Last month we talked about unusual work perks and here are some of my favorites that you shared.
1. The peacock
At the factory I used to work at, we had a peacock. He just turned up one day in the carpark. We tried to find his owners and simply couldn’t… so we kept him. He had a little heated house, we would all go and eat lunch with him and he became a real mascot. He eventually died of old age – RIP Boris!
2. The move concierge
One job offered a move concierge. A couple of days before you were due to move, you gave him your keys and he packed all your stuff, emptied the apartment, cleaned it, took any final meter readings, returned the keys to the landlord and handled inspections, then drove to your new place, picked up the keys, cleaned, unpacked, and restocked your fridge. For £20 he would also make all the phone calls to transfer your utilities to the new place. The company would then put you up in a corporate apartment for the couple of nights he was moving you. Bliss.
3. The slide
My office has a slide! I’m not working for a big tech company at all, we are at most 40 and located in France. The ground floor is an open space. The floor above is smaller, so there is enough place to have a slide to go down. And it’s regularly used!
4. The Day of Pudding
One summer in college, I temped at the headquarters of a large food distribution company. About once a week, they would have some type of quality testing where they’d get a large delivery of some sort of food and they’d open it up, cook it if needed, and lay out all the different options and permutations and flavors that the food came in, and then invite all the staff to come in to the kitchen and sample it. It was such a great perk! I remember it was the first time I tried jalapeño poppers – multiple iterations of jalapeño poppers, in fact!
But the best day ever was the Day of Pudding. There were 30 or 40 different vats of pudding. Containers of pudding that were bigger than a child! So many different brands and flavors, filling the room with puddingy goodness. Everybody grabbed a bowl and spooned in multiple flavors. Have you ever taste-tested and compared five types of chocolate pudding in one sitting? I think I went back for fourths. The office was on a sugar high that day!
5. The bee hives
My company has bee hives (for environmental reasons). The honey is available only to employees as part of an annual charity raffle that takes place on World Bee Day (no, I didn’t know either). It comes in nice jars and tastes good too.
6. The car detailing
I’ve recently started a wonderful new admin job with an electrical contractor. We have a few semi-normal perks that I’ve never had – snacks, drinks, beer fridge, flexible hours, some WFH, etc. The one that I love the most is that we can have our vehicles detailed each Friday if needed/wanted (we drive in a good bit of gravel lol).
7. The Christmas Elves
I worked in a multinational organization for a number of years, and they had what I called The Christmas Elves.
Basically, it was traditional for every representative from each country to send Christmas gifts to their counterparts from other countries. It very much became a matter of national pride, an opportunity to show off the best your country has to offer. A whole smoked salmon, a flat of local chocolate, a bottle of obscure Eastern European liqueur that could burn your chest hair off, a (full-size) bottle of whiskey, an entire smoked ham, etc.
There was literally so much of it going on that, basically for the entire month of December, “elves” would go around the entire building, delivering mail carts worth of gifts to each office. Given the number of countries represented, you’d wind up with 30-40 gifts per year.
It also spawned a bustling after-market trade, where we’d trade amongst ourselves (I, for one, am not a pork eater, so the ham usually went for 2-3 bottles of wine).
8. The cruise of your choice
At the holiday party, they draw names and send a person and their chosen plus one on a cruise of the person’s choice. You can only win it once during your tenure at the company, and you have to have worked there for a full year to be eligible, but it’s super cool.
9. The on-site nurse
Long ago I worked for a small agency with an occupational nurse on-site. Headache? She’s got you. Feel something coming on? Her drug cocktail would kill anything (one Allegra, two Sudafed, two Motrin, and a shot of Robitussin; it’ll cure what ails you!). She would also close an exam room, turn off the lights, give you a blankie, and set a timer for a catnap if you just needed a little snooze to get you over the 3:00 slump.
International travelers needed immunizations, so she’d regularly offer the leftover doses. “I’ve got two doses of yellow fever; schedule an appointment if you want one.” I worked there during the tetanus vaccine shortage and was able to get a shot after an all-staff email went out, “Who needs tetanus?”
10. The pinball machines
I worked at a place where the CEO’s hobby is pinball. He started collecting, repairing, and restoring pinball machines as a teen. As a result, he has hundreds. There are many scattered throughout the facility. All are either free, or there is a bowl of pennies on the machine to turn it on. The company has a lot of pinball experts as a result.
11. The bespoke shoes
I did some work for an Italian fashion brand, who decided that we needed to truly understand their craft. So boss lady and I got to spend a weekend at their (top secret) shoe workshop learning about their process and came away with a beautiful pair of designer heels handcrafted to fit my feet. No sky-high stiletto has ever been so comfortable – I could wear those all day at work and still chase down a cab at the end of the night.
12. The baby cougars
I used to work for the local zoo (summer day camp for grade school children) and the zookeepers would give the camp counselors lists of planned enrichment for the different animals in case we wanted to watch. I remember dragging my campers to the Pacific Northwest exhibit first thing in the morning, and they were all groggy and grumpy that we were pushing back snack time, but they all shut up as soon as the keepers announced we were about to see the baby cougars get their first carcass. There was growling, playfighting, tug of war, and even purring. One cub climbed up in a tree with their food and dropped it on their sibling.
We got to see at least one cool enrichment every week, but this one was probably my favorite.
