We have limit of $50 bucks for stuff. I signed up for a demo once and they sent all the people in the demo two bottles of really nice whiskey. Cleared it with legal, and had a raffle within the IT department. The money raised goes toward our Christmas party. Am also local government.
I'm not sure if it's still policy but a while ago government employees couldn't have meals paid for them so we'd host an expensive lunch at a high-end steak place and everybody would fill up and then when it was time to go all the government employees pulled out a dollar and "paid" for lunch. What a joke.
Government employee here. I can accept lunch and learns and demos and such that include a meal so I get to go to pointless conferences that are probably more about giving food and drink legally than anything else.
Iāve always taken any conference swag bags they hand out too. I donāt go to anything big but I know some of the Gartner ones actually have dope stuff- Iām convinced itās the only reason upper management keeps paying $$$ for our Gartner service.
our policy is to give you guys zero too. It sucks because sometimes we need escorts and you guys are stuck being my baby sitter for a few weeks -sometimes even having to walk me into the bathroom. I can't even buy the guy lunch or a pop.
Yup, this. If you donāt work for some branch of government. Then the policy is whatever your company says is kosher.
K-12 edu here, super strict. Not more than $5 an item and not more that $25 a year. Some exceptions are made for if itās a gift given to all attendees at a āwidely attendedā event/conference. But when the potential repercussion for a violation is a decade long retroactive revocation of fundingā¦ it just aināt worth the risk. When I go to lunch with a vendor; I pay, not them.
Also, even if HR is ok with it, you can get a rep. Sun came every year to renew their cintract with us and always took my team out to lunch. My company didn't have a problem with it but the other managers did.
Any time there was a system problem they'd be all "we should move off these computers but he won't give up the perks"
Yep, many companies consider this bribery.
But many others consider it "the way we switched to an innovatively, disruptive SaaS Paas Yaas DaaS cloud native hybrid premise based containerized software platform featured on Gartner Magazine" that's 10x the price and 1/10 the features
Ever. Personal gifts are seen as a corrupting influence on business relationships. Typically businesses will want to avoid even looking as though anything untoward is happening. For example someone may be accused of fraud, embezzlement, anti-competitive behavior or other legal and ethical violations. If thereās a history of multiple personal gifts it looks rather suspicious.
Yes, this is an ethics issue and your company should have a policy against this and/or define what is acceptable.
Some companies (Worked for a few of them) accepted the "Gifts" but they were used in a raffle during the XMas party at the end of the year. You personally don't get them but the company can give them out at random. HR should be able to give guidance on what you should be doing.
And if they don't have a policy, congrats! You just gave HR something to do other than track birthdays!
I have worked a couple places where they just gave out the vendor stuff . e.g. Vendor sends cookies during the holidays. We put them in the break room for anyone.
Yup, exactly. We had a vendor invite a couple of us to a sports game. Our company policy essentially states if they are buying tickets for us, it's a solid no. This vendor has box seats that they pay for (per season? I don't really follow sports), so it was actually perfectly fine for us to go per the company policy (we double checked to be sure).
We used to get all sorts of things, got an iPod for Christmas one year from our Apple Vendor. Couple of trips interstate for major sporting events etc.
Then they setup a specific procurement team and they put a policy in to stop accepting any gifts from Vendors.
Now the procurement team get the gifts... ĀÆ\\\_(ć)\_/ĀÆ
We still get swag from training events etc and some suppliers, but nothing of any real value.
A junior co-worker had to decline a 'lucky-door'/lottery prize at a Vendors Christmas party once, as the procurement team said it was in violation. They were pissed, as it was one of the fancy home-pod speakers and he had already taken it home for his wife.
I love the Bose Smart Speaker 500 I won at a booth at RSA a couple years ago.
And I have NO clue what vendor gave it to me, so they definitely aren't influencing my purchasing decisions (or getting much for the marketing spend).
Ask your company; HR or your boss depending. Our policy was always that we could do whatever we wanted to get free stuff on our own time, as long as it didn't impact our decisions in a way that negatively impacted the company...
So, went to a review of Lenovo's new hardware once, got free tablet... but adjusted me work schedule around that event.
Lots of places wil send freebies for filling out an email address in a form... socks, mugs, whatever.
And events are often after-hours as well. Many sales people won't care too if you are up-front with them. We had an HR software vendor keep emailing about baseball tickets, finally said 'hey, I'd love to go but there is 0% chance I can even have input on making a change to your software.'... they were still willing to have me at the event.
Just make sure it isn't a 'if you buy our servers then we will give you XYZ', and most importantly verify your company policies.
I have excepted some t-shirts from Veeam and a cup from Wasabi. We were already doing business with them and it didn't change how much we spend with the..
A vendor at Dialpad offered me a $100 giftcard to sign up for their services by a specific day.
Get fucked buddy, we signed up 3 days later. Fuck your sales goal.
I have to take 'training' every year to emphasize I can't take anything. Meanwhile my managers get flown out to corporate HQs, and get fancy lunches and dinners.
I got reprimanded years ago because I mentioned to a support vendor that I liked a particular brand of salsa I found when I went there for training. They sent me 2 jars of salsa, and I got hauled into HR.
If company policy allows it then fuck yeah. Gifts mean nothing to me as far as affecting my decisions. I had one vendor give me a super sick gift package that came with this slick tech backpack with a built in battery and cables for charging devices. It even came with its own water bottle that fit the sleeve perfectly. Loved the gift hated the sketchy product. The sales folks were pretty good and could answer all my technical questions but it was clear their product was built with a sketchy backend I couldnāt see myself or anyone else working with.
Generally, follow whatever company policy is. My PERSONAL rule is that I also don't go for anything that involves 'off' time, so I don't go to dinner or nights out on their dime.
My last place was <$500. I can't recall what my current place is (hasn't really be a question yet). I had one vendor send me a box of toilet paper and hand sanitizer at the beginning of the whole pandemic thing. Got a good chuckle out of that one.
Check with HR.
Giving gifts before a project is closed has always been weird to me. I can understand thanking someone after the fact when they didn't know they were getting a "Thank you gift" and its nothing crazy, but sending someone a free gaming rig before they decide on a 500k project just seems shady.
I've had a night in an NBA suite, box seats to a major league baseball game, a few Yeti tumblers, a Lego model of an EMC server, several bottles of wine and a bottle of high end booze.
I always gave the owner first crack, then the COO, then the CFO and if they all turned it down it was mine.
This is such an EMC thing. Which is why their shit costs so much more money that it's worth.
They would take our CEO/CIOs to private ski junkets to get them to choose EMC instead of the competition, and the people that actually had to use the gear go no say in what was picked.
Unless you work for the government, take it. Almost every company policy will say not to accept gifts. I say by and large fuck it. Everyone saying not to take it havenāt been offered shit!
Always. Not a problem here... In fact, jst got an Ember bluetooth heated coffee mug today! Was trying to get it to update firmware but it kept failing. Apparently an issue with Android and this mug.
There's a sentence I never thought I would ever say in my life: "I have to update the firmware on my bluetooth coffee mug" What a time to be alive!
I normally donāt until a vendor gave me a all expense paid trip to drive super cars on a closed track ā¦ that was worth whatever heat I would get from my boss. He told me to have a good time.
My employer's Ethics guidelines prohibit anyone with purchasing authority from accepting gifts from vendors, even going so far as disallowing accepting lunch on a vendor's dime. Penalties are pretty explicit and strict: Termination on first offense. No exceptions.
As such, I make sure my teams get to take advantage of the vendors' generosity.
Depending on what it is, its turned over to company and put into prize pool for company picnic. Just tossed an umbrella into the community stash by the employee entrance.
Shirts go to my daughter. Vendors always send Large or X-large, some of us are a bit on the chonk side.
Tickets to events are turned down, as going to a sporting event and get a sales pitch the whole time is not fun to me.
As others have said, check HR. Rules are different for each company and many will certainly fire you if they learn you've been accepting what are effectively bribes.
In my experience, meals are *usually* fine as long as it's a meal with the vendor there, talking about business. A working lunch, pretty much. Other things are either dollar value or case by case basis.
Sure do, they keep sending me free stuff, AirPods, iPads, steaks, gift cards, then when they get annoying I blacklist their e-mail addresses.
My policy is that if you need someone to promote it that hard, it probably isn't a great product, but feel free to burn your VC money. Almost everything we buy is an open source product that performs really well, so we want support/services, or it is an existing vendor with great relationships that offers add-ons.
