Is that Sprint gift basket a real job offer for T-Mobile employees?

For at least a few days, Sprint found a way to avoid the unfiltered social media fount that is John Legere, CEO of rival T-Mobile US Inc. Send gift baskets to his employees.

And include an invite to job shop at Sprint.

Legere’s Twitter feed, usually a source of jabs at Sprint, had ignored, at least through late Friday, the many published reports about those Sprint gift baskets showing up at T-Mobile stores.

And the official word from T-Mobile is they’re not talking about this.

Sprint’s communications people similarly said they’re not talking about the baskets either.

So it’s impossible to tell how many baskets went out or what the effort cost. No one, however, is jumping up to deny claims that Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure sent them.

A photograph published online shows that a card accompanying the basket offers the treats in the season of giving and is signed MARCELO in block letters.

Reactions by others range from what amounts to a “not even” on the job offer to the conclusion that Sprint’s move was misguided.

After all, Sprint executives are slashing budgets and laying off staffers back at headquarters. The company has set a goal to cut $2.5 billion from budgets and expect layoffs, according to Sprint’s chairman, to be in the thousands.

One side of the cardboard basket includes the phrase “Let’s Move Forward, Together” and includes the Web address of Sprint’s online recruiting page for sales staff. Viewed literally, Claure is trying to pinch T-Mobile’s talent.

At least one T-Mobile manager thought better of the idea.

One tweet connected the costs of the baskets to the pink slips being handed out at Sprint.

News of the baskets seems to have surfaced at TmoNews, a website that calls itself the unofficial T-Mobile blog. The site said its sources say T-Mobile officials had told employees to toss out the baskets.

Other published reports have treated the job offer as genuine, in one case labeling the offering “guerrilla gift baskets” and in another calling them “job applications.”

It’s entirely possible that Sprint is trying to add experienced sales staff during the cellphone industry’s most intense push for customers.

But given the budget-cutting targets management has set, it’s not impossible that the company could be shedding some of those sales jobs soon. Sprint announced plans in January 2014, before Claure’s arrival that August, to lay off 300 to 500 employees as it closed less profitable stores in a cost-cutting move.

Wrap it all up and the gift basket offering amounted to the wireless world’s “Worst of the Week,” at least according to Dan Meyer at RCR Wireless News. He writes a feature by that title and handed the dubious distinction to Sprint’s baskets.

“Maybe I am just being too much of a Grinch on this matter and should look at the festive spirit in which I am sure Sprint was looking to take in this latest move. But, with money tight and job cuts on the line, it’s hard not to view Sprint’s maneuver as a bit misguided,” Meyer wrote.

Meyer could have added that Sprint executives have cut off snacks in their own offices and halted emptying trash cans at employees’ desks among many moves to reach their cost-cutting goal.

This story was originally published December 18, 2015 at 5:21 PM with the headline "Is that Sprint gift basket a real job offer for T-Mobile employees?."