Quotes of the Day

When Sophie, a financial analyst in Paris, learned that her bank would lay off 50 employees by this summer, she didn't react by mailing out résumés or trying to ingratiate herself with her managers — she scheduled arthroscopic knee surgery. "I'm doing it now because I won't be able to if I wait and lose my job," says the 27-year-old, who, fearing questions from her employer, spoke with TIME on condition of anonymity. By going under the knife ahead of her potential job loss, Sophie can use the firm's supplementary health insurance to cover the $4,000 procedure. As she says: "Insurance is one of the parts of having a good job you take for granted until you realize you may lose it all."

Sophie isn't alone. As the global economy continues to tank — the U.S. shed 663,000 jobs in March, and millions of jobs are disappearing from Madrid to Mumbai — employees are scurrying to exploit company benefits while they have them, scheduling dental exams, indulging in massages, utilizing company-covered therapists and buying bicycles at discounted rates. "People are petrified," says Dai Williams, an occupational psychologist at Eos, a career-consulting firm in the U.K. "It's a question of grabbing what you can while you can." (See 25 people to blame for the financial crisis.)

Dentistry is among the services most in demand. "I've had patients come in and say, 'I want to make sure I use all my insurance benefits before the end of the year," says Woody Oakes, a dentist in New Albany, Indiana, and editor of The Profitable Dentist magazine. "Ireland, the U.K., Brazil — dentists everywhere are telling me the same thing." Along with their smiles, employees are also rushing to look after their sight: Specsavers, a U.K. eyeglasses retailer with 12,000 corporate clients, saw year-on-year growth of 40% in 2008, despite the downturn. Corporate insurance provider CIGNA UK expects claims to jump as the crisis worsens. Says marketing director Ann Dougan: "People take a more proactive approach to their health when they worry they could lose private coverage."

We've been here before. Graham Farquhar, a partner in Ernst & Young's employment tax division, says the mad rush "is reminiscent of what we saw during the downturn in 2001," with employees suddenly acting on perks they may have forgotten were on offer. Katarina, who lost her marketing job with a cosmetics firm in Frankfurt, joined a gym before her last day to secure a corporate discount, which saves her $40 a month. "I've been unemployed for the past month but my gym membership is still the rate of a working person's," she says.

And workers are exploiting unofficial benefits, too. At Katarina's cosmetics company, management traditionally tolerated employees pocketing the occasional beauty product. Once the crisis kicked off, people started taking home more — and more expensive — freebies. "It was pretty widespread, from interns all the way to vice presidents," says Katarina, admitting that she stuffed her purse with anti-wrinkle cream in the weeks before her departure.

Losing one's job can make enjoying the last few benefits more difficult, of course. Jim, an American communications executive in Paris, began studying French on his company's dime last fall, and in February upped the frequency of lessons from two to four days a week after learning he would be let go in May. "It's pretty hard to stay motivated when you're facing a total blank in two months," he says. But at least now he can add language skills to the résumé he'll be passing around.

See pictures of the global financial crisis.

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• WILLIAM LEE ADAMS
• Around the globe, employees are hurrying to use up work-related entitlements before they lose them