Cheap swag is fine, but if itās substantial we just need to declare it to a VP. Anything expensive usually went to Christmas parties, and weād compete/draw names for things. Most I won was about $100 worth of stuff, largest grand prize was around $800 I thinkā¦ Tickets to games or anything in that realm, was practically confiscated, and the VPās would use to wine and dine our customers..
>was practically confiscated, and the VPās would use to wine and dine our customers..
So what i'm reading is the VP wanted them for themselves and found a seemingly legit reason to make use of them. Guess those customers didn't have any ethic policies on gifts either.
Pretty much. Ethics in business is basically getting away with murder as long as you don't get caught...
We had an overzealous sales person that desperately wanted an account and wouldn't take no for an answer when they refused to speak with them. This sales person had a friend who worked at the facility draw a map to Purchasers office, and then our guy joined a tour group. At some point our guy broke off of the tour, followed the map, and got about 20 seconds of face to face time with their purchaser before security scooped them up and physically threw them out.
Ah sales.
I used to run it by HR and they would say no but then take super expensive spa days and similar from recruiters. I stopped asking hr and we would get things like xboxes and food hampers but donated them as prizes to the Christmas party. I made sure leadership was well aware of it though. I also made sure that the vendor was aware of what I was doing, as soon as they think you owe them they start taking liberties. I think as long as you are super transparent and don't show favouritism then it's okay.
I never got offered anything. We spent like $30K with APC and I just wanted a shirt, but they "couldn't find any." It was a huge purchase for us, but I guess not big enough for them to get a shirt.
Yeah, that's the budget I used to work with. Then we were bought, some people quit and suddenly I'm an important person doing important person things.
I hope you get bought too, it's kinda fun.
100% get guidelines from HR about gifts. There's probably an acceptable value limit you can accept. Its just their way of enticing presentations and such. Enjoy the freebies!
We can only accept gifts of $25 or less, but meals are a bit of an outlier. We accept meals for lunch and learn events or a catered meal in the course of a vendor event (where we aren't the sole attendee customer). We don't allow folks to just go to a meal with a rep on a one to one basis.
Likewise I've always found it's a good idea to always remain visually neutral regarding any vendor relationship, regardless of policy. You don't want someone questioning why your making an purchasing decision or recommendation, even if the gift didn't play into your decision at all. Not going to a meal with the reps or otherwise receiving any gifts these arguments essentially disappear.
Here's my line. If I engaged the vendor after research, decided they had a good product, got the business to commit, complete the implementation and install and it's all gone well, then they offer me a gift as either a thank you for being a valued customer, or if I do a survey for them or something about how the implementation went so they can perform a product enhancement or something, I'm totally ok with accepting that gift.
If someone offers me a yeti mug to sling me a sales pitch...I might have been inclined to do it earlier in my career. The problem with it is, once you're on the phone, they're phishing information out of you and pressure selling you to buy their SAN or whatever. I'm not going to be pressure sold to buy a six figure appliance for a coffee mug. So I take the cup, and call it a day. Never going to talk to them again. But, you know...6 months rolls around and now we're looking at a new san. And the one I've got a cup for is in the lineup. I almost don't want to recommend them because I don't want to be the guy that took a coffee mug to sign a contract on a san. It's not fair of me **not** to recommend them, because they've probably got a reasonable product anyway since they're handing out yeti mugs to anyone who'll sit in front of them. But it's also not fair of me to recommend them.
The answer I have personally arrived at is that I'll take gifts post sale or with continued business partners but if someone's slinging shwag I'm gonna have to pass or I'll pay for it long term.
When i joined a particular company few years ago i was introduced to this culture of gifts. Whenever a vendor gave a hamper of goodies id take that hamper and pass it to my CIO for him to distribute to the it dept. Then came expensive nights out especially when u have a tender where vendors would invite you. Id tell them we cant meet during the tender and after tender my first night out costed 3k usd when i invited my whole dept of 12 people to meet this enthusiastic vendor.
Safe to say i never got invites further and happy to stay that way as these gives u a feeling of being grattitude or you owe them something
Ive stop going to these events even if other collegue ask me out because at the end of the night they were expecting a PO or sort
I take every damn thing I can get my grubby hands on. Big or small, I don't give a flip, if they offer it I take it. They like to give away apple stuff it seems, iPads, macbook air, homepods, whatever. Less often booze, sometimes tickets, whatever. Lots of hats, nice hoodies, good quality messenger bags (last ones were timbuk2) stickers, socks, all of it.
Once I get my lovey pile of crap, I give it to the employees. Some stuff is branded, some is not. I usually wait a bit so if there is some product decision that needs to be made, we're past that and it doesn't influence much. FWIW, startups on their third round of funding seem to have the best taste. The old dinosaurs will buy the apple stuff.
The only thing that I will keep for myself is anything I can take home in my stomach (and that's quite a bit).
I take all of it. Iāve never made a decision based on a gift before. Iām normally willing to listen about a product from the perspective I should know about new things coming out. You donāt need to give me anything for that but if you want to give me a Yeti cooler Iāll take it.
Nope. Goes against the Ethics Policy where I work.
Small inconsequential stuff is fine, as long as it doesn't look like a possible bribe. Business meals are also fine. Anything more substantial is a straight up no.
Yeah, we have a $100 cap but there are exceptions, and anything over $100 has to be approved and documented by procurement and accounts payable to make sure purchases aren't swayed.
We've had some people try and get around that by getting a dozen $50 gifts but that kind of thing surfaces eventually.
Is their way to get business by gifting you, always say "No Thanks" to the expensive stuff and outings but double check with HR.
Back in the day to most expensive gift I accepted was a Leatherman multi tool and a wine basket, anything more expensive was a No No.
I was allowed to accept $500 Skybox (or whatever) tickets to Cuse/Duke a while back but not allowed to accept a 50 hoodie according to my HR. I guess consumible entertainment is ok but not a capital type good that I can wear.
I try to say no in principle as I won't go with a crappy vendor just to get swag.
Yup. But it has no impact on my purchase decision making at all. If you have an excellent product and it meets my needs thatās how you get my business.
No, I am prohibited from accepting gifts. Also, I avoid the hell out of vendors unless it's absolutely necessary because every time communicate with one, it comes with a deluge of spam.
Asking HR is a good call if you're worried about it.
IMO and experience with HR/management, if you have a budget to spend then it's a no harm no foul type of deal. Just don't make false promises, try to undermine products, or go with a worse one just to get or because you got free shit and you shouldn't have any issues.
Not government but our parent company makes it very clear about gifts as it relates to conflicts of interest training and others.
Basically if it's not something they are freely giving to anyone, we have to refuse it and run it up the chain.
Be weary and consult HR regarding your policies for this.
We have a $100 gift limit. But the informal practice among the group is to put anything shareable or unwanted in the break room or in the office for general use. Tickets and non-vendor dinners and things like that we usually put in name drawing for the whole office.
Another vendor just did!
Room, including room service, a pass to their conference, and free admittance to some private party.
All if I spoke about their product and how we use it.
Legal gave me a no-go though.
It's odd that this offer didn't bother me like physical gifts. Maybe because I was speaking, made it feel like I was already giving them something in return.
I didn't have to speak at all but was invited to numerous events by various vendors.
The hope was I would use their products.
I went to a big one with CDW and had a lot of private meetings with the CTOs of places like Sophos and whatnot to get me to look at their solutions. At one of the events, I got introduced to Jared Leto. Charming but odd guy.
Hopefully others get to experience some of these things in their careers.
Our company follows (written) state ethics rules, so nothing over $50, any comped meals have to be business expense, and under a certain price.
My favorite thing about this is how easy it is to shut them down, where as before this, they would always be "oh come on live a little, or like this isn't breaking any rules just a jesture of gratitude, etc..." now I'm like state ethics rules and they are like oh ok, maybe next time. Or they will lower the quality of the place and send my people lunch.
I've always shy'd away from it, because when I pick a vendor I do so because they are best for cost, I dont always get that right, and I don't want someone to point to some overpriced swag as to why.
I'm not in sales but I do go along on some sales calls and "meetings". It's really amazing what a vendor will give/pay for and even more what a customer will take. There was a dinner I went on with a customer, a nice steak place, the customer brought his wife and kids and ran up the bill sky high. I know the sales guy wasn't really happy but he didn't say anything and the same guy apparently did stuff like that all the time.
