Perks of your job?

[Jester]

Every job has its good points and bad points. Most of them have some kind of cool perks. I'm not talking about benefits, mind you, like medical and dental. I'm not even talking about discounts or flexible hours. I mean just cool shit that goes along with your job that isn't necessarily in the job description or, perhaps, even official.

For example, my job at The Bar has some perks I rather like. Such as:

--I get to work in a t-shirt, shorts, and sneakers, and a ball cap if I choose. Sure, the hat and shirt need to be of The Bar or its sister business, but that's fine by me. And on football Sundays (not that I work Sundays), we can wear jerseys of our respective teams.

--I get to drink. No, we don't get drunk behind the bar. And frankly, that is one of the main reasons we CAN drink behind the bar. We generally don't make a regular habit of it, but if customers want to buy us shots, no problem! And from time to time, management themselves will buy us shots.

--I get to try all kinds of new and cool rums. This is actually almost an official part of my job, as we are a bar that specializes in rum, and it is good to know your product.

--I get to be a smartass to people. Hell, it's how I make my money, since I sure as hell am not going to do it with my looks. I can't be a complete fuckwad, but I can mouth off to people, and since I generally know who I can do this with, I get away with it. As do, I should say, several of my coworkers. (Though to be fair, the smartassery is more acceptable when we're behind the bar than when we're waiting tables.


So, what are the unofficial perks of your jobs? What non-standard things make you think, "I love my job," or at the very least, "This makes my job more tolerable"?

[AdminAssistant]

The Theatre History class I TA - especially the really awesome kids in it. The ones that pay attention, ask smart (or silly) questions, and are actually interested.

And the fact that when I lectured on Everyman and medieval drama on Thursday, I got to show a Lego version of Everyman. And they loved it.

That class more than makes up for the zombie frat kids in my Intro section. "Do we really have to see the play that's listed as mandatory in the syllabus? That's Homecoming weekend!! My sorority/fraternity has parties all that weekend!!" or "Is the midterm really the day before Fall Break? Because I want to go out of town two days early. Can I make the test up later?" gaahhhh.

[sarasquirrel]

thinking about perks of my job make me realize we dont have many...

other than employee discount in the store, we also get it to verizon and another phone company...wooo

hmmm if a bag of candy gets ripped open we eat it....but were really not supposed to do that.....

i get to hide candy for myself and buy it went it gets marked down, like halloween candy muhahahaha.

damn <insert pharmacy company here> :shakes fist:

[NightAngel]

Free meals on workdays. 1-2 depending on how many hours worked- saves on the grocery bill at home some.

And, our black Chef's uniforms make us look like Ninjas.

[FuzzyKitten99]

my restaurant job: 50% off anything I want to order, including the so-good-it's-evil tiramisu and molten chocolate lava desserts. If I work a weekday lunch buffet or the famous and extremely popular Sunday brunch buffet, I get to go through once for free on my break.

I also get experience in the industry I want to make my career at. The executive chef is from Sicily/Milan, Italy. I have learned a lot from him already, including how to speak some Italian.

My retail job: employee discount is nice, and we even get it on clearance items. I got the floor model of a desk I absolutely loved when it first was set up. New it would have cost over $700 alone, just for the desk part, which was all I really wanted anyway. But 8 months later, they discontinued the model (they do this with most of our furniture anyway), and clearance priced the desks down to $400. When those were all gone (they went pretty quick, which surprised me), the floor model was all that was left. It is/was heavy as hell and one piece because to get it apart was just too much to deal with. So my store management discounted the floor model to $280. Now I was salivating on it. And my manager knew that. I was looking at it while at work and he said if I could get the thing out of the store within 48 hours, he would give it to me for $200 flat, which would include my employee discount. They needed the room for new merchandise.

So... I got myself a nice desk (well, and I got it kind of in the mindset that my BF will likely work from home a bit and needs a nice setup) for well less than half of what it would have cost new.

[RichS]

I work as an on-call tech - basically, when the store needs me, they call me. Plus I do some work for the churches my wife works at.

Benefits - keys to the store and one of the churches, and a choice between 6MB, 3MB, or 768KB DSL connections.

