Setting gifts aside for VIP customers is different that employees stealing samples for themselves, or to give to friends and family, which is not allowed in any workplace situation.
Company samples designed to give away to customers are not the same things as company gratis designed to help the employees understand the product so that they can pass that information on to the customer, even if it may look the same.
Back to the VIP thing - lots of places do that, both big retailers and small. We would call a book full of VIP customers to let them know in advance of sales, deals, promos, the like. We'd pull and set aside any specific pieces that they wanted. We'd give them any extra discounts that we knew about as well as any samples - this is how Rouge members, and also to an extent VIB members at
Sephora should be treated. But not giving samples is not the same thing as stealing and it really, really makes uncomfortable to read some posts that push that boundary. In the end, accusations like that could cost people their jobs, whether or not they deserve it, and that can have ramifications down that line that we can't even guess at. I worked in retail for nearly 20 years and I have
seen that happen. Anyways, I can't talk about this any more because it makes me too heated and that's not cool. ha ha, a pun.
/emoticons/
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As for the YSL perk, I don't see it anymore either! Aww... hope it comes back, it was the first perk I actually wanted in a long time!