Food for thought

A lot of tech companies provide some configuration of food/beverage for their employees. Bare minimum table stakes is free coffee/tea (which is why I was gobsmacked on my first day at the non-profit a few years ago to find out they didn’t even do that). The next tier up is sodas and snacks (some array of junk food, usually) and possibly an on-site cafeteria where the meals are subsidized.

Then there’s the free food, full stop.

Hot-shot startups tout “community lunches!” and “catered dinners!”, which only means that they expect you to work through your lunch and far into the night. The megaliths like Apple and Facebook (and, once, Twitter) have multiple cafés and cafeterias serving varieties of cuisine from morning to night—all at no cost to staff and guests. Because otherwise you’d waste time getting in your car to go somewhere to eat and then come back.

That’s it, basically. They want to keep you on campus and producing; it's worth it to them to feed you.

In the before times, my current employer had the requisite reefers of soft drinks (both Coke and Pepsi products, plus juices, canned coffees and milk), coffee machines (Nespresso as well as something that disgorges coffee and latte-like beverages, only I’ve seen the innards of that mechanism, so I don’t use it), and walls of snacks (from Pop Tarts—although there are no toasters—to chips, cookies and energy bars).

Additionally, every Tuesday we had a hot lunch, catered from an array of restaurants. My first ever Tuesday there was brioches with eggs and bacon in them, as well as trays of bacon (and, of course, vegan and vegetarian alternatives). That was, hands down, the best ever—even better than the Indian, Mexican, barbecue and other ones.

(Additionally, there were almost always leftovers, so you could have lunch again the next day.)

I never had to worry about making dinner on Tuesdays. It was great.

Well, Covid put an end to that—primarily because everyone worked remotely. A few months after they re-opened the office, they had Tuesday lunches brought in, but it was all pre-portioned into sealed containers and, frankly, not very appetizing. Yeah—a couple of times were good, but it was mostly tasteless and not much of a variety. (The fruit cups were good.)

There were rumblings among the staff; that’s how bad they are.

I brought the remains of one lunch home and set it outside for the birds, squirrels and occasional fox. The meat disappeared overnight, the rice stayed for a couple of days and the broccoli was there for weeks.

Well, then came the acquisition by Megalithic Software Company, and they took over the food provision process. The array of canned coffees and types of milk in the reefers metastasized, the two coffeelike extrusion machines have been broken for weeks and the variety of snacks was decimated. But because it’s this company’s policy to feed their employees on site (see above about not wanting people to waste time away from the computer), they promised us we’d be getting hot lunches delivered to us every day (we have no cooking facilities in the office).

Well, that was the story, but then it was, oh—it’ll start later in the week. Then, it’ll start next week. That was three weeks ago, and they finally started it up yesterday.

With the same catering vendor, Tasteless R Us.

<Sigh>

I don’t know if this is permanent—how could it be when somewhere out there there’s a vendor who stuffs little brioches with eggs and bacon?—or what. I guess we’ll see.

On the plus side, they fill bowls with fruit. So far I’ve brought home five apples and made tarts, and yesterday I took two oranges, since they cost $1.25 each at the grocery store. Girl's gotta make ends meet.