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Land of the Free, Home of the Perk

By N. R. KLEINFIELD

The NY Times, September 22, 2002

Vincent Laforet/The New York Times

Corporate perks are like hard currency in New York. How about a ride home in a limo? Don't forget to call the family, wake up the kids and have them waiting outside to watch.

Jack Welch, what have you done?

It's not the mess with the other woman, the prickly divorce proceedings, all that. New Yorkers can handle divorce just fine.

It's the perks, the thing with the perks.

Oh, it got worrisome in recent weeks with all the hoo-ha about Mr. Welch's meaty retirement package from General Electric that showered him with a rather wondrous conglomeration of perks, like a $15 million apartment facing Central Park, floor-level seats to the Knicks, Yankee tickets, a box at the Metropolitan Opera, use of the corporate Boeing 737, free flowers, free toiletries, free satellite TV at his four homes.

These days, unpaid-for excess doesn't play well. Corporate sovereigns walk on eggshells. Faced with stinging criticism, Mr. Welch surrendered most of the perks, which he insisted had been exaggerated anyway.

Ouch. Snubbing perks is easy for Mr. Welch to do. Even without G.E.'s wallet, he can pick up tickets to the Garden, handle the TV bill, no problem. But what about everyone else? Suddenly that all-too-treasured and wonderful nicety of New York life — the corporate perk — is being depicted as a little sleazy, a little insidious, a little, heaven forbid, undeserved.

Where might this lead? If your company hands you two free orchestra seats to "Thoroughly Modern Millie," are you going to have to worry that the feds might want a word with you? Is someone going to wind up in Rikers for accepting a basket of chocolate-covered macadamia nuts?

Is it necessary to start feeling bad about taking something for nothing?

Come on. If there's one thing New Yorkers thrive on, it's freebies. The way New Yorkers look at it, perks are something of an entitlement. They are practically a necessity. If you're not handed a little up-close-and-personal dazzle every now and then, courtesy of someone else, what's the point?

"I don't know if New York can survive without perks," said Howard J. Rubenstein, the Manhattan public relations man well schooled in the lore and love of perks.

In New York, if you have tickets to the World Series, people don't wonder how much you paid for them, they wonder if you paid for them. You rate only if you got them for zilch.

If you get a ride home in the corporate limo, you call the family, wake up the kids and have them waiting outside to watch.

"Perks have been a badge of honor," Mr. Rubenstein said. "For instance, if the seats you got at the U.S. Open or the opera were better than a competitor's, you would be boastful about them. People wear the perk openly."

New York, after all, is perk central. The city offers a long roster of seductions: the World Series every year at Yankee Stadium, the World Series every 20 years at Shea Stadium, the United States Open tennis tournament, restaurants with $50 hamburgers and $20,000 bottles of wine, the fashion shows, the MTV Video Music Awards, the Tony Awards, the theater premieres, the opera, the ballet, the triple-A-list parties, and on and on.

And it keeps getting better. A couple of weeks ago, one of the all-time great perks presented itself: the screening of new episodes of "The Sopranos" at Radio City Music Hall, followed by a party at the skating rink at Rockefeller Center, the cast members themselves swanning around.

You got a problem with that? Hello!

Every corporate manager fondly remembers the first time he got to sit in the corporate box at Yankee Stadium and watch the Yankees take another World Series. The boss was one seat over — and in shirt sleeves! After the game, Derek Jeter stopped by to say hi.

Something wrong with that? Are you out of your mind?

How are you going to eat at La Grenouille if someone else doesn't foot the bill?

It's not just a money thing, it's an access thing. It's getting close to one of New York's principal products: celebrities.

That means getting invited to a corporate party celebrating the entry into the wall socket business and there's Bono singing on the stage. There's all-you-can-eat caviar. There's Christy Turlington mingling with you.

Something wrong with that? Are you from Mars?

"Free is a wonderful thing," said Patty Ferris, an account manager at the ANC Rental Corporation, the parent of Alamo Rent a Car and National Car Rental. She gets a company car, a Chevy Impala, updated every year, the only car she owns or needs. "It's a really good perk, especially with gas prices being as high as they are," she said.

The last few years, she has been given tickets to National's skybox at the Buick Classic golf tournament in Westchester County. She took her mother, who loved it despite minuscule interest in golf. "It was premium food, premium drinks," Ms. Ferris said. "Former Mayor Giuliani came in."

And she periodically gets tickets to the Giants, right on the 50-yard line. "I'm a nonsports person," she confessed, "but I've been told those are good seats."

The perks puff her up. "Not only do these things make you feel special, it's the prestige," Ms. Ferris said. "You tell your friends you've got these free tickets, and they go, `Wow, that's really cool.' People are the way they are. They like to top other people. I am certainly a person who loves perks."

She has abundant company. "In New York, perks are the most powerful and seductive currency there is," said Steve Rosenbaum, the chief executive of Broadcast News Networks, an independent news production company. "One of the ones that gets shared and dangled with malice aforethought is tickets."

Just the other day, he said, he got an e-mail message indicating the possibility of two tickets to a celebrity-studded awards event and dinner. Before granting them, the giver wanted to know whom he would take. He promptly e-mailed back his candidate. The return message said there would be one ticket available for him.

"My friend didn't make the cut," he said. Would Mr. Rosenbaum still go? "Of course," he said. "Hey, it's every man for himself."

The perks Mr. Rosenbaum relishes are proximity to live events, like courtside seats. "If I go to a basketball game, I want to remember how tall those guys are," he said.

He's had that perk. He's had plenty of perks. Is he perked out? "No," he said, "I haven't had them enough to be comfortable with. I want more."

Perks are even part of the discussions in job negotiations. One candidate for chief executive of a corporation was insistent that the company get him a private jet or he wouldn't take the job. It was a deal breaker. Give me my plane! They gave him his plane.

Certainly perks can get out of hand. Certainly some people don't know where to draw the line. A number of years ago, a client invited a junior executive to a western-style event at Southfork, the ranch where the TV series "Dallas" was filmed. Great food. Great horses. But junior had to wring some more out of it. He decided to try to bill the client (unsuccessfully, as it turned out) for a $200 pair of designer jeans, a $75 checked shirt and a haircut.

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