Finding a job seems to be harder than ever, but even with our struggles to find a job, we still have to have some standards.
While purusing job descriptions, we have to take into consideration how our skills and work history will contribute to the position, but we also have to think about what the company has to offer us, including benefits.
But some of the benefits that companies are currently offering are downright degrading. Honestly, it might be better if they just didn't list any "benefits" at all.
Already cringing, Redditor AdHour6144 asked:
"What's the most insulting 'benefit' a job has offered you?"
Define "Flexible."
"'Flexible work hours.'"
"You must be in office between 8:00 AM and 5:00 PM, but you can show up even earlier or stay even later if you waaaaaant."
- WritingImplement
Lunch "Provided"
"They got a food truck to come out and park behind the building for us. They didn’t pay for any of the food or consult us on the type of food we wanted."
"So basically the benefit was, 'You can pay for your lunch if you happen to like this food,' but they hyped it up as some grand gesture."
- NewApartmentNewMe
"My medical clinic manager's 'morale boosters' include food trucks (we have to pay our own way), including a gourmet food truck with the average price of $50."
"There's also an annual chili cook-off. Employees have to bring all of the ingredients on their own dime, buy a T-shirt so we can all match (yep, we have to pay for it), and all we get as our 'appreciation' gift from the parent corporation is a plastic cup with a card that said how much we matter."
"Reader… we do not feel appreciated."
- employees_only
More Expensive Gas
"They signed a deal with a gas station chain, employees would get a certain amount off on gasoline/diesel. This was paraded out with a full company meeting and everything."
"The price reduction was less than normal customers who got a card with that gas station chain. So they had spent months working out a deal that was worse than what anyone could get by signing up at the gas station chain's website."
- Evil-Bosse
"I work at a gas station and get taxed on my paycheck for fuel points as a perk of the job. To be fair, it's a better rate than you get in the store. It just sucks for me because I can't drive, lol (laughing out loud)."
"I just use my fuel points on customers that are struggling. Y'know, the people who put 1.79 on a pump and tell you they're just trying to get home. May as f**king well use them before they expire since I'm godd**n paying for it."
- meat_uprising
Free H20
"'Free water for the employees!'"
"Wow, thank you!"
- myhamsterisajerk
"European here. Is the provision of drinking water not a legal requirement?!"
- Careful-Swimmer-2658
"OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) regulations clearly state drinking water is available to all employees. So, yes, it's a legal requirement, not a perk."
"But companies here like to parade mandated laws as benefits. They'll say something like, 'You're getting a raise! Because you're making minimum wage, and minimum wage in our state just went up, but it's more than we want to give you, so it's a raise!'"
- leonprimrose
Questionable Gyms
"Once worked at a place where the 'benefit' was free access to the company gym... which was just a treadmill in a dark, windowless basement room. No thanks, I'll pass on the dungeon workout."
- hottievickyyx
"I worked at a company that had the same benefit, only the women weren’t allowed to use it because the owner was a man and didn’t like it. I ruffled some feathers when I asked if that was legal, and why on earth did you even show me the gym on my tour the first day?!"
"A few months later the gym was no longer for anyone 'except managers'... And guess what? All the managers were men."
- ScaryFrogInTheMorn
Stay Classy
"I started a bar job and the people who were supposed to take over from my shift quit, so I worked three shifts in a row my first day."
"After working 23 hours, my boss said he’d give me a bottle of liquor as a thank you."
"He gave me a half bottle."
- Lingonberry_Born
The Boss's Autograph
"I worked at an Amazon warehouse, and management told us we were the most efficient warehouse in the entire national system during peak on some metric and will be getting a prize soon. In February, someone writes on the suggestion board asking what that prize is going to be, and they reply It’s on its way now."
"The prize was that one of our Kivabots that delivers the shelves to our workstations will be autographed by Jeff Bezos. He never actually came to our warehouse so they probably printed a sticker and put it on one of the machines."
"So every once in a while, we will get to see the great one's signature on the robot that delivers us tasks."
- Cinnabon-Jovi
"This feels so dystopian. Oh my god."
- phycologist
The Saddest Of Sandwiches
"I worked at a radiology clinic where they would Provide a single bread roll for staff for lunch on Wednesdays. No fillings or spreads. Just a plain white bread roll."
- Milled_Oats
"At a place I temped at, leadership made a huge deal that for lunch one day we would be served BLTs, so bring your appetite that day."
"That day we go the cafeteria and get served our BLTs, which was some precooked frozen bacon warmed in a microwave, one leaf of almost limp lettuce, a very thinly sliced tomato, between two pieces of very cheap bread, slathered with the thinnest layer of the cheapest mayo."
"People were rightfully p**sed, and management was amazed why people were upset and hungry."
- wetwater
Employee Appreciation Fair
"When I worked at a local mental health facility, they had a crazy high turnover issue across the board, but particularly with clinical staff."
"One of their solutions for the morale issue was to throw an employee appreciation fair. Free food, games, music, the works."
