Free + Food + Work = Bedlam
June 6, 2023 9:33 AM Subscribe
Once again, Ask A Manager's Alison Green has asked her readers for their crazy work stories - this time regarding free food at work, and what it does to people's minds.
Mind you, she recieved so many responses that this is only Part 1, in which we get blatant cheese theft, terrifying the Coldstone guy, and pizza management by spreadsheet, among others.
Mind you, she recieved so many responses that this is only Part 1, in which we get blatant cheese theft, terrifying the Coldstone guy, and pizza management by spreadsheet, among others.
Who ate the bananas then?
posted by Etrigan at 9:49 AM on June 6, 2023 [15 favorites]
posted by Etrigan at 9:49 AM on June 6, 2023 [15 favorites]
I once had an argument about ordering pizza with my superior. She felt the place I wanted to order from was too expensive. “They are 18” pizzas” I said “the other place has 16” pizzas.” I then had to draw a geometry diagram to prove the extra 2” was a big deal. She didn’t take all the leftovers home, though.
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:52 AM on June 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:52 AM on June 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
There used to be a Snack Cart on Mondays, with a bicycle bell that let people know it was making its way down the hall. We'd all line up like idiots for a candy bar or whatever.
Now there's a "food finder" channel in Slack for each of our office locations. I was never really jazzed about picking over someone else's picked-over buffet lunch ordered for a meeting, but now after COVID it's even more disgusting.
posted by emelenjr at 10:09 AM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
Now there's a "food finder" channel in Slack for each of our office locations. I was never really jazzed about picking over someone else's picked-over buffet lunch ordered for a meeting, but now after COVID it's even more disgusting.
posted by emelenjr at 10:09 AM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
We had a "pizza pocket bandit" that straight up stole someone's pizza pockets consistently for several years. They eventually started to just bring in a tiny cooler for their pod/desk.
posted by Fizz at 10:17 AM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Fizz at 10:17 AM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
I work for a family company and there's an executive lunch meeting every week. (And a monthly all hands lunch as well which isn't a working lunch, just food and social conversation.) These meals are always served family style and not individual box lunches.
The prior office manager would always over-order so us peons could eat leftovers but the new one is less of a spendthrift. This is good but also a bummer. We had gotten used to consistent free food. Now leftovers are a bonus.
posted by vespabelle at 10:34 AM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
The prior office manager would always over-order so us peons could eat leftovers but the new one is less of a spendthrift. This is good but also a bummer. We had gotten used to consistent free food. Now leftovers are a bonus.
posted by vespabelle at 10:34 AM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
I was a travelling software trainer, and the companies I was visiting would often order lunch for the entire group. I always got a laugh out of seeing people appear when the food was served, but otherwise skip out on all of the training.
posted by thecjm at 10:37 AM on June 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by thecjm at 10:37 AM on June 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
This is going to start off sounding like a food theft situation, but actually ends up being weirdly charming.
My company is in a renovated warehouse in a business campus; and two years ago, we decided to have a company-wide "summer barbecue" picnic-type thing in our side parking lot. We got most of the food catered (we weren't allowed to cook anything in the parking lot ourselves), set up a basketball hoop and some cornhole, and got doofy things like a popcorn machine and a cotton candy maker, and at 3 pm on the given day everyone clocked off early and went out to the parking lot.
Well - one of the things we got was we rented an ice cream truck to come join us and park next to us; it wasn't an open-bar type of situation, we'd walk up and ask for whatever and he'd hand it to us. So that was pretty popular, and for the afternoon people would always be walking over to get a bomb pop and then go back over to watch the games of HORSE or cornhole or whatever.
At one point I glanced over to see a couple people in the line for ice cream....and I realized I didn't recognize them. I didn't think anything of it at first - we had a lot of interns that summer and I thought maybe they were interns I hadn't seen. Then I saw them go back a second time a half hour later, and then drift over to watch the basketball. I was sitting next to our head of HR, and I nudged her and pointed them out to her. "Do you know who those two people are?"