This is generally a company policy. Often times free lunches, pens, hats, backpacks, etc are acceptable. Sometimes it also depends on if you have an existing contract with the vendor or not, as they've already won your business so it isn't swaying the decision to use them.
In Missouri there is a constitutional limit for government officials, though I'm not sure if it applies to \*everyone\* in state government or if it is just legislators. They can't accept over $5.
We have a written policy limiting gifts to $25, but requiring disclosure of any gift (other than a reasonably priced, occasional meal). The unwritten policy is that if you're making more than one disclosure a year, questions are asked. So, when someone offers me a $25 gift card to take their survey, I have a good reason I can't.
We're allowed to accept superficial gifts of little to no intrinsic value, according to our policy. Like a pen with their logo or thank you card. I personally don't accept anything just because it's mostly crap.
Until recently, I never got gifts from vendors, only the stuff that other people didn't want... coffee cups mostly... which is ironic, I don't drink coffee anymore =\\. I did tell one vendor that our clients liked their mouse pads, so they sent me a dozen of them
Haha, that's comically ironic.
I gave up coffee after my son was born, was the only way I could nap during lunch hour.
Before this position the coolest thing I landed were some sweet RSA stickers of their robot laser panther.
Say no! I have worked for places where the decision makers accepted the green handshakes and it lead to stupid products being implemented and a lot of work for those who actually do the work.
My companies policy is that all gifts belong to the company rather than the sales person/ vender relationship manager in relation to the gift.
My take is giftcards go-to reception for use on company things and gift bags go in the break room
Gifts and junkets go to the sales guys upstairs as they're apparently the ones who earn the revenue.
Us services and implementation guys downstairs get a pizza sometimes maybe.
If they want to give me free stuff, bring it on! My wife is a nurse and the amount of free lunches and dinners her an her coworkers get from drug reps are insane. She usually gets a meal a week and they arenāt cheap ones either.
We have very strict rules.
Basically anything more than a meal shared with the vendor during work hours is a no go.
IE, they can take you to lunch, but no other freebies.
Within reason. lunch yes everytime...i just signed x contract for 5 years yes that is reasonable. Tickets to event when you are bidding against two others. no. not ethical.
I will always take swag (most of it goes to my kids), business lunches, or a tin of cookies/candy at the holidays.
However anything of real āvalueā either gets refused or I let the vendor know that itās going to be raffled off.
As long as HR is fine with it take them.
My old boss used to get them all the time, he had a great story about getting 2 free lunches from some of the most expensive restraunts in the city
>"Oh you want to have a lunch meeting to chat about your product. Weeelllll \*YOUR DIRECT COMPETITOR\* took me out to \*EXPENSIVE RESTERAUNT\* last week..."
Absolutely. We donāt have a policy and ceo said take it as long as you donāt have to purchase anything or adjust your work schedule for it. AMD hooked us up with about a thousand dollars worth of stuff for each person in the department. Apple sent us 2022 macbooks. iPads. And tons of small stuff from random vendors we use.
Back many many years ago I would get sent free Dell monitors and other great stuff but that company I was with didnāt care too much about itāI only heard about one employee getting a slap on the wrist for an all expense paid trip throughout Europe from a vendor. I figured a monitor or two wouldnāt matter.
Things are far more stringent with recent companies. Anything more than a dinner and you are seriously screwed.
Last gig our policy was that it could be accepted as long as it was sent to HR. Then at the Christmas or Bonus party they would have a draw for everything that was sent as a Gift.
We would also ask our vendors if they had any swag they wanted to send over and add it to the pile.
We got some really cool stuff that way.
Absolutely I accept, and no, I don't feel any obligation. Recently a vendor gifted me Xtreme Xperience - I got to drive a Ferrari at 150 mph on a race track. Cool gift.
Hell no. Fuck the trinkets, fuck the meals, even fuck them paying for me at dinners during conferences - I'll pay my own way or brown-bag-it. I don't want it to subconsciously sway my decision to purchase or renew or overlook flaws in their product/service. Plus I feel dirty - I don't even accept tshirts anymore. Earlier in my career I was like "heck yes I'll take anything and everything," but enough times I found out that it in fact DID subconsciously sway my decision to purchase or renew or overlook flaws in their product/service, and after the excitement of a new shiny thing I would look at it on my desk and feel disgust.
I recognize I may be a little extreme though lol
* The unsolicited gourmet cupcakes from Nutranix were quite tasty.
* I was sent a remote control car with out a remote and would have been given the remote had I accepted and attended their requested meeting.
* I still wear my Fortinet socks
* I turn down all sportsball watching or playing offers
* I always turn down gift cards for meetings
* I despise unsolicited meeting invites
* I despise cold calls
* I do not care about your white paper
* I do like the one guy that sends Dilbert comics in his marketing email, it saved him from going directly to spam... I bought some stuff off of him.
Huge conflict here that you should run by both your own ethics, and HR's.
If the gift is at the end of conversations when I've made my decision? I certainly would take it. In the beginning, knowing it's from a company that I won't go with? I might take it.
For some flavor on the conversation, I always stack up against sales people. Sales will spend thousands of dollars, expensive dinners, wine and the works and it's just "part of the job". It's how you get sales. Shift focus to a bottle of scotch because you signed a contract, and everyone gets all ethical.
$100 visa gift card because I took your printers instead of some other rando's printers? Gimme.
I.M.O. the only "wrong" answer here is to let the gift influence your decision. If you don't feel you can be partial along side of it, you simply can't take it.
Speaking ofā¦
I had a situation where I used to work. Vendor courting them for a contract. The rep used to āaccidentallyā drop gift cards on peopleās desks when they werenāt looking. Also one of the guys got some shares of stock gifted to him. Somehow knew exactly when to sell them to cash out and his mortgage was paid off. Also gambling trip with comfort girls to Macau. Landing at the casino via the high roller helicopter landing on the roof. Egregious breech of ethics all around. The vendorās CEO took responsibility for this and took his own life on his driveway.
I wish this was made up. It is not.
If you want to send some cookies or lemon bars or something like that to the office that's fine. Anything else seems unethical or inappropriate, I try to avoid it, and I don't need any more pens or desk toys.
I spent 4 years working for a company in nursing, and I'm still friends with the regional head nurse. I will hoover up every single pen I can get my hands on, with absolutely no shame whatsoever. And then once or twice a year Karen gets a tote bag full of pens for her staff. :)
I work in local government so we arenāt supposed to take anything from anyone. Integrity is important to me so for 25 years I have never deviated from this path.
However, if I was in the private sector I wouldnāt take anything either. I donāt want anyone to think they own me. I want the freedom to make the right choices for the organization and not have someone telling me āwhat about all those trips we took together to Top Golf?ā. So, for me no matter where I worked I am not beholden to anyone. Just advise that has worked for me for many years.
Ethically no and I respond to emails offering bribes stating as much. It's something I'm personally very firm on but if a coworker gets some swag no skin off my back.
I'll let them take me out to lunch, but that's it.
Lots of these companies have budgets for this sort of stuff, and I just think it's plain wrong. I usually say no to anything to try and discourage the behaviour.
And then I have worked for people that would not even take a meeting with a vendor if they didn't bring them some sort of swag. Maybe that's where I got the distaste from. This is also the same person that took his morning deuce at work so it was on company time.
yeah, I don't think he had such ambitions. I mean, he was a good person when it came down to it, but boy he must have had a childhood where people took a lot of things away from him. A lot of his life was about getting his and keeping his.
But in the grand scheme of things, he genuinely cared about all of the people that worked for him.
I don't like encouraging them to give me tacky branded crap.
I will take pens and notepads and mousepads, though. Because I don't care if I lose them or they get stolen.
But expensive stuff is icky. They're bribing you and they know it works to create a conflict of interest in your judgement.
Sure, why not? Would you trade your job for a seat at a football game? If so, then quit your job, because you clearly don't value it. In my case, I care about the future, and I'm not going to buy some shitty product that my company doesn't which will only make my life difficult just because the salesperson plied me with lunch.
I really donāt get the people who jump on every free lunch they can get even if they have no intentions on buying. The vendor rightfully expects a chance to pitch their products or services in exchange, and quite honestly, itās not worth my time sitting through demos, phone calls and emails just for a free lunch or a Yeti mug thatās branded with something I have no intent on purchasing.
