When I was in high school and worked for the AV club we could use that to get into movies for free.
My perks since then have been boring.
I had a friend in college who worked the last shift at Shipley Donuts, and she was allowed to eat or give away any donuts left at the end of the day. She was very popular!
Probably the perk I enjoyed the most was offered by a retail store I worked for that catered to the military. We sponsored several Navy support groups and also had a presence at the annual Air Show in Virginia Beach. All the employees got free tickets, VIP parking, the best seats right next to the runway and free food/drink at the company’s show tent.
My company has a suite in the local Minor League baseball park. Our department gets some tickets a few times every season and we take some clients up… it’s pretty nice!
High end catering in college in New Orleans was really fun. I got to meet lots of famous people for long periods of time and the pay was unusually generous ($20+ an hour plus at least that much in tips) but we could also drink while we worked as long as we were discrete about it and it was open bar at our highly acclaimed hotel bar after our shift and whenever I decided to drop by otherwise. The catering manager and his wealthy friends also paid for lavous nights out on the town every weekend. If you could tolerate the blatant and constant gay sexual harassment from them, they would buy me anything within reason. I am not gay myself but everyone has their price and they found mine at the time. They absolutely hated ‘nancy boys’ as they put it so they were always willing to pay to have a couple of clean-cut straight guys around to keep their public image intact (that was really important for one of them because he was a local TV celebrity). It isn’t for everyone but it was a great perk for me at the time and I certainly never had to do any sexual favors for it.
My greatest perk is getting to drive or ride in prototype military vehicles. This was especially great when I got to drive a vehicle of my own design for the first time. (Mine at least at a high level…obviously I had a significant engineering team all contributing, but it was my baby).
We get free dinners at work and cheap, subsidized lunches.
But really my favorite perk is that I work pretty much whenever I want. I am a night owl so this tends to be from 11 to 9 (minus two hours for lunch and dinner). But I can shift that around at will as long as there’s some overlap with other employees and I average about 40 hrs/wk. I don’t have to ask to take a half-day as long as it isn’t too frequent, and I can work from home on occasion.
Back in the 70’s I once worked in a job where I had a phone that had Flash Override. If I pressed that button it would kick off everyone on the line between me and the number I dialed. I used it a few times. Unlike what Wikipedia implies, Flash Override wasn’t limited to the President and the Secretary of Defense or wartime, but you had to be in the right job.
I got my second master’s with free tuition, plus 50% per diem, plus my salary .
I got to authorize the launch of ‘hot’ air to air missiles.
I had an evening where I got to debunk a persistent and extensive UFO sighting over a SAC base. That night would make a movie. Good times. Good times.
When I first started publishing in the 80s, science fictionb was booming, ad pubishers were freely handing out books. You’d go to a party at a con and scoop up a half dozen of them; they were piled up for the taking. And around Nebula voting time, you’d get packages of stories in the mail; Omni would send every story they published that year. Publishers have cut back, but some major cons continue the tradition.
There also was the SFWA Circulating Book Plan, where you’d get a couple of dozen books a month, read them, then pass them on.
Back in the Internet boom of the 90s, you could go to trade shows and have people literally toss t-shirts at you as you walk by. And up until recently, I’d go to computing conferences all over the country; the most recent was a trip to Las Vegas,
Not exactly a perk. But I had that job for a couple years. Selecting targets & directing attacks. It was pretty fun. Except when the target shot back.
We also got to tour much of Central & South America. I always felt much safer back then when we did it heavily armed than I do now when unarmed. One time 30 of us USAF & Army guys borrowed a CH-47 Chinook & took it to some ancient Mayan ruins. Just set down in the parking lot near the tour busses then paid our fee and took the tour. Stopped at a *bodega *on the way out & bought their entire supply of beer & beef. The ensuing party made up for a lot of MREs in the previous month. Good times.
The airline perks as described by **Honey **in post #14 are still pretty nice. With the advent of alliances we can get very, very low cost tickets to damn near any airport on Earth. BUT …
Nowadays the internet has made it very easy for the airlines to sell every last seat. So non-rev travel can be a real nightmare of waiting *days *for a seat to go on your trip. Or worse yet, to get home. That means sitting around the airport from before dawn to near midnight, day after day. If you want to visit Milwaukee in February it works totally awesome. Visiting Milan in July, not so much.
OTOH, if you don’t much care *where *you’re going, it can still work. A lot of airline folks just keep an eye on the passenger loads each day. On any given day for some unknowable random reason one particular international departure to some random destination will have 20 empty seats. “Hey Honey, we’re going to Buenos Aires tonight!!!” It’s a fun hobby. As above there’s no guarantee you’re going to get an easy ride home though.