She squinted. "uh....you know what, no I don't." She got up and head over to talk to them.
They were not interns. They were not our employees at all. They were instead employees of a completely different company who'd clocked off early that day and were on a walk around the rest of the campus, and had just stumbled upon us, saw the ice cream truck and thought it was a regular truck on its regular route.
They were mortified when they realized their mistake, but our head of HR is a sweetheart and reassured them it was clearly just an innocent mistake, and then hung around with them another 20 minutes telling them about our company and asking about theirs.
To this day I tell people that's a sign of how awesome my company is - we throw such good office parties that we get crashers.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:38 AM on June 6, 2023 [38 favorites]
My company is in a renovated warehouse in a business campus; and two years ago, we decided to have a company-wide "summer barbecue" picnic-type thing in our side parking lot. We got most of the food catered (we weren't allowed to cook anything in the parking lot ourselves), set up a basketball hoop and some cornhole, and got doofy things like a popcorn machine and a cotton candy maker, and at 3 pm on the given day everyone clocked off early and went out to the parking lot.
Well - one of the things we got was we rented an ice cream truck to come join us and park next to us; it wasn't an open-bar type of situation, we'd walk up and ask for whatever and he'd hand it to us. So that was pretty popular, and for the afternoon people would always be walking over to get a bomb pop and then go back over to watch the games of HORSE or cornhole or whatever.
At one point I glanced over to see a couple people in the line for ice cream....and I realized I didn't recognize them. I didn't think anything of it at first - we had a lot of interns that summer and I thought maybe they were interns I hadn't seen. Then I saw them go back a second time a half hour later, and then drift over to watch the basketball. I was sitting next to our head of HR, and I nudged her and pointed them out to her. "Do you know who those two people are?"
She squinted. "uh....you know what, no I don't." She got up and head over to talk to them.
They were not interns. They were not our employees at all. They were instead employees of a completely different company who'd clocked off early that day and were on a walk around the rest of the campus, and had just stumbled upon us, saw the ice cream truck and thought it was a regular truck on its regular route.
They were mortified when they realized their mistake, but our head of HR is a sweetheart and reassured them it was clearly just an innocent mistake, and then hung around with them another 20 minutes telling them about our company and asking about theirs.
To this day I tell people that's a sign of how awesome my company is - we throw such good office parties that we get crashers.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:38 AM on June 6, 2023 [38 favorites]
I also worked at a place where the marketing department upstairs would have an event with a catered lunch, and then give the leftovers to the call centre downstairs. We eventually asked them to stop, because they would deliver things like just a half-full tray of plain rice.
posted by thecjm at 10:39 AM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by thecjm at 10:39 AM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
I keep the candy dish for our office (paid for by the department, not out of my salary, though I do occasionally buy a bag of candy because I sit in this office so I eat more of the candy than most people!) and I am obsessive about making sure all the foil wrappings match. I have Opinions. Currently it's all pastel mermaid colors, pinks and purples and mint greens and baby blues, which looks amazing, so I am likely to keep it this way for awhile. Around end of September I will switch to oranges and blacks. Etc.
posted by joannemerriam at 10:40 AM on June 6, 2023 [16 favorites]
posted by joannemerriam at 10:40 AM on June 6, 2023 [16 favorites]
When I was working, I kept a candy jar in my office. It encouraged people to drop by and chat. Without it, my only human contact was via email or phone message. But put out a jar of Twix and people will find excuses to visit.
posted by SPrintF at 10:44 AM on June 6, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by SPrintF at 10:44 AM on June 6, 2023 [6 favorites]
While not free food, mom or dad’s office is a goldmine for selling your kid’s band candy, softball chocolates, and the holy GirlScout cookies. I’d plop an open box of softball chocolates, and an envelope for the cash, on the big filing cabinet next to my cube, and it would silently all be gone by the end of the day.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:46 AM on June 6, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by Thorzdad at 10:46 AM on June 6, 2023 [6 favorites]
At one of my previous jobs, the main library in Fiji (the location is important) kept its loading bay doors open to encourage the breeze. Along the far wall of the loading bay were the cubbies where staff could leave their belongings every day. Many people opted to bring rotis in for lunch and left their rotis in their respective cubbies.
