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Giveaways

At work, I help out with the university recruiting efforts. As I like to joke, it's a self-defense effort to make sure that the coworkers around me know what they're doing. I'm a worker bee, so it's not like I am in a position to hire or fire people. So, I do the next best thing if I want to make life easy on myself at work: I try to help identify talented people as entry-level employees and interns. I figure if any percentage of them stick around, my work life is bound to get better.

The only reason I mention this is that this means I sometimes attend recruiting conferences. If you want to hire students, you go to the events that draw them in big numbers. There are a few of those every year, and I happened to be at one a few weeks ago. And as it just so happens, a particular moment stood out as flat out hilarious.

You see, we are not the only company that attends these conferences. Part of the reason why so many students attend some of these conferences is that there are lots of companies around. It's a great opportunity for us to find talent, and it's also a great opportunity for students to find internships and jobs. It's a win-win, basically.

Now, a fairly common practice at these conference is to give away some little gift. It sometimes attracts students ("I heard such-and-such company is giving away something good!"), it gives students something to remember you by, and it also acts as free advertising. If one student happens to be sporting something with your company's logo, other students are going to see it, and it might start conversations. Obviously different items and companies have varying levels of success with this, but such a common practice that companies will often barter their own giveaways to acquire other companies' giveaways.

The funny part about this is when the item itself can lead to odd conversations. In this case, one of the companies was giving away travel size containers of Vaseline. Yes, Vaseline. I didn't actually stop by their booth, but I thought I heard that the company responsible for this was the company that makes them. That more or less makes sense, so I can't exactly fault them for giving them away. It seems like a somewhat obvious choice. However, they were giving them away in sets. So you wouldn't just get one of them, you'd get like six of them. Essentially, you would get a LOT of Vaseline.

This can make for an ... interesting ... conversation when you consider that Vaseline has some not-safe-for-work uses. One of my coworkers actually decided to check in their luggage rather than having to explain to a TSA official why her bag was packed with a bunch of Vaseline containers. Sure, they were each under the legal limit, but it's still a bit eyebrow-raising to see the array of containers. I can't say I blame this person for wanting to just side-step that whole potential issue. The actual, truthful explanation would have seemed so convoluted as to have been made up, and I can only imagine the smirks it would have drawn.

To sum it all up, the lesson here is to be very, very careful when collecting giveaways, as they might lead to some very unexpected laughter.
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