About half the mornings and half the evenings that I work, I order up 8 slices of bacon. Then I eat it all. I get a 50% employee discount so I can eat a shitton of bacon for around $1.65. It's important to know the perks of your job. Focus: This actually started out as a bacon thread BUT SOMEBODY JUST CAN'T LET IT HAPPEN. So instead: what are the perks of your job? Awesome flexible schedule? Great pay? Free food? Bang the boss on her desk? Take your dog to work (sign me up)?
I work for a large CPG company. There is some corporate BS, but benefits aplenty. Though I'm probably underpaid according to the market, I'm compensated well in the big picture. Pretty flexible work hours. Its a rough 9-5 set up, but plenty of people work stuff like 730-4, or 930-6. People have families to get to, its understood, and there is freedom, at least in marketing. And we have summer Fridays, aka the office closes at noon on Friday from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Working for a huge global company, I don't get the fun quirky little start up perks, but the benefits are sound, its laid back, and I get tons of free beverages and snacks.
Perks of my job: I'm basically stealing money about 70% of the time I'm here. We get small influxes where its busy and then its chilling the whole time. It took me years of busting my ass working 12-15 hour days and taking call to get here though. The doctors are very demanding of high quality imaging as well. So this job would suck if I wasn't good at my job to begin with. I get paid ok. But I have to remember that for the amount of work I actually do, its pretty sweet. In the beginning, we had a few shitheads working here raining on my parade and generally trying to make my life hell. But one of them has since moved on and the other one has gotten his patients to hate him so much that administration can no longer ignore his attitude. So now I'm back to being comfortable again and he will either get fired or moved to a clinic that he will hate.
Opposite end of the spectrum here, I own a small company and I have a choice of either having a great deal of flexibility or working a ton and making pretty solid money. I've ended up, so far, killing myself when we're busy and when we're slow I might disappear now and then to golf or enjoy an afternoon buzz. It's a tough balance to strike with employees seeing everything you do. I'm not where I want to be on that yet but I'll get there.
I work a sort of second shift which is nice to be able to wake up at my leisure in the morning rather than being ripped awake by an alarm clock. The hours can be flexible but since I get paid hourly I usually work as much as they'll allow. We used to be able to take home what ever the clients didn't finish when they'd order buffet sized catering. Not anymore. But it was really unhealthy to be taking home boxes of pizzas and Qdoba every week. The only neat perk of my job is seeing and sometimes trying different products before they come to the market. Aside from food items that are cool to see/try most everything else is run of the mill home goods products. Say a new product form of Glade or Febreeze aerosol dispensers before they come to market EXCITEMENT! The old owners would usually dump most of the items and we could take them if we wanted. The new owner saves anything she can and uses it to serve future clients while still charging them for the snacks/perks.
I get to telework once a week and my boss tends to be flexible about my schedule and taking leave and stuff - as long as I'm not abusive about it. I'll be getting a new boss soon, hope he is the same way.
This is similar to my Dad, but his company is about 15 years old now. He has one of the most ridiculous work ethics of anybody I've ever known, but fully takes advantages of being an owner. He purposely has the office in my hometown so he can come home for lunch each day, does stuff like take long weekends to drive my sisters to college or pick them up, week vacations a couple times a year, etc... However, he works like a dog (8-6 every weekday, usually first or second one in, and goes in on Saturday morning to troubleshoot and play around with their new technology) and I don't think any employee would think twice about him doing what he needs to do. Especially since his "business partner" is a checked out douchebag who has a back office with its own exit, works about 30 hours a week, max, and has made no effort to improve his customer facing skillset or even attempt to match the attire aesthetic of the office. My Dad is also loyal to a fault...
Perks: I have a lot of flexibility in my job. Right now that means the flexibility to work long and inconvenient hours sometimes, but for the most part it means I don't have to miss things if I don't want to. Also, once fully established, I'll have even more control over meeting hours and an assistant will cut down on the admin side. I also have a bit of a cheat code to personal finance. Stuff that is scary and bewildering to a lot of people is my bread and butter and that relieves a lot of stress about the future. I know how life insurance, retirement accounts, college saving, and other stuff work in a way that lets me breathe a lot easier. I feel good about what I do and how I help people. The pay is good. It's tough in terms of fluctuation, but once things are up and humming the pay just gets better and better. The more I work, the more I put in, the more I try, the more I get paid. It's so rare to actually see such a direct correlation between work and compensation. The benefits are pretty good. The ACA borked our health insurance process, but still a good plan. I have a 401k, pension, and various other cool things. Which is extra cool for me because I've never had these things before from my previous time practicing as an attorney. I meet a lot of people which lets me network and be helpful to friends and clients alike. Also, some of these people are super hot (which is also a bit of a curse since there's nothing to do about it, but extra eye candy in life is nice). Learning and challenges never stop. It's a bottomless well of information and cool things to grasp and that keeps it interesting. All in all, I love my career for the first time in my life.
It was officially changed from telecommute a year or so ago. What is the shmancy new term supposed to be?
My primary perk at Planned Parenthood is endless entertainment. When you're not crying at the fate of our species or getting angry about how incredibly stupid everyone in this country is, the things these people say are the most ridiculous, hilarious collection of thoughts and words that you could ever imagine. I'm also good pals with about 90% of my coworkers and since the people we're talking to can't hear or see us, most of the time we're just hanging out together and laughing at the chatters. And I also get to laugh at the idiot anti-PP harassers. For example, Liveaction's current crusade is claiming that Planned Parenthood is promoting a BDSM lifestyle by acknowledging it exists on the website, telling people who come into the center asking about it that it's okay as long as it's consensual, and distributing training materials to the staff at the centers extending their safe sex information to include BDSM scenarios in case someone asks about it. We also have a flexible schedule and a pretty casual work environment, but we're crazily underpaid and have zero benefits, so they attempt to make up for that by giving us condoms all the time. Every single meeting I have, instead of a nice platter of baked goods or bagels like normal offices, they have a giant pile of condoms in the center of the table, and of course you take them. So I have tons of condoms everywhere. In my bag, in my nightstand, I'm always stepping on them in my room (which feels really weird in the dark). Just this past weekend I was going on a trip with my dad, and I went to hand him something from my purse and flung a wad of condoms right at his face like I was in a sitcom. Condoms are for dweebs, though, so I barely ever use them.
I teach a bunch of people how to program a computer. On occasion some of those people are grateful for the knowledge I present. Usually they are there because their employer told them to come or be fired. The latter folks in that fact make me loath my job. However, because I fly out for work and live in hotels during the week I haven't paid (hotel/plane) for a vacation in six years. I also make a pretty good salary. This is a list of places I have spent time in because of the hotel/ credit card/ airline miles: NYC Boston Philadelphia Miami Gainesville LA San Francisco Dallas Steamboat Springs Beaver creek/ Vail Vegas Cancun Louisville Lexington Nashville Memphis Washington DC Charlotte New Orleans Myrtle Beach St. Louis Chicago (going in two weeks for Reds vs Cubs) The only place I have not been that I want to hit up in the continental US is that Pacific Northwest. At first most of that travel was because I wanted a new place to call home and I wanted to see what the major cities offered. What I learned was that you can spend five days anywhere and have fun as a tourist. No matter where you are living something will suck. The thing I hate most about my job is that it takes me away from my wife during the week. No amount of free travel can replace the feeling of being in a loved ones arms. I am now trying to get a local job in a similar industry which will take away every perk I have so that I can be home every night.