The place I work for has a performance incentive scheme in place (read: bonuses). Depending on how well goals have been achieved, a bonus can be as much as 20% of gross annual pay. That's substantial, in anyone's language.

This year, due to the downturn, no bonuses for anyone. Also, no payrises. I feel totally gipped, because I worked much harder this year than the previous five years I've been with the company. It's been really hard slog. But what can you do? At least I wasn't counting on that money. There are people in my department who were actually relying on a bonus to pay their bills.

Max