The Perks of the Job

[Howyoudoin]

Back in the days before my Company was taken over (3 times and counting) we used to have a restaurant/canteen in the basement and a gym next door. Both were completely free. And if you couldn't make the restaurant for lunch, provided you filled in a form by 9.30am, they would make up your order of sandwiches, crisps, fruit/yoghurt to collect.

That seems so long ago now!

What perks did you used to get that have gone by the wayside?

HYD

[kiloran]

In exchange for my labour and intellect(?), the company put money into my bank account

More seriously, the defined benefit pension was frozen and we had a defined contribution scheme. Fortunately, that happened just a few years before my retirement so I was only slightly affected. But that was a real perk.

I really can't remember any other perks (other than a share purchase scheme at reduced price). I mainly worked for american companies, maybe perks is not part of their culture

--kiloran

[staffordian]

When I started work for the Council Transport Department I was given free bus travel, and my wife half fare travel on their services, and the local independant operator honoured this too.

A useful benefit, as well as removing the need to search for change, as most routes had "exact fare - no change" operation.

Rare to get perks from local government jobs, except the very generous pension, of course; though I think that is a shadow of it's former self.

[ReformedCharacter]

My youngest son recently started a job in the digital games industry; free medical care, dentistry, a well stocked fridge\freezer for ice-cream and the like and a monthly massage for a quid. I knew all of those hours spent in his room playing games on his PC would pay off one day

RC

[Clitheroekid]

What perks did you used to get that have gone by the wayside?

When I was a newly qualified solicitor a really quite valuable perk was the income from swearing oaths, affidavits and statutory declarations.

When I qualified the fee was £2 per oath etc and 50p for each exhibit (a copy document referred to in the affidavit). Hardly a fortune, but a typical affidavit would contain perhaps 2 exhibits, so it was £3, and the beauty of it was that it was always paid in cash and went straight into the back pocket (I'm hoping HMRC aren't monitoring LF!)

Although £3 sounds a trivial amount it only took about 10 minutes at most, so equated to an hourly rate of around £18 (about £25 before tax). More to the point, in those halcyon days £3 would buy about 6 pints of bitter. So on that basis it was worth something like £23 in today's money (in reality, more like £33, bearing in mind its `tax-free' status).

The fees increased dramatically in 1984 to the heady sum of £3 + 75p. So the typical affidavit was now £4.50, but it seems that this only kept place with inflation, as the price of a pint had increased to about 75p, so it was still a 6 pint fee.

The Lord Chancellor was clearly keen to protect solicitors from the ravages of inflation, so in 1988 the fees increased again to £3.50 + £1. A pint by then cost around £1, so £5.50 = 5.5 pints - still pretty good.

And then in 1993 another fairly hefty rise, to £5 + £2, putting the typical haul up to a mighty £9. This brought us fully up to date for a while, as a pint was now around £1.50, so it was still good for 6 pints - happy days!

As a keen fisherman, I always thought of oath fees like a salmon. The basic 1+1 fee was a 7 pound - respectable, but not worthy of note. But it was quite common to get more than one person swearing at the same time - executors of a Will, for example. You might therefore have three executors with three affidavits, each containing three exhibits, which would work out at £33, and as any fisherman know, a 33 lb salmon carries lifetime bragging rights!

The best I ever had involved a land dispute. There were five `swearers' (more accurately called `deponents') and each of them had (I think) 4 exhibits, which would have mounted up to £65. This equates perfectly, as the UK record salmon is 64 lbs.

But in 1993 the Golden Age of Swearing came to an abrupt end. The fees have remained the same ever since. We must be the only group of people in the whole world who haven't had a pay rise in 27 years.

And now that 6 pints has shrunk to just 2 - or to put it another way the fees should now be about £15 for the affidavit and £4 per exhibit.

I can't help feeling that HMRC had something to do with it!

[AndyPandy]

Not necessarily gone by the wayside, but probably nowhere near as generous travel allowances nowadays as it was in the 80's Boom:

I graduated as an electronic engineer and my first job was as a design engineer for a Company that did the ticketing and check-in tech at airports. Not being particularly worldly-wise nor well off, some of the highlights were:

- going Airside behind the scenes at Heathrow since that was where the Departure lounges were
- after a while of getting to airports and stopping, being sent all over the world to troubleshoot and upgrade
- Bangkok (twice, including a look, don't touch trip to Patpong), Hong Kong, Orlando for the day (literally fly out, 10 mins work, sleep, return & land within 24 hours), Europe, Taiwan
- Visiting BT Belfast pre-Good Friday Agreement - grey, innocuous building with single person turnstile entrance, metal detector and fully armed bods carefully watching your every move and a sign outside that said 'cars parked here will be blown up'

I did, and still do, love travel and when someone else is paying, that was terrific as an impecunious singleton. I also love trying out new foods. Got to try Szechuan food actually in Szechuan and Taiwan gave me sheep intestines, shredded pigeon and garlic sausage, which consisted of a cocktail stick impaling a sausage and a whole clove of garlic.

My most accurate timepiece ever was a fake Rolex from the streets of Bangkok. Wore it for years, never needed to adjust it. The Lacoste Polos didn't last as long, with the logos falling off at first wash.

Always made the point of learning some local lingo and can still count to 10 in a lot of languages.

[UncleEbenezer]

I really can't remember any other perks (other than a share purchase scheme at reduced price). I mainly worked for american companies, maybe perks is not part of their culture

--kiloran

Best perks I had were from a US employer, who paid pension contributions, car allowance (though my job had no need of a car), and indeed a checkup with Nuffield Health on top of the best salary anyone has paid me.

