How badly are you paid?
Don't really get it myself, I think typically such people are drastically undervaluing their time.
Me: I'm not doing DIY, I'd rather pay someone competent than waste my time and energy.
Also Me: I'm getting 100% of the value from this perk goddammit it's free stuff who turns down free stuff.
Your opinion is wide spread, but it erks me. "There's no such thing as a free lunch" is an adage millennia old, and true.
The rule is, nothing is free. Nothing. There are exceptions the rule, but that is exceedingly rare, and if you think you're onto one, it's probably a scam.
"strings attached" is another adage, and often you get "free", by having the strings attached to you.
E.g. I was at an 'all-inclusive' resort for work and some of my colleages seemed to think it was their duty to get as much value out of the meals as possible, even trying to calculate the actual cost of different dishes.
Of course it isn't "free" in the sense it is a result of work, but it is free in the sense it has no additional cost.
Source: finally realized that half the reason I went to technical talks that bored me was for free pizza and beer that were bad for me anyway
The brief stint I was at the company, the recruiter gave me tickets to the local professional baseball team that included access to premium suites and tickets to the local professional football team.
But yeah I get it, having a free meal wouldn’t mean much to me.
We weren’t going to hire contractors outside of that agency.
Heck, my manager asked me did I know someone with the same skillset I had, I had a friend who was looking for work and asked for a rate of $80/hour. They wouldn’t hire them directly. I had to negotiate with the recruiter and my manager until we also settled on paying the agency $120/hour to hire my friend so he could get $80.
No my manager also wasn’t responsible for choosing the agency. That was chosen on higher levels.