Free Crap: To Accept or Not?
I get lots of crappy swag from various media vendors.
When I worked at an agency, management used to elude that they considered the swag as part of our job benefits. And, no joke here, it was to some extent an excuse to pay us crap.
"But you get taken out lunches, dinners, cocktail hours, free massages, receive free binoculars, poker sets, mouse pads, etc... That's a huge benefit to the job."
"No it's not," I used to say. Sure, I can accept crappy and useless (for the most part) swag and free outting events from vendors... But then I feel guilty about not running money with them. Or running less money with them. I don't know, I just have never been comfortable with accepting free stuff from media vendor reps for spending money with them. It has always made me uncomfortable.
I was offered Sox tickets recently from one of my vendors. I don't follow the Sox. So I declined them. My boss joked (when he found out) that I should ALWAYS accept the free stuff. But I couldn't bring myself to do it.
(However, I would TOTALLY accept a set of Ginsu knives from one vendor who has promised them if I sign with them. Hmm...)
Often, vendors (one in particular that I find completely useless) will just send me the crap stuff without giving me a heads up. Then it just sits on my desk, un-used. I would give it away, but it's crap. No one would want it.
But today, I found a use for one particular piece of crap swag I got from the useless vendor.
I didn't have any napkins to put my pop on. So I used the mouse pad as a coaster. Quite useful now!
When I worked at an agency, management used to elude that they considered the swag as part of our job benefits. And, no joke here, it was to some extent an excuse to pay us crap.
"But you get taken out lunches, dinners, cocktail hours, free massages, receive free binoculars, poker sets, mouse pads, etc... That's a huge benefit to the job."
"No it's not," I used to say. Sure, I can accept crappy and useless (for the most part) swag and free outting events from vendors... But then I feel guilty about not running money with them. Or running less money with them. I don't know, I just have never been comfortable with accepting free stuff from media vendor reps for spending money with them. It has always made me uncomfortable.
I was offered Sox tickets recently from one of my vendors. I don't follow the Sox. So I declined them. My boss joked (when he found out) that I should ALWAYS accept the free stuff. But I couldn't bring myself to do it.
(However, I would TOTALLY accept a set of Ginsu knives from one vendor who has promised them if I sign with them. Hmm...)
Often, vendors (one in particular that I find completely useless) will just send me the crap stuff without giving me a heads up. Then it just sits on my desk, un-used. I would give it away, but it's crap. No one would want it.
But today, I found a use for one particular piece of crap swag I got from the useless vendor.
I didn't have any napkins to put my pop on. So I used the mouse pad as a coaster. Quite useful now!
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