Perks/freebies at work (not stolen/liberated items!)

[NellesVilla]

Hi,

This is a slight TAT. When trying to be positive, I thought about the good things about current and previous jobs, not just the rubbish pisstakey things workplaces do like:

• Expecting me to use my own car and have me pay for my own business insurance/low mileage reimbursement etc
• uniforms the employee must pay for
• no free tea/coffee
• shit pay job but have to pay for parking as no car park/just for management etc.
• As a TA, no paid breaks.
• No card, nothing, when leaving a job. Just charming.
• As a tutor, clients often cancelled last minute without paying me. Having to watch my blood pressure reading that back!

The one that still fucks me off a decade later is when working as a nanny, how tight some families were. Think, demanding I take the kids to the cinema to see a film I’d never choose to see, yet expecting me to pay the petrol, parking and my own ticket. If I dared to use their money for the parking or my ticket, they would get funny. Oh, and I often had to purchase food for the kids inside as no more cash. If anyone wants to know how to NOT treat a nanny, let me know!!

Anyway, the perks (little things) that I rather enjoy/have enjoyed have been:

• Free meals on duty and unlimited free tea, coffee and biscuits (why not!)
• Decent daily budget as a premium nanny (virtually unlimited if the trips were ‘educational-ish’). And not expected to pay entry for myself.
• In previous care type jobs, although no scheduled breaks, in quiet times it was lovely to just sit and watch a film with the client and take the weight off your feet for an hour or two. Bliss.
• Bonuses- big or small at Xmas and leaving card and gift- again, big or small- when leaving. One family at a tutoring job made me homemade cards when leaving- that was v sweet!
• Use of printer at work (I was permitted to do so, promise!)- really kind and helpful when I couldn’t afford a computer and printer at the time.
• Use of a house for 3+ months. Possibly outing, but a lovely employer let me use her house for a while when she went travelling. V kind of her.

I get free uniform and free travel on Transport for London-managed services? I work for them.

If you go on the gov.uk website you can also get a tax rebate for washing/cleaning said uniform. I get £60.

Would love free travel on Transport for London tbf, @saggyhairyass!

We get free coffee and free fruit. There’s never any bananas left though.

Free fruit fridays - but i work from home fridays so i miss out !!

My office is based in a call centre and we have a Starbucks. Everyone in the office this weeks gets a free drink.

We have vending machines with free drinks.

Those are the only current ones, but I’ve had loads over the years, free weekly fruit baskets, free Disney on ice tickets, free Jake Bugg tickets, free fairground rides in the car park, and more food and drink than you can shake a stick at.

One year they did a sound of music theme and we got ‘brown paper packages tied up with string’ with bread and jam, tea and Viennese whirls in. There were sticky jars of jam littered around the office for months.

Oh, Easter eggs, chocolate advent calendars and Terry’s chocolate oranges at Christmas used to be common too.

I work in a university and we can sign up for a student discount card with our email address.

I also get free travel on any TfL service, as well as Northern Trains. I’m a police officer so it’s not a benefit from my employer as such, just an arrangement we have with TfL, and Nothern for some reason let us travel for free. There are no perks or freebies at all from my actual employer, just cancelled rest days and forced overtime

Free breakfast, lunch and dinner made for you.
Free other foods and drinks.
Paid to sit and talk with really cool people.
Activities which are.paid.for (bowling, cinema, go-karting etc).
Free meals out / take aways.

We get left over buffet after events - great excitement now that more conferences are back in person!

We have a panel of experts who we introduce clients to. Because I give them business they give me free advice or heavily discounted help with things like Wills, mortgages, financial services,accountancy, legal and lots more.

I teach in primary school and today it was a lovely sunny afternoon, so I decided to take the children outside for extra break. They'd spent all morning doing assessments, so deserved a little sunshine. That was a lovely perk!
Also, this morning someone had made proper coffee in the staffroom unexpectedly. Joy!

I actually can’t think of any (work for local government). I think I can use my ID badge as a discount for some places though.

Oh I do get free parking in the car park at work.

When I was an usherette we got free popcorn and “own brand” Coke, and free tickets for family and friends. We got a certain number of tickets a week in our wage packets and it was such a rubbish cinema that nobody wanted them and they used to stack up in my purse. We also used to take icecream every so often, never sure whether that was allowed or not but management tended to turn a blind eye.

I get unlimited tea...coffee..etc and i graze on food all day...i work in a restaurant/coffee shop.

I used to work in a prison with a swimming pool (left over from when it was barracks I believe, and it would cost a fortune to get rid of, community groups came in to use it). So you could go for a quick swim at lunchtime for free. So long as you don't mind the lifeguard being a prisoner. I didn't. They were usually just reading the paper while a handful of competent adults did lengths.

Wimbledon tickets & tennis club membership

I get bargain gym membership (£12.50 a month) and I get free use of the saunas, steam rooms and hot tubs at some of the gyms I work at, whether I’m a member or not.

Free tea and coffee and free parking.

A family member works for a supermarket they get 10% off for family and friends plus an hour shopping at Christmas for staff before the store opens to the public on Christmas eve. They also had an hour for staff on a Sunday during covid so staff could shop which was massively useful for my family member as there was never anything left on the shelves at the end of their shift, it had to be a normal shop though and no stockpiling etc.

I don't like adverts that list perks as pension, annual leave etc - all the things that should be provided anyway!

I find that many perks on offer are things I don't want or need, or things you can get better from other sites or places (discount codes for example)

• Free parking (which we can also use when going on holiday, office is close to our local airport)
• Free tea/coffee and often cake
• Really good discounts on selected products we sell
• The opportunity to travel and option to extend if we want (ie: if I was going to another city for a meeting on a Friday I could book my travel back for Sunday at their expense and just cover my own expenses over the weekend)
• The day off on our birthdays, extra to annual leave
• A certain amount of flexibility so long as the hours are done (if we have an appointment that doesn't quite fit into lunch it's fine so long as we work the extra time back)

Not bad, all in all. That's why I've been there 15 years.

I get breakfast, lunch and dinner paid for each day if I want it, finish work once the job is done, regardless of the time of day, and free fuel.

Public sector. Nothing.
Have to provide own tea, coffee and kettle.
Have to pay to park in a public car park.

Free on-site parking, 20% discount in the farm shop, free tea, coffee and snacks, owner regularly buys our lunch, his wife bakes cakes for us and free event tickets ideal home show etc.

The office is next to a small petting farm. I get to say hello to wallabies and baby goats every day!

Companies often drop off testers when they have a new flavour of something so there’s normally a red bull or cereal bar type freebie in reception. It’s free fruit Friday too at the minute but every month there’s normally something like a bbq or chocolate brownie. Free parking too is a definite perk.