Company Coffee Mugs

How many of you faithful readers work for a company that gives you a free coffee mug with the company logo on it?

I was telling my story today out on the smoking deck. (Yes, we have one of those.)

I am an indefinite "temp." Why? I don't have clue, but supposedly I have job security. Anyway, I didn't get a coffee mug OR a welcome package, so one day when there were no paper cups, I complained to one of my co-workers (a permanent) who volunteered to go get me a mug.

She delivered. She came back with a mug AND a story. The guys in the mugroom told her they don't give mugs to temps. They sell them for $5.00 on the company website.

Well, excuse me. I am booking half a million dollars a week in media for a major telecommunications giant client and you won't give me a friggin $5.00 mug?

How much do you expect me to do for you? Or to put it more succinctly, how well trained are you in customer service?

I think I smell a rat.

But as I was telling this story to a co-worker who is permanent, he said, "But you degrade it for the rest of us."

He's not an asshole, it was tongue-in-cheek. But it sounds and smells like asshole to me.

My perception problem, MY perception problem.