I recently made the mistake of not asking upfront what the compensation and benefits package were for a company I was interviewing with and we only discussed benefits after receiving the tentative offer (lesson learned.) At that point, the hiring manager admitted that the benefits were poor but arrangements could be made to make things work.
Later that night I received an email from the manager's personal email address and was offered a number of things "under the table" or better put "undocumented" outside of the signed offer.
Is this act normal? Was I right to decline the position and further negotiations on this ground?
I would have loved to work in that position and on the projects he had lined up, but I'm confident this is some type of ethics violation that could be considered grounds for termination if discovered.
[The following is copied from a comment by the OP]
The amount of PTO I had initially asked for was offered off the books and that we'd make arrangements to use them outside of the current system. The current policy is that PTO is earned and I wouldn't accrue it until X amount of days. What bothered me was that I could not get this in writing and it was offered without HR being present or through an internal email address