At home, I have no choice other than dial-up. So, I have permission to use the DSL as I see fit. No illegal stuff - it's just when I need to work on one of my computers, either reinstalling the OS or getting updates, or nabbing the latest security software or game demo. It helps having access to the store when I'm having a major problem with a system and I could use one of the store tools.

Still, I wish I could get high-speed. Satellite is not an option, and the wireless connections I can get are 50/50 as far as reliability.

[flybye023]

We don't have many but they do provide free coffee, tea, and hot chocolate. Also, my department lets us listen to our iPods/Zune/Mp3 players whenever we want.

[Boozy]

We get anywhere from 5-7 free bottles of wine every month.

We also get sent to the wineries on occasion for "education", or as the staff calls it, "world-class piss 'em up with full-course lunch"

[ta2ooed1]

My company recently moved and about a month after we did they sent out a company email that there was used hardware in an empty cubicle and we were all free to take it home. There were old laptops and small flat screen monitors, some sound and video cards and a really sweat dell server sans hard drive and ram. I got the server, it made the perfect gift for my bf and now our music/video library has an awesome new home

Oh and I got a really nice pair of alienware gaming headphones that were brand new in the box still in the same haul.

[Food Lady]

They feed us several times a month, according to some theme or other (chili day, for example). It doesn't matter if you're working that day or not; come on in and nosh. We have an LCD TV in the breakroom with cable. Just about every Wed, during the morning meeting, there are samples from the cafe. The HR guy always has a huge bowl of candy, free for the taking. I guess most of our perks have to do with food.

I forgot--a couple of times a year we get a card that entitles us to an extra discount on all our store brands, on top of our regular discount. It's good for the whole month, to be used as many times a day that we want to.

[bainsidhe]

I used to work at a hotel and sometimes tickets to events would become available. I flew on a fuel plane and watched the Thunderbirds refuel in mid-air while I sat in the boom just a few feet away (WAY awesome!). One of the pilots waved. I also saw the Royal Ballet (just a couple rows back from the front) and Riverdance (also front section and center seats). FREE!!

At Media Play I was in charge of the monthly Anime event and we gave away freebies. The manager thought it was so great for me to deal with the hassle that I got to keep an item from the "prize" selection. I got a few new DVDs and T-shirts from that one.

[KellyHabersham]

library job: all city employees are eligible for a free bus card, which is a great perk for those of us who can't/don't drive. We also have little parties for various things......like birthdays, or just because my supervisor felt like having a "junk-food potluck".

church office job: I've had people bring me cookie samples, or various little things they felt I might be able to use in the office.

[Seshat]

As a published author, I can get copies of any book my publisher prints if I want it.

As a writer, I can work from home in my jammies.

And 'published author' gets some respect from people, so I have that. Not enough respect to pull "Do you know who I am?", of course! But it's great at parties.

[fireheart]

Perks from the supermarket...

-I get to watch the thieves getting chased by my CW's.

-Occasionally we'll get some new product to try out to recommend to our customers. (i.e. we think that this is good...)

-We can have as much of the free samples as we like. (and the sample ladies are lovely)

-there's no end of cute guys (I have a boyfriend yes, but we've been dating for a couple of months, I've been at my current job for 2 years)

-Occasionally, if there's too many of the sample bags from magazines, or free gifts with said magazines, work lets us have them.

[smileyeagle1021]

-there's no end of cute guys (I have a boyfriend yes, but we've been dating for a couple of months, I've been at my current job for 2 years)

don't feel bad, at the hotel we have the same perk... my boyfriend has before come into work with me for no other purpose than to 'enjoy the view'

other perks (there aren't many)
-we supposedly get discounts nationwide... I say supposedly because our hotel group is quite possibly the most disorganized hotel group on the planet and the other hotels aren't actually required to honor discounts of other hotel's employees.

-free food in the morning (not that my boss knows about that perk )

- we don't actually have to do work most of the shift

the call center though was amazing for perks

- barbecues every quarter
-hotels were always providing lunch
- a hotel discount plan that worked
- the break room was the awesome... ping pong tables, air hockey, big screen tv, leather sofas... oh it was heavenly.
- we had a dress code, but you didn't have to follow it fri/sat/sun, any day you made a donation to the charity of the month, or any day you did at least 2 hours of overtime
- and of course, cute coworkers