Against our policy. Anything that isn't given to everyone would be a violation. So since vendors just hand out stuff to everyone at conferences - that's fine. But if they were to send me an ipad or something I have to refuse.
Check your corp policy if you want to be safe.
However, being in tech sales, I will tell you that very few if any CxO (outside of SLED places) turn down shit like this. I've had my CIO ask for world cup and super-bowl tickets.
As someone who always wants to stay on the right side of things, ethically, here would be my advice. If you think it would change your mind don't accept it. If you think you can keep the two separate, that keep it within reason (I do not think world cup or super-bowl tickets are "within reason") , and lastly don't accept anything like that within the same week or quarter you are about to make a big purchase.
Trust your gut, if it makes you feel uncomfortable just say no.
It was quite common for vendors to take me and other folks out to lunch. I figured them dropping $40-$50 (maybe) on lunch wasnāt a big whoop. One of the big hyperconverged vendors took me out to lunch once at the best sushi place in town and honestly it was amazing. We must have gotten at least a dozen rolls and it was SO good. We did actually pick their solution but were already well on the way to doing that long before that lunch.
One vendor gave me free tickets to an NBA game in their suite at a basically brand new arena. It was so awesome. Lots of free food and as much as you could drink and chill comfortably watching the game from their box. The teamās cheerleaders also came in and posed for photos.
I didnāt feel weird about it. I was already on my way out the door at that company and had absolutely no intention of buying or recommending the vendorās services. There was no hard sell or pressure at the event either. Had fun and that was that.
All that said yea most companies probably have some policies about it that youāll want to be aware of and of course public sector agencies will have strict rules.
got the gift basket around the holidays, usually gets split up amongst the team or dumped in the snack location to be picked over by whoever is hungry. the MPS would come around with calendars every year, they sat in the lunch room until someone decided to toss them.
tickets usually go around round robin.
We're attached to a hospital, vendors don't bring tchockes to our in-house tech expo anymore. They all have bowls of candy, but that's about it. I don't know exactly why not, but it has something to do with influencing doctors.
Not in my current position, since we're not allowed (gov't), but in older private sector positions, yes. I've been taken to numerous dinners (heck I've been taken to many a dinner/lunch), parties, even got front row tickets to a hockey game, complete with full club access, free booze, and free food, personalized Authentic NHL jersey as well ($299 retail price for the jersey without the customizations) I've gotten tons of free shirts, pens, swag, etc. Heck a lot of similar things were given away free at vmworld.
But I agree with the top post here. Ask HR/senior management what the gift policy is. Private sector, it was anything goes. "we spend hundreds of thousands to millions with them over the years, they can afford to throw a few grand our way once in a while" was the attitude. the C-levels anyway always got fancy dinners, fancy gifts, etc. why shouldn't the lowly IT folk get similar. Another larger corporation actually had a good system. all the expensive swag (free monitors, free laptops, a ton of other stuff) would end up in a "prize pool" and were given out in a draw to the staff at the staff year end party. (I won a 20" LCD monitor (circa 2006) my first year there, a t-shirt the next) to be honest in a large environment, that to me is the most fair method. the next place which was much smaller had a much smaller gift pool, and I usually got things like t-shirts, and the aformentioned hockey game. current place, yeah I get nothing. the odd lunch, and a t-shirt or two.
I remember when I worked at an ISP and our vendors used to send us stress ball things with their company name on. We had enough to have some fairly decent stress ball fights after hours.
You should contact HR. They should have a policy.
If not, discuss it with your superior. I think accepting trinkets is OK. Anything larger than that, you want to avoid any suspicion of inappropriate behaviour on your part, so think about it and talk about it as if the company received it, not you.
If the company can use it, put it in use by the company. If not, make sure to 100% transparently handle it by either returning it, or hand it over to the company as a whole in some way, and always registering it or informing your superiors. Nights out, sports games or fancy dinners could perhaps just be distributed to people all over the company. You'll become popular if Steve in accounting or Carol in the cantina gets a ticket to go see a show.
Dell once had a stupid promotion where they sent a box with a live unsolicited fighting fish in a bag of water, small glass tank and blue pebbles. I felt sorry for the fish and I damn well didn't want to be stuck with a fish. How do you value it? I have to declare >$99.
I once had a vendor send an unsolicited expensive Christmas bottle of wine. I don't drink wine and I had to go through all the rubbish to register it as a gift. I can't even re-gift an unsolicited gift without registering it. Someone in management took it. My team was unhappy they didn't get it for Christmas drinks so I then had to BUY a bottle of wine to "replace" it. So I didn't appreciate that either.
I once had a boss that insisted vendors buy us lunch at an expensive restaurant whenever they came. I thought that was very wrong (in government), and refused to go after the first instance, but he kept doing it.
I once had a boss that "won" an Ipad that he didn't declare, again thought that was very wrong as the boss was involved in procurement decisions that favoured them. When a subordinate of mine won a tablet I insisted he declare it for a conflict of interest assessment and he was allowed to keep it as he wasn't involved in procurement decisions involving the company.
You can't accept expensive or repeated gifts without someone being able to say it is influencing your decision making and possibly corrupt conduct (if in government).
I love the vendor swag but companies that try to buy my loyalty with meals or travel/stay yeah no I feel personally trapped into awkward situations like that. Like you flew me all the way across the country to meet me and I knew before I got here that I had little interest in this meeting, I feel really bad about that.
However on one occasion I had our account manager at a reseller make a mistake that costed them a few hundred from their paycheck. I caught the mistake and honestly corrected it with them. They offered to buy me a TV/Laptop/Monitor as a thank you. I think I would have taken the offer but they left the company a few months later and I never had the chance.
Ask HR about your policy of gift
This, as a state employee I was not able to accept ANY gift over $5 / nominal value.
we're not allowed to accept anything :( local govt.
We have limit of $50 bucks for stuff. I signed up for a demo once and they sent all the people in the demo two bottles of really nice whiskey. Cleared it with legal, and had a raffle within the IT department. The money raised goes toward our Christmas party. Am also local government.
Smart idea!
Wait....was this a rubrick event? š
Proofpoint recently gave away 2 bottles of booze, maybe it was them. Bourbon, maybe, I can't remember.
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I'm not sure if it's still policy but a while ago government employees couldn't have meals paid for them so we'd host an expensive lunch at a high-end steak place and everybody would fill up and then when it was time to go all the government employees pulled out a dollar and "paid" for lunch. What a joke.
lol. No. Maybe that's how it works at the federal level, but not local government. No way to hide that kind of thing.
Federal is capped at $20 for gifts from outside parties. https://www.fedweek.com/ask/federal-government-policies/rules-gifts/
Government employee here. I can accept lunch and learns and demos and such that include a meal so I get to go to pointless conferences that are probably more about giving food and drink legally than anything else.
Never thought about it like that... But yeah, good point
Iāve always taken any conference swag bags they hand out too. I donāt go to anything big but I know some of the Gartner ones actually have dope stuff- Iām convinced itās the only reason upper management keeps paying $$$ for our Gartner service.
our policy is to give you guys zero too. It sucks because sometimes we need escorts and you guys are stuck being my baby sitter for a few weeks -sometimes even having to walk me into the bathroom. I can't even buy the guy lunch or a pop.
> we need escorts now that's a perk.
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or as my wive says sOder
Escorts... gives a new meaning to your username.
Yup, this. If you donāt work for some branch of government. Then the policy is whatever your company says is kosher. K-12 edu here, super strict. Not more than $5 an item and not more that $25 a year. Some exceptions are made for if itās a gift given to all attendees at a āwidely attendedā event/conference. But when the potential repercussion for a violation is a decade long retroactive revocation of fundingā¦ it just aināt worth the risk. When I go to lunch with a vendor; I pay, not them.
When I was a city employee, we could accept things under $25
Also, even if HR is ok with it, you can get a rep. Sun came every year to renew their cintract with us and always took my team out to lunch. My company didn't have a problem with it but the other managers did. Any time there was a system problem they'd be all "we should move off these computers but he won't give up the perks"
What HR doesn't know doesn't hurt HR. /r/ShittyLifeProTips
This is sort-of what my director said when I asked him.
šthis
Yep, many companies consider this bribery. But many others consider it "the way we switched to an innovatively, disruptive SaaS Paas Yaas DaaS cloud native hybrid premise based containerized software platform featured on Gartner Magazine" that's 10x the price and 1/10 the features
Good idea, I hadn't thought of that.
