Good job perks

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’m a radio announcer, and there have always been little perks that come with the job (to make up for the lousy hours and low pay). The main one, of course, is free CDs from record companies.

But today, I hit the jackpot.

One of the people I interview regularly is the owner of one of our local bookstores. We’ve gotten to be good friends and, today, she mentioned she always has trouble finding “readers” for the f & sf section. What she meant was, she needs people to read pre-release copies of new books and give her a bit of a critique. It’s all IMHO - all I have to do, really, is give an honest answer on whether or not I enjoyed reading the book and a couple of comments on the storyline.

So, in return for reading a book every couple of weeks (and that’s hardly a chore for me), I get a constant supply of reading material in my favourite genre.

Damn, I love my job :smiley:

2

Oh, I’m incredibly jealous. Do all bookstores use readers like that? I wonder if I could get a gig doing that???

3

My girl just started a job clerking at a dry cleaners. Now we get all of our dry cleaning done for free. She had $40- of drycleaning done just yesterday. For free.

(I’ve never had anything dry cleaned before. This is cool!)

4

I work at a Vocational Technical Center in SW Michigan. They have many different programs for high school students to take. The following are some of the programs we offer and the perks I get because I work in this building:

Automotive: Get my car fixed at cost and get an unbiased appraisal of any problems I may have.
Cosemtology: I can get my hair cut for $4.00 US… and it looks good too.
Hospitality Services: They run the cafeteria. I get a great lunch every day at half the price you would pay at a restaurant. They also bake cookies and cakes on a regular basis for the staff.
Floriculture: They run a flower shop. I can get flowers at cost.
Plastic Injection Molding: I’ve had a number of magic props made by this program to my specifications, just because they needed a project.
Child Care: They run a daycare facility that I take my 2 oldest sons to.
Graphic Art: They run the printing room and make all the business cards for our organization. They have made me personalized business cards, again, because they needed a project.

Plus, since I work for a school, I get all the same days off that the teachers get (with the exception of summers) as well as all the same benefit packages.

I LOVE where I work!

5

Trips in the past year to . . .

Vancouver - 4
Calgary and Edmonton - 3
Montreal - 2
Halifax - 1

Just enough to be interesting; not too much to make me sick of living out of a suitcase!

6

I’ve got you all beat…

As long as we make money no one gives a damn if I spend the entire work day right here at the SDMB.

And what’s a better perk than that?

7

My boss is about 800km (or 500 miles) away.

I get use of a kick-arse laptop with TV Out and DVD-ROM Drive.

As long as I get my work done and tell the guys in the office, I can take days off whenever the hell I please.

My clients have low expectations.

Oh yeah, I get paid more than I used to as well.

I’d still like a company car, though. :smiley:

After years of busting my hump for SFA, I feel kinda guilty for finding this job so easy and getting paid more than ever. But that’s something that i’ll have to learn to live with. :wink:

8

Compared to my last job, I’m currently in heaven. My salary is about 30% higher and I no longer have to live in Montgomery, Alabama. :slight_smile:

Pros: A fully stocked kitchen on-site free of charge, downtown parking paid for, metro transit sytem pass paid for, laptop with docking station, gym dues paid half, free banking with a major national bank (since the company banks with them), formal holiday party, and my bonus is 20-30% of my salary, depending upon results, and I happen to love the work I do!

Cons: Not a one so far!

Yay me. :slight_smile:

9

This job? None whatsoever. Except it’s close to home, if you discount the traffic that makes going home suck.

Last job? Free broadband, bay-bee. And none of that suck-ass DSL, I had the gooooooood shit. For free. Plus unlimited web space, a great development environment, all the coffee I could drink, great music and a koi pond.

Damn, I wish they hadn’t gone out of business. I miss my old job so much. :frowning:

10

Previous job, travel agent.

Can we say perks,… hmmm, thought so!

