Wells Fargo is upset today. Upset that they had to cancel their Las Vegas employee getaway due to media pressure. Upset that the media “misled” the public about the trip by calling it a junket. Upset that its hard-working employees will now not get to enjoy a lavish vacation in Vegas for doing such an outstanding job approving residential home loans. And they made their frustrations known by expressing them in a full-page New York Times ad.

Know what? I’m upset too. Actually I’m pissed. Pissed that Wells Fargo, after accepting $25 billion in bailout money, would have the nerve to use some of that money on a trip to reward its executives and “hard-working” employees, the same folks who helped nearly bankrupt them, and contributed to the overall economic catastrophe we’re in today.

Here’s how Reuters reported the ad:

“Okay, time out. Something doesn’t feel right,” the ad begins, before attacking “media stories” for creating the mistaken impression that every employee recognition event is a “junket, a boondoggle, a waste, or that it’s for highly paid executives. Nonsense!”

Later in the article, a Wells Fargo rep tries to defend the ad buy:

The ad attempts to compensate those employees for the thanks they will not receive this year at their canceled events, said Wells spokeswoman Julia Tunis Bernard.

Mighty self-righteous, eh Wells Fargo? Of course, the company puts a different spin on the trip in their press release about this fiasco, dated Feb. 3 , 2009:

The event is not a “junket” for executives but a four-day business meeting and recognition event for hard-working team members who made homeownership achievable and sustainable for borrowers across the nation. In 2008 alone, the team members who were invited to this event and their colleagues produced $230 billion in mortgage loans for U.S. homeowners.

Wonder how many of those mortgages are now in foreclosure? The bottom line is, Wells Fargo, and banks like them, just don’t get it. They ran their businesses so poorly, that they needed to be rescued by the federal government, or in other words, we the taxpayers. Spending money on extravagant trips to “reward” employees, many of whom likely contributed to their situation, should not be an option. Likewise, taking out a full-page NYT ad (probably somewhere in the $200,000 range, or likely close to what the Vegas vacation would have cost) to complain about having to cancel such a trip is simply childish.

You’re in trouble Wells Fargo. It’s time you started acting like you were aware of that.