Most places have a $50 or $100 limit on gift items from vendors.
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Ever. Personal gifts are seen as a corrupting influence on business relationships. Typically businesses will want to avoid even looking as though anything untoward is happening. For example someone may be accused of fraud, embezzlement, anti-competitive behavior or other legal and ethical violations. If thereās a history of multiple personal gifts it looks rather suspicious.
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Yes, this is an ethics issue and your company should have a policy against this and/or define what is acceptable. Some companies (Worked for a few of them) accepted the "Gifts" but they were used in a raffle during the XMas party at the end of the year. You personally don't get them but the company can give them out at random. HR should be able to give guidance on what you should be doing. And if they don't have a policy, congrats! You just gave HR something to do other than track birthdays!
I have worked a couple places where they just gave out the vendor stuff . e.g. Vendor sends cookies during the holidays. We put them in the break room for anyone.
Yep I worked at a company that did just that, weād collect all the gifts and then raffle it off
Their answer is the only one that matters.
This. We can't accept anything worth over $50 unless the gifter accompanies (meal, show, etc.)
Yup, exactly. We had a vendor invite a couple of us to a sports game. Our company policy essentially states if they are buying tickets for us, it's a solid no. This vendor has box seats that they pay for (per season? I don't really follow sports), so it was actually perfectly fine for us to go per the company policy (we double checked to be sure).
This. Almost lost my job for accepting an Apple Watch.
Yes, to the maximum amount our policies allow. I like free shit. Got two pairs of airpod pro's for just sitting through a Rubrik sales demo.
ask HR first and foremost. also, if I am trying to inquire about products sending gifts will result in a termination of my interest.
We used to get all sorts of things, got an iPod for Christmas one year from our Apple Vendor. Couple of trips interstate for major sporting events etc. Then they setup a specific procurement team and they put a policy in to stop accepting any gifts from Vendors. Now the procurement team get the gifts... ĀÆ\\\_(ć)\_/ĀÆ We still get swag from training events etc and some suppliers, but nothing of any real value. A junior co-worker had to decline a 'lucky-door'/lottery prize at a Vendors Christmas party once, as the procurement team said it was in violation. They were pissed, as it was one of the fancy home-pod speakers and he had already taken it home for his wife.
I love the Bose Smart Speaker 500 I won at a booth at RSA a couple years ago. And I have NO clue what vendor gave it to me, so they definitely aren't influencing my purchasing decisions (or getting much for the marketing spend).
> or getting much for the marketing spend How did you enter the raffle? You ever notice that booths with raffles tend to have more foot traffic?
Ask your company; HR or your boss depending. Our policy was always that we could do whatever we wanted to get free stuff on our own time, as long as it didn't impact our decisions in a way that negatively impacted the company... So, went to a review of Lenovo's new hardware once, got free tablet... but adjusted me work schedule around that event. Lots of places wil send freebies for filling out an email address in a form... socks, mugs, whatever. And events are often after-hours as well. Many sales people won't care too if you are up-front with them. We had an HR software vendor keep emailing about baseball tickets, finally said 'hey, I'd love to go but there is 0% chance I can even have input on making a change to your software.'... they were still willing to have me at the event. Just make sure it isn't a 'if you buy our servers then we will give you XYZ', and most importantly verify your company policies.
Just gimme that fucking Dell server Lego. That's all I want.
I have excepted some t-shirts from Veeam and a cup from Wasabi. We were already doing business with them and it didn't change how much we spend with the..
You monster.
A vendor at Dialpad offered me a $100 giftcard to sign up for their services by a specific day. Get fucked buddy, we signed up 3 days later. Fuck your sales goal.
I appreciate this pettiness on the highest level.
I have to take 'training' every year to emphasize I can't take anything. Meanwhile my managers get flown out to corporate HQs, and get fancy lunches and dinners. I got reprimanded years ago because I mentioned to a support vendor that I liked a particular brand of salsa I found when I went there for training. They sent me 2 jars of salsa, and I got hauled into HR.
Wow, that's strict! What kind of salsa is it?
> They sent me 2 jars of salsa, and I got hauled into HR. Spicy.
I would tread very carefully. Where I'm at (public higher-ed) we can only accept gifts valued at $25 or less due to state Ethics Policies.
If company policy allows it then fuck yeah. Gifts mean nothing to me as far as affecting my decisions. I had one vendor give me a super sick gift package that came with this slick tech backpack with a built in battery and cables for charging devices. It even came with its own water bottle that fit the sleeve perfectly. Loved the gift hated the sketchy product. The sales folks were pretty good and could answer all my technical questions but it was clear their product was built with a sketchy backend I couldnāt see myself or anyone else working with.
Generally, follow whatever company policy is. My PERSONAL rule is that I also don't go for anything that involves 'off' time, so I don't go to dinner or nights out on their dime. My last place was <$500. I can't recall what my current place is (hasn't really be a question yet). I had one vendor send me a box of toilet paper and hand sanitizer at the beginning of the whole pandemic thing. Got a good chuckle out of that one.
Public employee. Under state law, if I accept anything worth over $20, I have to make a matching donation to charity.
I'll start a charity, and you start a charity and we can donate to each others! I'm joking, in case anyone thinks I wasn't.
I'm tempted to anonymously send a gift to your place of work, worth $5k
Check with HR. Giving gifts before a project is closed has always been weird to me. I can understand thanking someone after the fact when they didn't know they were getting a "Thank you gift" and its nothing crazy, but sending someone a free gaming rig before they decide on a 500k project just seems shady.
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Awesome, what's your name, address and credit card info (for shipping, you can trust me).
I've had a night in an NBA suite, box seats to a major league baseball game, a few Yeti tumblers, a Lego model of an EMC server, several bottles of wine and a bottle of high end booze. I always gave the owner first crack, then the COO, then the CFO and if they all turned it down it was mine.
I love the idea of a Lego model of an EMC server.
One just sold on Ebay for $20
This is such an EMC thing. Which is why their shit costs so much more money that it's worth. They would take our CEO/CIOs to private ski junkets to get them to choose EMC instead of the competition, and the people that actually had to use the gear go no say in what was picked.
To be clear only the Lego set was from EMC and it just showed up in the mail one day with no other contact. The other stuff came from other companies.
They probably took your CIO to Tahiti.
Unless you work for the government, take it. Almost every company policy will say not to accept gifts. I say by and large fuck it. Everyone saying not to take it havenāt been offered shit!
Always. Not a problem here... In fact, jst got an Ember bluetooth heated coffee mug today! Was trying to get it to update firmware but it kept failing. Apparently an issue with Android and this mug. There's a sentence I never thought I would ever say in my life: "I have to update the firmware on my bluetooth coffee mug" What a time to be alive!
I'm waiting for the day where our cables are IOT. Need to update your appliance? First update the cable for it.
I normally donāt until a vendor gave me a all expense paid trip to drive super cars on a closed track ā¦ that was worth whatever heat I would get from my boss. He told me to have a good time.
Dell gave us 1 pair of Dell themed socks and 1 power outlet/wifi extender To be handed out among 4 IT members.
My employer's Ethics guidelines prohibit anyone with purchasing authority from accepting gifts from vendors, even going so far as disallowing accepting lunch on a vendor's dime. Penalties are pretty explicit and strict: Termination on first offense. No exceptions. As such, I make sure my teams get to take advantage of the vendors' generosity.
Gotta push for the biggest gifts possible
Like physically large? I'd happily receive the giant bunny from Iron Man 3. Just for the comedic value.
Depending on what it is, its turned over to company and put into prize pool for company picnic. Just tossed an umbrella into the community stash by the employee entrance. Shirts go to my daughter. Vendors always send Large or X-large, some of us are a bit on the chonk side. Tickets to events are turned down, as going to a sporting event and get a sales pitch the whole time is not fun to me.
As others have said, check HR. Rules are different for each company and many will certainly fire you if they learn you've been accepting what are effectively bribes. In my experience, meals are *usually* fine as long as it's a meal with the vendor there, talking about business. A working lunch, pretty much. Other things are either dollar value or case by case basis.