There’s also cheap last-minute deals on cruise ships for travel industry folks.
Back when I was in the software biz we had season tickets to the baseball Cardinals(Yaay!) & football Rams (meh to yecch most years). Good seats down low in each stadium. They were officially for the sales team to [del]bribe[/del] entertain customers & would-be customers.
But there were more games than customers. So the non-sales officers (i.e. me & the CFO) got the leftover dates. With VIP parking.
When I was young my dad was in airlines and a senior exec. We got a card (wife and each kid) that got us priority seating for free any any major carrier in the US and select international flights. It was freaking awesome. I once got sent to the principal’s office - in first or second grade - and she called my mom because my teacher thought I was lying when I used a snowglobe from Washington DC for show and tell and told the class I’d gone there for the weekend.
These days? My perks are pretty good.
Twice a year vacations - I have to earn then but it’s not hard - to a catalog of about 50 locations (different ones each year in winter and summer). I was in England for New Years and I’m thinking about either Alaska or a western Med cruise with my mom for the summer.
Loads of local sporting tickets, but it’s Charleston and the options are limited. People would be more excited if it meant Clemson or USC games.
$1200 to spend on healthcare at my discretion. We get a card at the beginning of each year.
I don’t get vacation or sick days. I have complete flex time provided I get the job done each month.
The travel’s the big thing, though. Hard to argue with that.
My current employer paid entirely for my law degree: fees, textbooks, study leave, exam leave.
In my former life, I worked at a production company - mostly commercials, CGI, animation, etc. For 2 years I was assistant to a director who was a member of the Academy. A few weeks before voting, he’d receive a beautiful velvet-lined box with a VHS/DVD of every single movie that was up for ANY award at all - blockbusters, indies, foreign film, docs, everything! Many of the movies were still playing in theatres, many were tiny obscure films that had been nominated for smaller awards. He’d let me take home 1 or 2 films a night, any night. As far as I know, only he, his producer, and I had access. SUCH a great perk!!
I once saw a video of the making of Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue and there was a guy (maybe he did lighting?) who’s job was to brush the sand off the models with a little whisk. The sand got in all sorts of places.
My best perk was when working for one of the online travel agencies and getting free stand-by airline tickets.
I got nothing myself, but… when my mum was working for the government, we lived in the house, got milk and vegetables as part of the deal, and she’d walk up the hill to be home every day at the time my little sister walked home across the field from her elementary / grade / primary school. Unless you’re rich, you can’t buy that kind of lifestyle.
My brother has to wash and change every day when starting work. Not much of a perk by itself, but fits in nicely with riding a bicycle to work every day.
My cousins were military brats, and grew up living on base, which is actually kind of nice for kids. Also, the camping expeditions to the wilderness sections of training bases. Also (a long time ago), the free standby flights on military aircraft.
Also there used to be a lot of informal stuff I knew about: all the theatre staff in the city recognised each other, and admission was free for vacant seats. The travel industry was entirely free or “at cost” for travel agents: and the hotel industry operated the same way for management and administrative staff.
I work for a university that’s a member of Tuition Exchange, Inc. When any of our children attend one of these schools, my employer will pay the tuition.
For a decade I worked for a toilet paper manufacturer. We used to get a bale of product per month. For a decade neither I, my parents or parents in law had to buy toilet paper.
Not glamorous, but certainly useful!
When Niels Bohr won the Nobel Prize in 1922 Carlsberg gave him a free house next door to the brewery. It had a beer tap with endless free beer!
Not too shabby!
Consulting firms always seem to have a lot of “perks” that are really designed to allow you to work longer hours:
Free snacks / coffee
Expenses means if you work past 7pm (which is like always)
Concierge service for dry cleaning and whatnot (this is back when we had to wear suits and dressing like a homeless 15 year old wasn’t industry standard for tech firms)
Back in the day at my old firm, we used expense a lot of trips to steak houses, strip clubs and nightclubs, particularly if a client was with us.
I’d take that job if they paid me in sand.
Apple and Facebook will pay to freeze your eggs.
I’m not saying that would be a bad job, but I suspect that after the first fifteen minutes it would most of the time just be a job to do.
I mean, from my own experience, sitting surrounded by big stacks of cash was cool for the first fifteen minutes, but it very very quickly became just the crap that was supposed to add up right.
(Better than being a gynecologist, though I suppose. At least the supermodels are all healthy…)