I’ve spent many a year in Corporate America, and I’ve gotten a lot of free stuff. I’ve thrown almost all of it away but one item remains: the Chairman Mao watch I got when I worked at Monster. Here’s how it landed on my wrist. 

I worked at Monster in 2005. It was past its internet-darling heyday but very much a leader in the online recruitment space. I worked in the old mill headquarters in Maynard, MA with a ton of creative people, and we generally had a blast. At the time Monster was owned by a giant agency based in NYC that made its fortune in yellow pages advertising. The corporate brass didn’t fully understand this internet thing, which often led to odd culture clashes between Maynard and New York. 

But New York had cash—something Monster needed to compete in the post dotcom business arena. Even though it didn’t look like much a site called Craigslist was nipping at Monster’s heels, and CareerBuilder.com was gaining momentum. And it’s hard to imagine now but back then newspaper classifieds were still something to worry about. In response to these market changes Monster did what lots of places do to stay on top: it went on a shopping spree. 

These acquisitions really didn’t affect us much in Maynard. When one of them happened we’d read the press release the PR team emailed to the whole company, realize it had nothing to do with our deadlines, delete it, and go back to work. This routine stayed in effect until Monster announced its monster multi-million international deal to buy ChinaHR. 

I can’t remember how much it was for (a quick Google search as I wrote this turned up $240 million), but it was a big deal. It would expand Monster’s reach into Asia, a giant market full of people who were also using the internet to find jobs. Oh, the synergies: Global reach! Access to databases full of candidates looking for new opportunities! International job postings! Surely a rebirth of internet riches. What could go wrong? 

The CEO went to China to close the deal. The only reason I know this is because everyone, including me, got a present after he got back form his trip. 

Oh yes. 

It was the Chairman Mao watch. 

An employee gift wasn’t the original intent. From what I heard the CEO wanted to celebrate the deal by giving Monster’s partners and customers some authentic Chinese SWAG. Legend has it he was walking down a street in Beijing when he saw a sidewalk vendor hawking watches. But these weren’t ordinary watches. These timepieces had Chairman Mao’s stately profile emblazoned on the watch’s face with one of his arms raised in a friendly salute. And they weren’t battery-operated. You had to wind the watch to make it work. 

That’s when the magic happened. 

A few seconds after winding the watch Mao’s arm would kick into action, waving up and down in a herky-jerky salute until it stopped. That’s when you knew your time was up and it was time to wind it again. The CEO bought hundreds, if not a few thousand, watches and had them shipped back to Maynard. The watches sat in pallets outside the mailroom waiting to be mailed to the chosen.

As the direct mail wheels went into motion the buzz started in the mill. Some people in upper management, I’ll never know who, started to voice concern that this Chairman Mao watch may not be the best thing to send to Monster’s partners and customers. (I would have killed to have heard those discussions: “Oh, absolutely Chairman Mao is well-known, but do you know why?”). Long story short, the plan was scrapped. 

But what to do with all those Chairman Mao watches?

Give them to the People!

I still remember seeing my friend wheeling the pallets around Monster’s long corridors, dropping a precious watch package on every employee’s desk as he went, hysterical laughter erupting after each delivery. What made it even better was that there were actually two versions of the Chairman Mao watch. The swanky version was of course the wind-up watch that powered Mao’s cheery salute, the other was a just a regular battery-powered watch that had a sticker of Chairman Mao’s entire profile and no moving arm. I ended up getting both versions but only because my manager, the recipient of a swanky watch, gave me hers after she saw I got the static one (“There’s an even cheaper version?” She exclaimed as she handed me hers.) 

Those watches did more for morale than the giant sheet cake Monster put out in the cafeteria to celebrate employees’ birthdays each month. I have my Chairman Mao watch to this day. It still works. Winding it remains a hilarious, timeless reminder of that strange slice of time in the early aughts, right after one market bust and just before another. 

Got a favorite SWAG story? Leave it in the comments or drop me a line, I’d love to hear it.