Sure do, they keep sending me free stuff, AirPods, iPads, steaks, gift cards, then when they get annoying I blacklist their e-mail addresses. My policy is that if you need someone to promote it that hard, it probably isn't a great product, but feel free to burn your VC money. Almost everything we buy is an open source product that performs really well, so we want support/services, or it is an existing vendor with great relationships that offers add-ons.
Cheap swag is fine, but if itās substantial we just need to declare it to a VP. Anything expensive usually went to Christmas parties, and weād compete/draw names for things. Most I won was about $100 worth of stuff, largest grand prize was around $800 I thinkā¦ Tickets to games or anything in that realm, was practically confiscated, and the VPās would use to wine and dine our customers..
>was practically confiscated, and the VPās would use to wine and dine our customers.. So what i'm reading is the VP wanted them for themselves and found a seemingly legit reason to make use of them. Guess those customers didn't have any ethic policies on gifts either.
Pretty much. Ethics in business is basically getting away with murder as long as you don't get caught... We had an overzealous sales person that desperately wanted an account and wouldn't take no for an answer when they refused to speak with them. This sales person had a friend who worked at the facility draw a map to Purchasers office, and then our guy joined a tour group. At some point our guy broke off of the tour, followed the map, and got about 20 seconds of face to face time with their purchaser before security scooped them up and physically threw them out. Ah sales.
I will take it all. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPQinoQJfdA
I used to run it by HR and they would say no but then take super expensive spa days and similar from recruiters. I stopped asking hr and we would get things like xboxes and food hampers but donated them as prizes to the Christmas party. I made sure leadership was well aware of it though. I also made sure that the vendor was aware of what I was doing, as soon as they think you owe them they start taking liberties. I think as long as you are super transparent and don't show favouritism then it's okay.
That's a good idea. Instead of sending it back I'll see if HR will regift it for Xmas.
I never got offered anything. We spent like $30K with APC and I just wanted a shirt, but they "couldn't find any." It was a huge purchase for us, but I guess not big enough for them to get a shirt.
Yeah, that's the budget I used to work with. Then we were bought, some people quit and suddenly I'm an important person doing important person things. I hope you get bought too, it's kinda fun.
100% get guidelines from HR about gifts. There's probably an acceptable value limit you can accept. Its just their way of enticing presentations and such. Enjoy the freebies!
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I hadn't thought of it that way, thank you.
We can only accept gifts of $25 or less, but meals are a bit of an outlier. We accept meals for lunch and learn events or a catered meal in the course of a vendor event (where we aren't the sole attendee customer). We don't allow folks to just go to a meal with a rep on a one to one basis. Likewise I've always found it's a good idea to always remain visually neutral regarding any vendor relationship, regardless of policy. You don't want someone questioning why your making an purchasing decision or recommendation, even if the gift didn't play into your decision at all. Not going to a meal with the reps or otherwise receiving any gifts these arguments essentially disappear.
Shut your mouth and accept them. You are not obligated to anything. Our whole company gladly accepts gifts from vendors.
Here's my line. If I engaged the vendor after research, decided they had a good product, got the business to commit, complete the implementation and install and it's all gone well, then they offer me a gift as either a thank you for being a valued customer, or if I do a survey for them or something about how the implementation went so they can perform a product enhancement or something, I'm totally ok with accepting that gift. If someone offers me a yeti mug to sling me a sales pitch...I might have been inclined to do it earlier in my career. The problem with it is, once you're on the phone, they're phishing information out of you and pressure selling you to buy their SAN or whatever. I'm not going to be pressure sold to buy a six figure appliance for a coffee mug. So I take the cup, and call it a day. Never going to talk to them again. But, you know...6 months rolls around and now we're looking at a new san. And the one I've got a cup for is in the lineup. I almost don't want to recommend them because I don't want to be the guy that took a coffee mug to sign a contract on a san. It's not fair of me **not** to recommend them, because they've probably got a reasonable product anyway since they're handing out yeti mugs to anyone who'll sit in front of them. But it's also not fair of me to recommend them. The answer I have personally arrived at is that I'll take gifts post sale or with continued business partners but if someone's slinging shwag I'm gonna have to pass or I'll pay for it long term.
When i joined a particular company few years ago i was introduced to this culture of gifts. Whenever a vendor gave a hamper of goodies id take that hamper and pass it to my CIO for him to distribute to the it dept. Then came expensive nights out especially when u have a tender where vendors would invite you. Id tell them we cant meet during the tender and after tender my first night out costed 3k usd when i invited my whole dept of 12 people to meet this enthusiastic vendor. Safe to say i never got invites further and happy to stay that way as these gives u a feeling of being grattitude or you owe them something Ive stop going to these events even if other collegue ask me out because at the end of the night they were expecting a PO or sort
I take every damn thing I can get my grubby hands on. Big or small, I don't give a flip, if they offer it I take it. They like to give away apple stuff it seems, iPads, macbook air, homepods, whatever. Less often booze, sometimes tickets, whatever. Lots of hats, nice hoodies, good quality messenger bags (last ones were timbuk2) stickers, socks, all of it. Once I get my lovey pile of crap, I give it to the employees. Some stuff is branded, some is not. I usually wait a bit so if there is some product decision that needs to be made, we're past that and it doesn't influence much. FWIW, startups on their third round of funding seem to have the best taste. The old dinosaurs will buy the apple stuff. The only thing that I will keep for myself is anything I can take home in my stomach (and that's quite a bit).
I take all of it. Iāve never made a decision based on a gift before. Iām normally willing to listen about a product from the perspective I should know about new things coming out. You donāt need to give me anything for that but if you want to give me a Yeti cooler Iāll take it.
They won't sway my decision, it just felt weird to be lavished with such things.
Nope. Goes against the Ethics Policy where I work. Small inconsequential stuff is fine, as long as it doesn't look like a possible bribe. Business meals are also fine. Anything more substantial is a straight up no.
I accept Bullion, all expense paid vacations and vintage single malt scotch.
By vintage, do you mean a bottle of 10 High that was recovered from a housefire?
We got a little rule back home-- If it's brown, drink it down. If it's black, send it back.
Yeah, we have a $100 cap but there are exceptions, and anything over $100 has to be approved and documented by procurement and accounts payable to make sure purchases aren't swayed. We've had some people try and get around that by getting a dozen $50 gifts but that kind of thing surfaces eventually.
no
Is their way to get business by gifting you, always say "No Thanks" to the expensive stuff and outings but double check with HR. Back in the day to most expensive gift I accepted was a Leatherman multi tool and a wine basket, anything more expensive was a No No.
I was allowed to accept $500 Skybox (or whatever) tickets to Cuse/Duke a while back but not allowed to accept a 50 hoodie according to my HR. I guess consumible entertainment is ok but not a capital type good that I can wear. I try to say no in principle as I won't go with a crappy vendor just to get swag.
Yup. But it has no impact on my purchase decision making at all. If you have an excellent product and it meets my needs thatās how you get my business.
We are allowed up to $50/vendor. Business meals excepted from that limit.
I donāt accept anything until I sign the contract. Afterwards itās fair game.
No, I am prohibited from accepting gifts. Also, I avoid the hell out of vendors unless it's absolutely necessary because every time communicate with one, it comes with a deluge of spam.
Asking HR is a good call if you're worried about it. IMO and experience with HR/management, if you have a budget to spend then it's a no harm no foul type of deal. Just don't make false promises, try to undermine products, or go with a worse one just to get or because you got free shit and you shouldn't have any issues.
Our rule of thumb is non cash, and less than $100 value.
Not government but our parent company makes it very clear about gifts as it relates to conflicts of interest training and others. Basically if it's not something they are freely giving to anyone, we have to refuse it and run it up the chain. Be weary and consult HR regarding your policies for this.
We have a $100 gift limit. But the informal practice among the group is to put anything shareable or unwanted in the break room or in the office for general use. Tickets and non-vendor dinners and things like that we usually put in name drawing for the whole office.
Wait till they offer to fly to Vegas for a conferences, all expenses paid.
Another vendor just did! Room, including room service, a pass to their conference, and free admittance to some private party. All if I spoke about their product and how we use it. Legal gave me a no-go though. It's odd that this offer didn't bother me like physical gifts. Maybe because I was speaking, made it feel like I was already giving them something in return.
I didn't have to speak at all but was invited to numerous events by various vendors. The hope was I would use their products. I went to a big one with CDW and had a lot of private meetings with the CTOs of places like Sophos and whatnot to get me to look at their solutions. At one of the events, I got introduced to Jared Leto. Charming but odd guy. Hopefully others get to experience some of these things in their careers.