Then all of a sudden the rotis started to go missing. There aren't security cameras so there was a lot of hard feelings and suspicion about the identity of the Roti Thief. One day the thief was caught in the act: one of the local mongooses! (mongeese?)
So, if fodd starts going missing in your workplace, consider that it might be the work of the local wildlife.
posted by orrnyereg at 10:55 AM on June 6, 2023 [41 favorites]
Then all of a sudden the rotis started to go missing. There aren't security cameras so there was a lot of hard feelings and suspicion about the identity of the Roti Thief. One day the thief was caught in the act: one of the local mongooses! (mongeese?)
So, if fodd starts going missing in your workplace, consider that it might be the work of the local wildlife.
posted by orrnyereg at 10:55 AM on June 6, 2023 [41 favorites]
i dislike work-provided food.
like, hard dislike. i don't care how good it is. i don't care how good it is, i don't care how plentiful it is, i don't care if it's made by a michelin-starred chef and served in a restaurant at the top of a company-owned skyscraper with a 360 degree view of city and sea. i don't like it. i'd rather be downstairs at a coffee shop paying money for a microwaved croissant thank you very much.
i don't know why i don't like accepting work food, and i understand that not liking it is something that's extremely idiosyncratic to me in particular and no one else, but i do not like it, i powerfully do not like it.
if i had to guess i'd say it's related to the following:
i make one exception: if there's fresh fruit available, especially oranges or something equally stashable/non-messy, i will gladly fill my pockets (or even backpack) with that fresh fruit on the way out the door. eating work sandwiches is accepting extended hospitality, which establishes a sense of obligation in the mind of the hospitality-granter and the hospitality-accepter both, but pocketing citrus on my way out the door feels like a way to put the company in its place. your tangerine defenses are weak, and so now they are my tangerines! socheap free and juicy!
thinking it through more: okay, and i don't get the same "i am flexing on you! be thankful i'm not peeing on your rugs!" feel when i carry off multiple boxes of sandwiches or whatever. it has to be fresh fruit. i cannot fully theorize why this is the case: maybe it's because work goes into the preparation of sandwiches, and so by taking boxes of sandwiches i am accepting hospitality, even if not in the intended way. oranges, though, those are just delicious little packets of nutrition, no additional preparation involved. yoink.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:12 AM on June 6, 2023 [28 favorites]
like, hard dislike. i don't care how good it is. i don't care how good it is, i don't care how plentiful it is, i don't care if it's made by a michelin-starred chef and served in a restaurant at the top of a company-owned skyscraper with a 360 degree view of city and sea. i don't like it. i'd rather be downstairs at a coffee shop paying money for a microwaved croissant thank you very much.
i don't know why i don't like accepting work food, and i understand that not liking it is something that's extremely idiosyncratic to me in particular and no one else, but i do not like it, i powerfully do not like it.
if i had to guess i'd say it's related to the following:
- the long-standing cultural role of food as a means of establishing a certain type of intimacy between guests and hosts, you know, "bread and salt," that sort of thing
- the use by employers of work food as a means to entice people to attend work events that they would otherwise avoid / tolerate work events that they're required to attend
- related to point 1, the implicit sense of obligation established through providing someone with food, like, i'm supposed to be thinking "ah! that nice ape gave me ape food, so i should do good ape work for them!"
