Every year in mid-June, Hornady Manufacturing, a Nebraska company that makes ammunition and reloading tools, gives its employees an impressive bonus. Three years ago, after local leaders accused the company of not supporting the local economy, it began earmarking a part of that bonus to be spent only at local businesses. How did they do that? By giving out envelopes of a very particular form of currency: $2 bills.

The Omaha World-Herald reports that when the bonus program began three years ago, the company handed out rolls of dollar coins. Those were too bulky, especially when the bonus works out to around $200 per employee.

Where do you get more than 30,000 $2 bills? The company has to order them from its bank weeks ahead of time.

Watching the $2 bills circulate around local shops let everyone see the company’s impact on the economy, and employees’ bonus spending in the town became very, very visible.

Of course, the whole bonus doesn’t come in $2 bill form: employees also get a real bonus check, as well as a contribution to their retirement accounts.

(This concept also has an evil twin: I have also heard of a strip club that gave out change in $2 bills, so patrons had to either give all of their bills to the dancers or have others in the small town know where they had been.)

Curiously, the Omaha World-Herald didn’t interview local storekeepers about the possible inconvenience of the influx of $2 bills.

Employer hands out $61K in bonuses — all in $2 bills [Omaha World-Herald]

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