (AIG), the company sent executives on a $440,000 retreat

That doesn't sound like middle class salesmen to me.

[Fawn]

Maybe they are like ‘you’...but in my world, there is no one I know or work with that would spend over $400,000 on their employees for ONE SHOT and I work for a BIG country wide company! This is dispicable!!!!

[Hemingway's Ghost]

The timing is bad..but the people who were rewarded are just like us.

BFD.

It's nearly a half a million dollars spent on worthless bullsh*t, when all the while they needed government help to keep from tanking. If the company didn't waste half a million dollars on this sort of thing, maybe they wouldn't have tanked.

[Prokopton]

The timing is bad..but the people who were rewarded are just like us.

I don't know who you think "us" is, but I'd wager that most FReepers have never been sent to a luxury spa by their employer, especially if their employer had just narrowly avoided bankruptcy by a massive government bailout.

[TexasCajun]

I've never been treated to a fully paid 5-Star resort treatment.

Didn't AIG parent company get this bailout?

[Eagle of Liberty]

The way I read it..this was a rewards trip for salesmen in a unit not related to mortgages. This is a common way that big companies reward the MIDDLE CLASS salesmen and their wives for meeting goals.

THE ENTIRE COMPANY needed to be bailed out, not just one division. The Government now owns 80% of AIG, both successful divisions and CORRUPT divisions. If ANY division of that company was doing so good that it could spend $400k on rewards, don't you think that the money would have been better spent SAVING the company?

It was budgeting such as this that drove the company under in the first place.

[ichabod1]

Doesn’t matter. Once you let Uncle Sam in the door, you have to wear drab clothing and use gunmetal office furniture, and you CANNOT have employee outings like this.