Don't mean to be rude but... You _bought_ company swag, as an employee?
Don't they usually give out like at least a free t-shirt and a mug for everyone?
Don't they usually give out like at least a free t-shirt and a mug for everyone?
Just to make it clear, the $50 was the discounted price for the book that the employees had to PAY.
The gift was the discount. On the book. Of photos of $M++ art.
The cafeteria vendor drama was also a fun way to feel the bean counting penny-pinching machine at work.
The company store was there mostly to sell swag to give them to customers. I’ve expensed plenty of branded stuff, and well, that eye-bee-m t-shirt is classy. Every end of quarter or so they also had a sale that sold stuff below market rates, so it was a cheap way to get nice suitcases and backpacks.
Along with everything else they could think of too.
Free coffee for employees? Not from about 2 decades ago... ;)
Is this a joke that went over my head, or are they seriously making their employees pay for coffee?
Yep, it's as brain damaged an idea as it seems, and yep it's also an accurate depiction of how little they think of their employee productivity.
The money wasted on the employees dumping their own bins probably offsets the money saved on cleaning staff directly by an order of magnitude, not to mention the indirect losses of people being annoyed/pissed and leaving.
The team I was in had no money to expense so for the first few months I worked using just the company provided laptop with no peripherals, and had to wait for someone leaving to be able to grab their external monitor and a laptop stand. Team/Company morale was very low in my time there.
They finally made coffee free when the sales guys said it was too embarassing.
Same thing with the startup I worked for, and the midsize/small company I work for now.
From my experience, this is not how it is outside the bubble of SV.
Not something you would willingly spend money on and this is definitely stuff companies give away for free. It seems to be changing a bit now with companies having an environmental committee for all stuff that is made in plastic.
- T-shirt, nice water bottle, backpack pins for interviewing (we got them on the swap over) - Hoodie and very nice ~$120 backpack on start - Hoodie at 2 years - Hoodie at holidays every year - T shirt & hoodie at every con I worked - Backpack at 2 years - Team hoodie, 3 t-shirts, or nort face soft shell every year with team logo on it - Yeti coffee cups for each team I founded - Custom yeezies
I have around 20 hoodies now, 3 backpacks, 30 shirts. This doesn't include the electronics we got every year. All of this stuff is american apparel (pre-issues) or nicer.
From megacorp I got a bad t-shirt and a paper thin targus backpack and the option to buy swag. When I rolled over to acquired startup we got a swag budget to bribe megacorp employees into meetings with us. It worked very well. We'd get Sr VPs in to a room with just a t-shirt for their kids.
Every single one had free coffee and snacks as well as free swag at least once or twice a year. Meaning shirts, sweatshirts, hats etc. Mostly lowish quality if I'm being fair, but my last company would give everybody really high quality stuff like 3-4 times a year.