Honeymoon to Maldives, at about AUD $ 2500 off

Two free trips to Melbourne, one with my mum. Plus free sightseeing around Melbourne, to the Great Ocean Road (stunning scenery) and the penguin parade for me and my mum.

Free airfares to New Zealand (for me and SO) plus free bus trip around the south island, plus goodies like free bungy jumps, skydiving, parasailing, quite often half price accom, half price snowboarding, etc… the list goes on.

Free airfares to Tasmania (for me and SO)

Lots more discounts available, particularly to Asia.

Unfortunately, for those who didn’t have a SO earning what mine does, even all these perks are too expensive on the crappy pay structure we had.

And the crappiness of selling people on extras they don’t need, pressure from above to sell more, being told to lie to customers, etc… just isn’t worth the perks (for me, anyway, for others, just point them to the pile of dead bodies that they have to scarmble over and off they’ll go) :stuck_out_tongue:

11

My best perk was when I used to bake cookies. I worked all alone in this cookie house cooking cookies for hours on end. And, like I said, all by myself. This placed me in the way of a tamptation to great to resist. I must have eaten 50 pounds of cookie dough by the time I quit.

Immoral and wrong, but it felt so right.

12

I’m currently working at Waldenbooks. 33% discount, and tomorrow and Sunday, 40% discount. Woohoo!

13

If I can just show up for twenty-five or so hours per week I won’t get fired. Then I can eat. And that is a big perk…

14

I work for a large cancer treatment hospital. As a state employee, I get all kinds of cool bennies.

For example:

[ul]

[li]They pay my insurance[/li][li]They pay $2500 a year for my tuition at school, for whatever course of study I want. Hell, they’ll pay for law or medical school if I want to do that.[/li][li]They operate a hotel and let the employees stay there for a tiny fraction of the normal rate on weekends. ($40 a night vs. $200 for patients)[/li][li]23 days a year of paid leave, plus state holidays.[/li][li]A kick-ass T-1 connection.[/li][li]Special employee wellness programs and facilities, including smoking-cessation classes, Weight Watchers, a gym with exercise classes, and access to the cancer prevention clinics for annual checkups.[/li][li]They have a higher-than-average salary structure.[/li]
[/ul]

Damn, I love where I work!

Robin

15

They let me go home at night.

16

Pros:

Travel

Cons:

Some of the places I travel too don’t have much of a nightlife.
Oh and I get the same kickass web connection at home as I have at the office.

Plus I can take time off on a whim

17

I once worked for a place that distributed magazines and books to retail stores. We could have any magazine and any paperback book that we wanted, anytime we wanted it. All we had to do was take the cover off. (That’s how they got credit for it.) Top that off with the fact that the boss did not care how many hours we worked a week as long as he didn’t get any complaint calls from the stores. Four day work weeks, at about 24 hours a week, plus all the reading (and viewing :smiley: ) material I could ever want. Plus he provided complete medical, dental and vision insurance for the whole family without cost to the employee. On top of all that, I made more then that I do to this day.:frowning: That was from 1979 to 1985.

All good things come to an end though. The boss retired and sold the business to another outfit that was not near as generous. Plus, they fired me for no good reason. :mad:

18

I used to work as a trustee’s agent; it was really rough when he’d call and say “I need you to go to the Bahamas” or “I need someone to go to Mexico” and “While you’re there, take a little vacation for yourself”. Every expense was paid and I had a generous daily spending allowance. I discovered that eating a lobster a day for a week doesn’t get monotonous at all.

Not spending the winter in Canada can be a good thing.

:slight_smile:

19

Once a month, I get to pay $5.00 to wear jeans on Friday. Bet you all are salivating. Now, mind you, that $5 goes not toward donuts (evil grin) but toward a needy charity.

20

Well, SOME people in my company get perks.

One of their main perks is they get paid 3 times as much as I do and give all (ALL!!!)their work to me. I’m not bitter. Much.

They also get mucho vacation. I get 1 week. They also get things like bonuses, etc. Don’t think I’ll be getting any of that.

The Great (looking for a new job) Gazoo