i make one exception: if there's fresh fruit available, especially oranges or something equally stashable/non-messy, i will gladly fill my pockets (or even backpack) with that fresh fruit on the way out the door. eating work sandwiches is accepting extended hospitality, which establishes a sense of obligation in the mind of the hospitality-granter and the hospitality-accepter both, but pocketing citrus on my way out the door feels like a way to put the company in its place. your tangerine defenses are weak, and so now they are my tangerines! so
thinking it through more: okay, and i don't get the same "i am flexing on you! be thankful i'm not peeing on your rugs!" feel when i carry off multiple boxes of sandwiches or whatever. it has to be fresh fruit. i cannot fully theorize why this is the case: maybe it's because work goes into the preparation of sandwiches, and so by taking boxes of sandwiches i am accepting hospitality, even if not in the intended way. oranges, though, those are just delicious little packets of nutrition, no additional preparation involved. yoink.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:12 AM on June 6, 2023 [28 favorites]
one place I used to work at would cater major meetings (clients, etc) - always the same little finger sandwiches, tray of fruits, and little cookies.
there'd always be leftovers, so somebody would send an email saying "leftover food from a meeting in the 19th floor kitchen" so that people could go get it. this was a pretty regular occurrence, maybe every week or so.
and at first - free food, nice, right?
but after a while, wow, it started to bum me out - because of the dumb pavlovian reaction that people would have upon seeing those "leftover food from a meeting!" emails. people's heads would pop out of their offices, and they'd scurry like gophers, trying to get to the kitchen before the food was gone, but trying not to look like they were hurrying, and then trying to get a satisfying amount of food - because free food! - without looking downright greedy - and looking at the other people putting cubes of flavorless honeydew melon into their napkins or paper cups, and looking over their shoulders as more people scurried into the kitchen and crowded around the table, trying to reach the tongs and get the last of the crumbs...
posted by entropone at 11:22 AM on June 6, 2023 [6 favorites]
there'd always be leftovers, so somebody would send an email saying "leftover food from a meeting in the 19th floor kitchen" so that people could go get it. this was a pretty regular occurrence, maybe every week or so.
and at first - free food, nice, right?
but after a while, wow, it started to bum me out - because of the dumb pavlovian reaction that people would have upon seeing those "leftover food from a meeting!" emails. people's heads would pop out of their offices, and they'd scurry like gophers, trying to get to the kitchen before the food was gone, but trying not to look like they were hurrying, and then trying to get a satisfying amount of food - because free food! - without looking downright greedy - and looking at the other people putting cubes of flavorless honeydew melon into their napkins or paper cups, and looking over their shoulders as more people scurried into the kitchen and crowded around the table, trying to reach the tongs and get the last of the crumbs...
posted by entropone at 11:22 AM on June 6, 2023 [6 favorites]
Yeah I also dislike work-provided food, mostly because if I'm eating work-provided food it means that first off, I'm in the office. Which, fuck that. Or worse, I'm traveling for work, which ABSOLUTELY fuck that. Second, whether or not I have done actual travel for work, if they're feeding me it probably means I'm in some kind of all-day meeting that is absolutely NEVER the best use of anyone's time. (Because, lol, after the barest hour of actual work, we have lost at least two hours to the selecting, ordering, and picking up/eating of food.)
Basically, I want as little involvement with the "company" part of my job as I can swing, and free food almost always means I'm involving myself with the "company" side of things waaaaayyy more than necessary. Let me just do my actual work! So I can go home! Roar.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:26 AM on June 6, 2023 [8 favorites]
Basically, I want as little involvement with the "company" part of my job as I can swing, and free food almost always means I'm involving myself with the "company" side of things waaaaayyy more than necessary. Let me just do my actual work! So I can go home! Roar.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:26 AM on June 6, 2023 [8 favorites]
> but after a while, wow, it started to bum me out - because of the dumb pavlovian reaction that people would have upon seeing those "leftover food from a meeting!" emails...
right?! i see that sort of thing and it makes me want to send an email to the c suite and no one else about how i've got some leftover pad see ew in the fridge if they want it.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:26 AM on June 6, 2023 [6 favorites]
right?! i see that sort of thing and it makes me want to send an email to the c suite and no one else about how i've got some leftover pad see ew in the fridge if they want it.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:26 AM on June 6, 2023 [6 favorites]
Heh, as a consultant and former 'dispatched' technical support person - I have seen dozens and dozens of weirdnesses about food.
If you are in a regional council office in Australia, outside the city - expect that you will be getting instant powdered creamer - (and for us North Americans... instant coffee as well).