"The first problem was that they expected the support staff to set up and man everything (maintenance constructing the booths, IT setting up and managing the sound system, kitchen staff doing all the cooking.) So not only did they (we, I was IT) not get to enjoy the event, we ended up a full day behind on our normal tasks, as well."
"The other problem, the BIG problem, though, was that any of the staff that interacted with patients, particularly the clinical staff they were having trouble retaining, couldn't cancel those appointments to attend. So the event just ended up being administrative staff and the office pool having a big party for themselves while the rest of us either served them or heard the festivities coming from outside while they were stuck inside doing actual work."
"As you may imagine, it did not have the intended effect, but the C-Suite liked it so much, it became an annual event."
- danielisbored
Banking Options
"Direct Deposit was listed as a benefit. Like wow, is it full of money, too? THAT would be something."
- rdyek
"On the reverse of that, one of my last employers offered paper checks as a benefit. But I do the payroll and would encourage direct deposit because printing and mailing paper checks is a serious pain in the a**."
- PunchBeard
Redefine "Overtime"
"I worked crazy OT (overtime) for a month to get vital computer security updates done (every computer had to be touched individually). Those of us who were salaried were promised we would be taken care of for the 20+ hours of overtime each week."
"Hourly people earned time and a half."
"Salaried people got a company embroidered baseball cap as a 'thank you'. Oh, and so did the hourly people."
- greenjelloland
"One thing I appreciate at my current employer (and is part of why I'm hoping to stay there after I get my degree and move up to engineering) is that my boss actually wants the salaried guys to work reasonable hours overall. Pull a bunch of OT one week? He tells them that the crunch is done, take it easy, and only clock 30 or so next week."
- 00zau
A Spicy BBQ
"Staff appreciation BBQ where all the staff was invited, but we still had to cook for all 300 employees. Everyone got to go but the kitchen staff and they never made it up to us."
- letseattacos
"I worked for a company that had, like, 35 office staff and 100 technicians. The CEO wanted to give a Christmas gift, so he took 27 of the office staff and 25 technicians to an overnight stay to see Metallica in concert."
"There was no contest; he just picked who he liked, and the day of the concert, they bought prepackaged Christmas cookies from Walmart for the leftover people, lol (laughing out loud)."
- ThrowMeAwayM90
A Free Podcast
"Two general managers started a podcast they expected us to all listen to."
- kurafuto
"My boss wrote a book he "encouraged" people to buy and read. Somehow a PDF found its way onto the company file share, and since his book was about our line of work, reading it- on the clock- got counted as fulfilling our certifying authority's Continuing Education requirements."
"I mean, it's a pretty good book. I bought a copy myself. But the rules clearly state that as the director obviously intended to designate his book as training material, it's the company's responsibility to provide the material to staff and to ensure all training is done during paid work hours."
- ThadisJones
Competitive Wages
"I told our HR (Human Resources) person we were losing employees because of low pay. I showed examples of similar jobs that were paying 25 percent more at other firms."
"She told me that the casual work atmosphere was a huge benefit and should be taken into account."
"My response was that I could buy a lot of neckties for $10K a year. I resigned a few weeks later and they tried to counteroffer. Id**ts."
- Caspers_Shadow
"I just had something similar happen earlier this year. I pointed out that places in the same geographical and business area were typically ten to 25 percent higher for comparable positions."
"Additionally, I ended up getting stonewalled as a senior employee who they refused to advance to management because they needed me where I was (it got so bad, they just didn’t fill the manager position, because if they did, they knew it had to be me)."
"When they walled me off, I got told I was only ever going to get a three percent raise each year with no end in sight (that was policy. Everyone only got three percent), and right in the middle of some wonderfully high inflation periods so I was actually taking pay cuts."
"I was well respected within the company, so had conversations with multiple people in senior leadership. They point-blank told me nothing was going to change, mostly because they never thought I would leave."
"It took a few months, but I finally got out of there."
"They didn’t understand why I would leave such a great company."
- LtSqueak
The No-Lunch Trick
"I was working at a shop and was actively pursuing a job as a teacher, which was not a surprise to anybody. I got the job with the understanding that when I finished my degree I’d be pursuing a teaching job."
"I needed to come in late one day due to an interview. I literally just needed to be an hour late."
"My boss said, 'Go ahead and take an extra 15!'"
"I thought he was being nice. Turns out, dipping below seven hours was what he needed to deny me a lunch break that day."
- TheRandomHistorian
"I had a similar temp job until I got something related to my degree. When I finally found my big boy job, I gave my two weeks."
"It was the Thursday of my final week and I needed to take an hour off to get a physical before I could start the new job."
"My current boss starts yelling about how I said two weeks and now I was not even giving him that."
"Meanwhile, over the last week and four days, he hadn't hired someone new for me to train or even POSTED a job listing."
"I didn't bother to come back after the physical."
- dishwashersafe
It's shocking that none of these companies went so far as to offer "air to breathe," "building exits," or "bathroom breaks."
In all seriousness, basic human rights should not be included as "benefits" but should be implied. But there are some niceties, even just coffee offered in the breakroom that employees don't have to buy themselves, that all companies should have adopted by now, and not as benefits, but as a way of life in commonplace work culture.
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