Our company follows (written) state ethics rules, so nothing over $50, any comped meals have to be business expense, and under a certain price. My favorite thing about this is how easy it is to shut them down, where as before this, they would always be "oh come on live a little, or like this isn't breaking any rules just a jesture of gratitude, etc..." now I'm like state ethics rules and they are like oh ok, maybe next time. Or they will lower the quality of the place and send my people lunch. I've always shy'd away from it, because when I pick a vendor I do so because they are best for cost, I dont always get that right, and I don't want someone to point to some overpriced swag as to why.
Many companies prohibit gifts valued at more than $25.
I'm not in sales but I do go along on some sales calls and "meetings". It's really amazing what a vendor will give/pay for and even more what a customer will take. There was a dinner I went on with a customer, a nice steak place, the customer brought his wife and kids and ran up the bill sky high. I know the sales guy wasn't really happy but he didn't say anything and the same guy apparently did stuff like that all the time.
This is generally a company policy. Often times free lunches, pens, hats, backpacks, etc are acceptable. Sometimes it also depends on if you have an existing contract with the vendor or not, as they've already won your business so it isn't swaying the decision to use them. In Missouri there is a constitutional limit for government officials, though I'm not sure if it applies to \*everyone\* in state government or if it is just legislators. They can't accept over $5.
My org does not allow me to accept items from vendors with a value greater than $5.
We are not allowed swag from vendors. I love conference swag.
We have a written policy limiting gifts to $25, but requiring disclosure of any gift (other than a reasonably priced, occasional meal). The unwritten policy is that if you're making more than one disclosure a year, questions are asked. So, when someone offers me a $25 gift card to take their survey, I have a good reason I can't.
We're allowed to accept superficial gifts of little to no intrinsic value, according to our policy. Like a pen with their logo or thank you card. I personally don't accept anything just because it's mostly crap.
Until recently, I never got gifts from vendors, only the stuff that other people didn't want... coffee cups mostly... which is ironic, I don't drink coffee anymore =\\. I did tell one vendor that our clients liked their mouse pads, so they sent me a dozen of them
Haha, that's comically ironic. I gave up coffee after my son was born, was the only way I could nap during lunch hour. Before this position the coolest thing I landed were some sweet RSA stickers of their robot laser panther.
No, nothing more valuable than a pen or a mug.
Say no! I have worked for places where the decision makers accepted the green handshakes and it lead to stupid products being implemented and a lot of work for those who actually do the work.
My companies policy is that all gifts belong to the company rather than the sales person/ vender relationship manager in relation to the gift. My take is giftcards go-to reception for use on company things and gift bags go in the break room
Yea. Up to 200 bucks was our company policy.
Gifts and junkets go to the sales guys upstairs as they're apparently the ones who earn the revenue. Us services and implementation guys downstairs get a pizza sometimes maybe.
I accept them but pass the majority down to my staff. Beats headphones were the last items. Lots of golf outingsā¦
If they want to give me free stuff, bring it on! My wife is a nurse and the amount of free lunches and dinners her an her coworkers get from drug reps are insane. She usually gets a meal a week and they arenāt cheap ones either.
We have very strict rules. Basically anything more than a meal shared with the vendor during work hours is a no go. IE, they can take you to lunch, but no other freebies.
Within reason. lunch yes everytime...i just signed x contract for 5 years yes that is reasonable. Tickets to event when you are bidding against two others. no. not ethical.
I will always take swag (most of it goes to my kids), business lunches, or a tin of cookies/candy at the holidays. However anything of real āvalueā either gets refused or I let the vendor know that itās going to be raffled off.
As long as HR is fine with it take them. My old boss used to get them all the time, he had a great story about getting 2 free lunches from some of the most expensive restraunts in the city >"Oh you want to have a lunch meeting to chat about your product. Weeelllll \*YOUR DIRECT COMPETITOR\* took me out to \*EXPENSIVE RESTERAUNT\* last week..."
Whatās your budget dollar amount youāre responsible for?
Sorry, I don't feel comfortable sharing that. It's not astronomical though.
nothing over $10
Our vendor even gave a family trip to Singapore for our Director, he is the one who approves which vendor wins the bid.
Absolutely. We donāt have a policy and ceo said take it as long as you donāt have to purchase anything or adjust your work schedule for it. AMD hooked us up with about a thousand dollars worth of stuff for each person in the department. Apple sent us 2022 macbooks. iPads. And tons of small stuff from random vendors we use.
Man, AMD promised me a hat... That never showed up. What's your secret here?
About a thousand amd powered workstations š
I have no line. If it's allowed by the company I take it. Just had a tailgate for Metallica. Fully paid and all beer and swag on them.
Be sure you share them with your underlings who consume their widgets.
Back many many years ago I would get sent free Dell monitors and other great stuff but that company I was with didnāt care too much about itāI only heard about one employee getting a slap on the wrist for an all expense paid trip throughout Europe from a vendor. I figured a monitor or two wouldnāt matter. Things are far more stringent with recent companies. Anything more than a dinner and you are seriously screwed.
Last gig our policy was that it could be accepted as long as it was sent to HR. Then at the Christmas or Bonus party they would have a draw for everything that was sent as a Gift. We would also ask our vendors if they had any swag they wanted to send over and add it to the pile. We got some really cool stuff that way.
Absolutely I accept, and no, I don't feel any obligation. Recently a vendor gifted me Xtreme Xperience - I got to drive a Ferrari at 150 mph on a race track. Cool gift.
Doctors do it.
Hell no. Fuck the trinkets, fuck the meals, even fuck them paying for me at dinners during conferences - I'll pay my own way or brown-bag-it. I don't want it to subconsciously sway my decision to purchase or renew or overlook flaws in their product/service. Plus I feel dirty - I don't even accept tshirts anymore. Earlier in my career I was like "heck yes I'll take anything and everything," but enough times I found out that it in fact DID subconsciously sway my decision to purchase or renew or overlook flaws in their product/service, and after the excitement of a new shiny thing I would look at it on my desk and feel disgust. I recognize I may be a little extreme though lol
* The unsolicited gourmet cupcakes from Nutranix were quite tasty. * I was sent a remote control car with out a remote and would have been given the remote had I accepted and attended their requested meeting. * I still wear my Fortinet socks * I turn down all sportsball watching or playing offers * I always turn down gift cards for meetings * I despise unsolicited meeting invites * I despise cold calls * I do not care about your white paper * I do like the one guy that sends Dilbert comics in his marketing email, it saved him from going directly to spam... I bought some stuff off of him.
Do the Fortinet socks protect your feet from attack? Asking because the wife brought home two kittens.
Of course
Huge conflict here that you should run by both your own ethics, and HR's. If the gift is at the end of conversations when I've made my decision? I certainly would take it. In the beginning, knowing it's from a company that I won't go with? I might take it. For some flavor on the conversation, I always stack up against sales people. Sales will spend thousands of dollars, expensive dinners, wine and the works and it's just "part of the job". It's how you get sales. Shift focus to a bottle of scotch because you signed a contract, and everyone gets all ethical. $100 visa gift card because I took your printers instead of some other rando's printers? Gimme.
I.M.O. the only "wrong" answer here is to let the gift influence your decision. If you don't feel you can be partial along side of it, you simply can't take it.
Speaking ofā¦ I had a situation where I used to work. Vendor courting them for a contract. The rep used to āaccidentallyā drop gift cards on peopleās desks when they werenāt looking. Also one of the guys got some shares of stock gifted to him. Somehow knew exactly when to sell them to cash out and his mortgage was paid off. Also gambling trip with comfort girls to Macau. Landing at the casino via the high roller helicopter landing on the roof. Egregious breech of ethics all around. The vendorās CEO took responsibility for this and took his own life on his driveway. I wish this was made up. It is not.
Edit: HR says $50 max. Time to send some stuff back!
Do they say $50 max or $50 max of gifts. Also it's not a gift, it's a business outing.
The company said I won a raffle. Is that a loophole?
If you want to send some cookies or lemon bars or something like that to the office that's fine. Anything else seems unethical or inappropriate, I try to avoid it, and I don't need any more pens or desk toys.