At one government department (Ontario, Canada), anytime there was leftover food from a party or a catered lunch - people would rush and circle like vultures (I mean, I like free food as much as the next person - probably more so - but, it was embarrassing - entropone basically sums up how I felt about my well-paid colleagues).
Many many many years ago, I was a consultant for a large multi-national bank (you have heard of it - and bad things too), and while the coffee was provided, cream/creamers were not. So - I started organizing and providing it - out-of-my-own-pocket (as it was not a hardship, plus - I could 'expense' the costs anyways) - wow... I did not realize how people would abuse it entirely... People using coffee cream for their cereal...
But the absolute most amazing office food experiences were the times I got to visit Iqaluit in Nunavut. People would bring in amazing local food - mmmm bannock was a total a treat- and one time even managed to have a taste of whale that was offered from the first successful hunt in years.
posted by rozcakj at 11:28 AM on June 6, 2023 [10 favorites]
If you are in a regional council office in Australia, outside the city - expect that you will be getting instant powdered creamer - (and for us North Americans... instant coffee as well).
At one government department (Ontario, Canada), anytime there was leftover food from a party or a catered lunch - people would rush and circle like vultures (I mean, I like free food as much as the next person - probably more so - but, it was embarrassing - entropone basically sums up how I felt about my well-paid colleagues).
Many many many years ago, I was a consultant for a large multi-national bank (you have heard of it - and bad things too), and while the coffee was provided, cream/creamers were not. So - I started organizing and providing it - out-of-my-own-pocket (as it was not a hardship, plus - I could 'expense' the costs anyways) - wow... I did not realize how people would abuse it entirely... People using coffee cream for their cereal...
But the absolute most amazing office food experiences were the times I got to visit Iqaluit in Nunavut. People would bring in amazing local food - mmmm bannock was a total a treat- and one time even managed to have a taste of whale that was offered from the first successful hunt in years.
posted by rozcakj at 11:28 AM on June 6, 2023 [10 favorites]
> Basically, I want as little involvement with the "company" part of my job as I can swing, and free food almost always means I'm involving myself with the "company" side of things waaaaayyy more than necessary. Let me just do my actual work! So I can go home! Roar.
yes! like, sorry, company, we do not have that kind of relationship, i am not on a date with you, i do not like you that way, i do not like you at all. you are not a thing i share meals with, you are a thing i extract money from.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:29 AM on June 6, 2023 [27 favorites]
yes! like, sorry, company, we do not have that kind of relationship, i am not on a date with you, i do not like you that way, i do not like you at all. you are not a thing i share meals with, you are a thing i extract money from.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:29 AM on June 6, 2023 [27 favorites]
The only fun story I have regarding office food is from a coworker who recently left. We were cleaning out their desk, and opened one of the drawers to find - over a dozen bags of chips. Some of the chips had been expired for years. This person saw the free snacks in the breakroom, grabbed a bag, then went back to their desk, opened up a drawer already full of chips, and put the new bag in, instead of eating said chips. They had been doing this for a while, maybe they were prepping for a post-chip apocalyptic world or something.
posted by meowzilla at 11:33 AM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by meowzilla at 11:33 AM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
I will say though that in one vanishingly rare instance where an all-day meeting was both productive and necessary, I was introduced to the Panera green goddess salad and I am not lingeringly mad about it.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:33 AM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:33 AM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
okay also i get off on ignoring work food for nakedly toxic social-dominance-play reasons: it sends the message that i don't have needs and that therefore 1: the people offering the food have no handle on me and 2: the people who do take the food are marking themselves as weaker than me. toxic, toxic, toxic — but nevertheless, if you want to catch me eating it'll be in a walk-and-talk where i'm munching on an orange
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:37 AM on June 6, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:37 AM on June 6, 2023 [9 favorites]
A former workplace of mine had a candy dish in the kitchen, kept fairly well stocked. I think it may have actually been filled by the building management as sort of a tenant appreciation thing. It would get refilled every Tuesday IIRC. Anyway, someone - I never was sure who, but it was one of the people who got to work really early - would sift through the candy and take handfuls of the good stuff, leaving only the jolly ranchers and mints behind. For a while my cube was right outside the kitchen and to this day I hate that I never figured out who it was.
