When Free Gifts Hurt

It's great when you get little knick-knacks from work - coffee mugs, clocks and all that. The longer you work in a place, the more stuff you acquire - all with the company logo. And not just your company. Calendars, pencil holders and keyrings from companies trying to make a good impression and gain your business.

In my experience, I have found that most of these little trinkets seem to break, bend, scratch or simply cease to function after a short time (like that really neat 2005 wall calendar from a recruitment company which, frankly, is not much use now). You see, they've got to buy in volume. I've done this sort of thing before. The more you buy, the cheaper it is per item. So it makes sense for a bakery to buy 4,000 toilet-roll-holders with their company logo on it and send them to all of their customers and prospective customers. But although it is cheaper for a company to buy 4,000 instead of 400, each one costs money so inevitably they get the basic or non-deluxe version. The result is 4,000 low-quality, mildly defective, company-logoed chamois cloths, or whatever. In other words, junk with a logo on it. But you take it because it's free and it's a shame to waste it.

The only time when I can see this as not being applicable is if you are the CEO of a company. You have a win-win situation. Firstly, whenever some supplier sends you a freebie, you can say to your secretary, "Carol, why don't you take it. I already have a set of gaudy flurescent-green serviette rings". See, the reason you can do that if you are CEO is not because you already have that item, nor is it because you don't have the space in your large country villa for it, but it's because you don't feel the need for more freebies.

Here's what I mean.

Let's say that you are the CEO of Samsung. Samsung is a huge company that makes everything from gadgets to large appliances and beyond. So being the CEO, it would be embarassing for you and the company to be seen with a Motorola mobile-phone. You bring home various business associates for dinner and the company wouldn't look so good if they noticed that your TV, fridge, sound-system and microwave was made by General Electric. So the company gives you all this stuff for free. Now your home practically has "Samsung" written all over it. You no longer feel the need for a cheap "ACME Concrete" iPod cover.

But here's the downside: let's say that you leave Samsung for a better paying job as the CEO of a bank. A few things can happen: 1) Samsung wants all their shiny toys back and you have to re-stock your house with appliances; 2) Samsung lets you keep all of the shiny toys but now your house is full of Samsung branded stuff, which you may or may not have liked to begin with; 3) It's not like the bank is going to supply you with free samples of their product, so all you are ever going to get are cheap, plastic, bank-logoed gimmicks.

Looks like Carol will be missing out on her use-once-keyring-torch. Tough world.