When I was a newly qualified solicitor a really quite valuable perk was the income from swearing oaths, affidavits and statutory declarations.

Notary I went to in 2007 had a nice little earner with his forty quid fee for a few minutes work.

[bungeejumper]

Pitifully few perks in my career, unless you count the long boozy lunch-breaks in London that used to go with the very long and unpredictable working hours. But, having spent the 35 years since then in self-employment, the only perk that other people seem to have noticed is when they say brightly: "You self-employed people are so lucky. You can choose when you work."

Yeah, right. Saturdays, Sundays, bank holidays, Christmas day, days when I'm ill. [Clenched teeth] Doing the books, paying the accountant, doing the VAT, chasing payment, touting for work.... Whoopee, what's not to like? [/Clenched teeth]

[bungeejumper]

On a brighter note, I can confirm the old story about working for Cadburys. I spent a student summer at Bournville, trolleying tonne after tonne of chocolates from one end of the factory to the other, and it was absolutely true that you were allowed to eat as much chocolate as you liked, as long as you didn't take it from a finished box.

Smart move by Mr Cadbury. You'd spend the first two weeks absolutely gorging yourself on the stuff, and then you'd go right off it. 45 years later, I am more than just a little indifferent to the taste of chocolate - I tend to avoid it whenever it's politely possible. Funny, that.

BJ

[dionaeamuscipula]

When I was in the engineering business we used to get cheap fish from the on-site trout farm.

DM

[ReformedCharacter]

I went to an interview for a supervisory role in a pie factory in the East End in the '80s. Maybe I was the only applicant, maybe the interviewer wanted to employ me. The interview certainly seemed to go quite well and towards the end the interviewer told me that one of the ladies from the production line was rather accommodating, I think his words were:

And there's Jean on the line, you can have her in the cold-room anytime you fancy

I've had a fair few job interviews but that one I've never forgotten.

RC

[redsturgeon]

I worked for a large UK pharmaceutical company from 1990 to 2001, their remuneration system was quite generous.

First off I was paid quarterly which was a huge advantage so at the end of your first month you received three month's pay, this immediately cleared the overdraft I'd had since student days.

Next their relocation package was super generous, up to £10k could be claimed against expenses and the guide to what you could claim for included the usual removal costs plus such essential items as retuning your piano and moving your horse...I kid you not.

The relocation package for your actual house purchase was the best bit though. Obviously all estate agent and solicitor fees were covered but also if you moved from a low priced region to the head office in London then you were paid the difference in mortgage costs of the higher priced region.

So for instance I was moving from Yorkshire and house prices there were 50% of London prices so they covered the extra mortgage payments needed to be able buy a £200k house to replace the £100k house one sold. These payments were made for 6 years.

They also bought your old house at market rates which was very useful since I was moving during the house price crash of the early 90s. So I bought a house for £240k that had been sold three years earlier for £400k and the company bought my house off me for top market value and then sold it at a loss six months later.

My relocation expenses were held on my budget cost centre so I was able to see that my relocation had cost the company over £50k in 1991. My optimisation of the package was responsible for them redesigning it shortly after.

Other perks such as full health insurance, on site dental, osteopathy and GP services, car allowances and first class travel and five star accommodation budgets were also a given along with generous share options and share save schemes.

All paid for by the generosity of the USA healthcare system where most profits were generated.

I look back with slight incredulity myself at all this.

John

[StepOne]

I worked in the chicken factory in Banff in my summer holidays, 1985. You got a free chicken every fortnight, and when the old hens came through, any eggs that were retrieved after they'd been killed and plucked were bagged up and you could take as many as you liked.

For some reason , they didn't seem that appetising.

StepOne.

[swill453]

[£50K relocation, first class travel, five star accommodation]

[eggs out of dead chickens]

Yeah, my perks were somewhere in between those...

Scott.

[stewamax]

One perk I remember was a free 10-minute neck and shoulder massage - intended to "relax the stressed employee".
After the one and only time I had such a massage, the masseuse apologised: she said I was already so relaxed that she was unable to find any tight muscles at all!

[bungeejumper]

After the one and only time I had such a massage, the masseuse apologised: she said I was already so relaxed that she was unable to find any tight muscles at all!

Clearly, you had the wrong kind of masseuse.

BJ

[redsturgeon]

On a similar note, I heard somewhere that a chiropractor is just a masseuse without the happy ending.

I just go along for the crack.

John

[Itsallaguess]

On a similar note, I heard somewhere that a chiropractor is just a masseuse without the happy ending.

I just go along for the crack.

I used to doubt the effectiveness of all this Chiropractor stuff.

After booking a recent session, I now stand corrected....

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[airbus330]

Having read this thread I'm feeling as though I have been pampered a bit through my career. I worked for a major, now defunct, holiday company and had a decent DC pension (18% company contr.), life insurance, premium health insurance, Heath Income Protection until retirement age, free Uniform, parking, annual medical, Union agreed high standards for travel and accommodation(latterly cut back), 75% discount on 2 holidays a year (slashed back latterly to a limited discount), access to industry discounted airfares and a generous relocation package which I used once, SAYE and BAYE share schemes and an Executive Share scheme which was a bit of a damp squib. Fair play though, a relative works for Google and his salary means he doesn't need perks!

[stewamax]

One of the chiro's favourite techniques - whether beneficial to the patient or just the chiro's wallet I know not - was the sharp lumbar twist-and-click known in the trade as the Million Dollar Roll.
I was only paying £20 a session so it explains why I still have a bad back ...