Communal office refrigerators have also always been drama-magnets in my experience. When does it get cleaned out, does "cleaning out" include throwing out bottles of salad dressing and stuff or just the perishables, is there a warning email before the big cleanings, do nasty signs get put up in the kitchen or passive aggressive emails sent out with pictures of expired food in them...
posted by misskaz at 11:39 AM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
Communal office refrigerators have also always been drama-magnets in my experience. When does it get cleaned out, does "cleaning out" include throwing out bottles of salad dressing and stuff or just the perishables, is there a warning email before the big cleanings, do nasty signs get put up in the kitchen or passive aggressive emails sent out with pictures of expired food in them...
posted by misskaz at 11:39 AM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
> Anyway, someone - I never was sure who, but it was one of the people who got to work really early - would sift through the candy and take handfuls of the good stuff, leaving only the jolly ranchers and mints behind.
i am trying and failing to avoid mentioning the time that my actions resulted in a mass email about how whoever keeps putting tide pods in the candy dish should stop doing that
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:43 AM on June 6, 2023 [26 favorites]
i am trying and failing to avoid mentioning the time that my actions resulted in a mass email about how whoever keeps putting tide pods in the candy dish should stop doing that
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 11:43 AM on June 6, 2023 [26 favorites]
Librarians and library staff are notorious for bringing food into the office for no damn reason. At one library I worked at, they'd just moved into a new building and the Library Dean declared that since the building was new and shiny, all staff food would be restricted to the breakroom. No more department parties in your departments, no more snacking at your desk, and emphatically no more candy at the reference desk.
This edict went out on a Wednesday morning. Thursday morning both the head of reference and the head of tech services brought in brownies for their departments and left them out in public. By Thursday afternoon, the candy dish at reference was overflowing because so many people had added to it. For lunch on Friday, IT and Circulation had two separate orders of ribs, pulled pork, and wings delivered from a nearby BBQ place and the delivery person came to the main circ desk to deliver the order.
No more was ever mentioned about food being restricted to the break room after that week.
posted by teleri025 at 11:46 AM on June 6, 2023 [11 favorites]
This edict went out on a Wednesday morning. Thursday morning both the head of reference and the head of tech services brought in brownies for their departments and left them out in public. By Thursday afternoon, the candy dish at reference was overflowing because so many people had added to it. For lunch on Friday, IT and Circulation had two separate orders of ribs, pulled pork, and wings delivered from a nearby BBQ place and the delivery person came to the main circ desk to deliver the order.
No more was ever mentioned about food being restricted to the break room after that week.
posted by teleri025 at 11:46 AM on June 6, 2023 [11 favorites]
i am trying and failing to avoid mentioning the time that my actions resulted in a mass email about how whoever keeps putting tide pods in the candy dish should stop doing that
Someone who definitely wasn't me would stir a few Skittles into the receptionist's M&M bowl every now and then. It never quite got to the point where people investigated, but you would be surprised how angry people can get at that for a few minutes.
posted by Etrigan at 11:54 AM on June 6, 2023 [25 favorites]
Someone who definitely wasn't me would stir a few Skittles into the receptionist's M&M bowl every now and then. It never quite got to the point where people investigated, but you would be surprised how angry people can get at that for a few minutes.
posted by Etrigan at 11:54 AM on June 6, 2023 [25 favorites]
so somebody would send an email saying "leftover food from a meeting in the 19th floor kitchen"
Here's what happened to Conan O'Brien when he found out his staff was doing this.
posted by Servo5678 at 12:01 PM on June 6, 2023 [9 favorites]
Here's what happened to Conan O'Brien when he found out his staff was doing this.
