A pet peeve

One marketing strategy we have here at work is to give some of our product away free. However, since no one has developed a way to make a profit off of giving things away, we try to be very judicious in our decisions about who will get free items. Almost every day, we get these "I have a job, give me free shit" letters. The letter-writers do not want to see our product so that they can decide whether to make their students buy 50 of them; they have not been ordered by their bosses to write up a review of our product. No, all they have going for them is a job and a huge sense of entitlement. This makes me irrationally angry. I do not write letters to Kroger asking them to give me free groceries because I have a job. I do not waltz into Walgreens with a request on letter-head for them to give me free contact solution because it's expensive and I have a job. But the thing I hate the worst about the whole "I have a job, give me free shit" attitude is that it's rarely, if ever, the grad students and junior faculty who are running around expecting us to hand out product just for fun. No, it's the senior faculty who've made names for themselves or gotten installed as department chairs or center coordinators--the ones with some money in their pockets--who act as if I should be flattered that they'd deign to ask for something of ours. This, America, is one thing fucked up about our country. Everybody bitches about how much free shit poor people get, and the richer and more famous folks get, the more free stuff they feel entitled to. I'm beginning to suspect that "conservatives" cut federal funding for free shit for poor people not out of any sense of fiscal responsibility, but out of a fear that, if everyone's getting free shit, no one will be able to tell who the really powerful people are. No, they must reserve the right to expect and get free shit all for themselves.