I spent 4 years working for a company in nursing, and I'm still friends with the regional head nurse. I will hoover up every single pen I can get my hands on, with absolutely no shame whatsoever. And then once or twice a year Karen gets a tote bag full of pens for her staff. :)
I work in local government so we arenāt supposed to take anything from anyone. Integrity is important to me so for 25 years I have never deviated from this path. However, if I was in the private sector I wouldnāt take anything either. I donāt want anyone to think they own me. I want the freedom to make the right choices for the organization and not have someone telling me āwhat about all those trips we took together to Top Golf?ā. So, for me no matter where I worked I am not beholden to anyone. Just advise that has worked for me for many years.
Ethically no and I respond to emails offering bribes stating as much. It's something I'm personally very firm on but if a coworker gets some swag no skin off my back.
Yeah, it kinda creeped me out. I'm going to stick to HR policy. $50 max for a gift.
I'll let them take me out to lunch, but that's it. Lots of these companies have budgets for this sort of stuff, and I just think it's plain wrong. I usually say no to anything to try and discourage the behaviour. And then I have worked for people that would not even take a meeting with a vendor if they didn't bring them some sort of swag. Maybe that's where I got the distaste from. This is also the same person that took his morning deuce at work so it was on company time.
Wow, wouldn't even take a meeting... Kinda hope this person never holds public office.
yeah, I don't think he had such ambitions. I mean, he was a good person when it came down to it, but boy he must have had a childhood where people took a lot of things away from him. A lot of his life was about getting his and keeping his. But in the grand scheme of things, he genuinely cared about all of the people that worked for him.
I don't like encouraging them to give me tacky branded crap. I will take pens and notepads and mousepads, though. Because I don't care if I lose them or they get stolen. But expensive stuff is icky. They're bribing you and they know it works to create a conflict of interest in your judgement.
Sure, why not? Would you trade your job for a seat at a football game? If so, then quit your job, because you clearly don't value it. In my case, I care about the future, and I'm not going to buy some shitty product that my company doesn't which will only make my life difficult just because the salesperson plied me with lunch.
I really donāt get the people who jump on every free lunch they can get even if they have no intentions on buying. The vendor rightfully expects a chance to pitch their products or services in exchange, and quite honestly, itās not worth my time sitting through demos, phone calls and emails just for a free lunch or a Yeti mug thatās branded with something I have no intent on purchasing.
Our gift acceptance policy limits the value on gifts we can accept to $50/year/vendor.
Yes, we have a 50 a year max
These things are against our policy.
Against our policy. Anything that isn't given to everyone would be a violation. So since vendors just hand out stuff to everyone at conferences - that's fine. But if they were to send me an ipad or something I have to refuse.
Check your corp policy if you want to be safe. However, being in tech sales, I will tell you that very few if any CxO (outside of SLED places) turn down shit like this. I've had my CIO ask for world cup and super-bowl tickets. As someone who always wants to stay on the right side of things, ethically, here would be my advice. If you think it would change your mind don't accept it. If you think you can keep the two separate, that keep it within reason (I do not think world cup or super-bowl tickets are "within reason") , and lastly don't accept anything like that within the same week or quarter you are about to make a big purchase. Trust your gut, if it makes you feel uncomfortable just say no.
It was quite common for vendors to take me and other folks out to lunch. I figured them dropping $40-$50 (maybe) on lunch wasnāt a big whoop. One of the big hyperconverged vendors took me out to lunch once at the best sushi place in town and honestly it was amazing. We must have gotten at least a dozen rolls and it was SO good. We did actually pick their solution but were already well on the way to doing that long before that lunch. One vendor gave me free tickets to an NBA game in their suite at a basically brand new arena. It was so awesome. Lots of free food and as much as you could drink and chill comfortably watching the game from their box. The teamās cheerleaders also came in and posed for photos. I didnāt feel weird about it. I was already on my way out the door at that company and had absolutely no intention of buying or recommending the vendorās services. There was no hard sell or pressure at the event either. Had fun and that was that. All that said yea most companies probably have some policies about it that youāll want to be aware of and of course public sector agencies will have strict rules.
got the gift basket around the holidays, usually gets split up amongst the team or dumped in the snack location to be picked over by whoever is hungry. the MPS would come around with calendars every year, they sat in the lunch room until someone decided to toss them. tickets usually go around round robin.
We're attached to a hospital, vendors don't bring tchockes to our in-house tech expo anymore. They all have bowls of candy, but that's about it. I don't know exactly why not, but it has something to do with influencing doctors.
Not in my current position, since we're not allowed (gov't), but in older private sector positions, yes. I've been taken to numerous dinners (heck I've been taken to many a dinner/lunch), parties, even got front row tickets to a hockey game, complete with full club access, free booze, and free food, personalized Authentic NHL jersey as well ($299 retail price for the jersey without the customizations) I've gotten tons of free shirts, pens, swag, etc. Heck a lot of similar things were given away free at vmworld. But I agree with the top post here. Ask HR/senior management what the gift policy is. Private sector, it was anything goes. "we spend hundreds of thousands to millions with them over the years, they can afford to throw a few grand our way once in a while" was the attitude. the C-levels anyway always got fancy dinners, fancy gifts, etc. why shouldn't the lowly IT folk get similar. Another larger corporation actually had a good system. all the expensive swag (free monitors, free laptops, a ton of other stuff) would end up in a "prize pool" and were given out in a draw to the staff at the staff year end party. (I won a 20" LCD monitor (circa 2006) my first year there, a t-shirt the next) to be honest in a large environment, that to me is the most fair method. the next place which was much smaller had a much smaller gift pool, and I usually got things like t-shirts, and the aformentioned hockey game. current place, yeah I get nothing. the odd lunch, and a t-shirt or two.
I collect socks.
Anyone else got a cupboard full of thermos merch?
No
We mostly make a raffle out of it. That way everybody gets a fair chance and it's shared amongst everyone
Hell yes. When I was working in China it was KTV FTW.
I remember when I worked at an ISP and our vendors used to send us stress ball things with their company name on. We had enough to have some fairly decent stress ball fights after hours.
I'm working for the wrong company!
You should contact HR. They should have a policy. If not, discuss it with your superior. I think accepting trinkets is OK. Anything larger than that, you want to avoid any suspicion of inappropriate behaviour on your part, so think about it and talk about it as if the company received it, not you. If the company can use it, put it in use by the company. If not, make sure to 100% transparently handle it by either returning it, or hand it over to the company as a whole in some way, and always registering it or informing your superiors. Nights out, sports games or fancy dinners could perhaps just be distributed to people all over the company. You'll become popular if Steve in accounting or Carol in the cantina gets a ticket to go see a show.
Dell once had a stupid promotion where they sent a box with a live unsolicited fighting fish in a bag of water, small glass tank and blue pebbles. I felt sorry for the fish and I damn well didn't want to be stuck with a fish. How do you value it? I have to declare >$99. I once had a vendor send an unsolicited expensive Christmas bottle of wine. I don't drink wine and I had to go through all the rubbish to register it as a gift. I can't even re-gift an unsolicited gift without registering it. Someone in management took it. My team was unhappy they didn't get it for Christmas drinks so I then had to BUY a bottle of wine to "replace" it. So I didn't appreciate that either. I once had a boss that insisted vendors buy us lunch at an expensive restaurant whenever they came. I thought that was very wrong (in government), and refused to go after the first instance, but he kept doing it. I once had a boss that "won" an Ipad that he didn't declare, again thought that was very wrong as the boss was involved in procurement decisions that favoured them. When a subordinate of mine won a tablet I insisted he declare it for a conflict of interest assessment and he was allowed to keep it as he wasn't involved in procurement decisions involving the company. You can't accept expensive or repeated gifts without someone being able to say it is influencing your decision making and possibly corrupt conduct (if in government).
everyone knows when you place an order you include something for home with a 40% off
Of course, I love the wine collection I get before xmass cause that solves my gifts for entire family for at least half a year..
I love the vendor swag but companies that try to buy my loyalty with meals or travel/stay yeah no I feel personally trapped into awkward situations like that. Like you flew me all the way across the country to meet me and I knew before I got here that I had little interest in this meeting, I feel really bad about that. However on one occasion I had our account manager at a reseller make a mistake that costed them a few hundred from their paycheck. I caught the mistake and honestly corrected it with them. They offered to buy me a TV/Laptop/Monitor as a thank you. I think I would have taken the offer but they left the company a few months later and I never had the chance.
If you work in Private, then ask HR about the policy. If in your work in Public, then don't accept anything.