posted by Servo5678 at 12:01 PM on June 6, 2023 [9 favorites]
When I had my trading firm, we would order lunch everyday for the traders and staff since they could not often leave their desks. We also kept the refrigerator stocked with soda, water, seltzer, etc. One day, the SEC auditors were in our office doing a routine audit. I went in to say hello to them. They were all brown bagging it. Mostly drinking water out of plastic cups from the tap. I explained that there were free drinks in the refrigerator, help themselves. These were junior level auditors. They refused. Said SEC policy was to accept no gifts from audit targets. They would not even take a 50 cent soda. I don't even think they were willing to put their brown bag lunches in the refrigerator because the cost of keeping them cold for a few hours was a "gift" in their minds. Several years later, I ran into one of them at a bar near the exchange. I bought him and his buddies a round of drinks but had to do it anonymously. That they took.
Back in my CHicago trading days, my clearing firm had cold kegs tapped in the kitchen. Free. Eventually, they had to lock them. They were only open from 2pm to 6 pm. Too many idiot traders drinking at lunch and too many would invite their friends up to the office and drink free beer well into the evening.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 12:10 PM on June 6, 2023 [6 favorites]
Back in my CHicago trading days, my clearing firm had cold kegs tapped in the kitchen. Free. Eventually, they had to lock them. They were only open from 2pm to 6 pm. Too many idiot traders drinking at lunch and too many would invite their friends up to the office and drink free beer well into the evening.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 12:10 PM on June 6, 2023 [6 favorites]
those "leftover food from a meeting!" emails...
I am old enough to remember when it was a merry string of phone calls going from floor to floor, desk to desk.
posted by JanetLand at 12:13 PM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
I am old enough to remember when it was a merry string of phone calls going from floor to floor, desk to desk.
posted by JanetLand at 12:13 PM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
I've said it before, but there's nothing like the office environment to make you wonder what the entire job application process is for. All the qualifications and seniority in the world won't make people not act like baboons in the break room. In fact, they're probably worse.
(The woman who stole the whole wheel of brie from the seminar ... on the one hand, adjuncts have literally starved in recent years, and maybe she needed it; on the other, starving adjuncts are generally too decent to do that kind of thing --)
posted by Countess Elena at 12:13 PM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
(The woman who stole the whole wheel of brie from the seminar ... on the one hand, adjuncts have literally starved in recent years, and maybe she needed it; on the other, starving adjuncts are generally too decent to do that kind of thing --)
posted by Countess Elena at 12:13 PM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
Oh, another weird food thing where I am - we have a company garden, and I have become its gardener. I shall explain.
Before moving into our current digs we shared a space with a company that makes hydroponic growing systems. They gave us one when we moved out - partly as a going-away gift, and partly to explore whether there may be a collaboration someday in the future. I don't know much about the business collaboration side of things; I just know about the practical upshot, which is that there's this glass cabinet-looking thing in our canteen, and once a week I fill its water tank back up and add a shot or two of plant food, and cut anything back when it starts overgrowing. I also give them a shout if we need any more plants added back in there.
The only problem was that for abut a year, no one really got that "hey, we can pick the stuff in there", and so it would get all overgrown and gangly. In fact, that's partly how it became my job - stuff was getting overgrown and clogging up the filter, so things started drying out and someone asked if I knew how to fix it. I took it over when I discovered no one was really doing anything with it, and as i was asking around I learned that no one got that you could pick stuff out of it.
So now I have a little "farm and garden" email I send out when we get a new lettuce or herb in there or something, or when I cut back the chives and bag it up for people to take. I even add a recipe so people will just take the damn stuff. (We have SO. MANY. CHIVES....)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:15 PM on June 6, 2023 [11 favorites]
Before moving into our current digs we shared a space with a company that makes hydroponic growing systems. They gave us one when we moved out - partly as a going-away gift, and partly to explore whether there may be a collaboration someday in the future. I don't know much about the business collaboration side of things; I just know about the practical upshot, which is that there's this glass cabinet-looking thing in our canteen, and once a week I fill its water tank back up and add a shot or two of plant food, and cut anything back when it starts overgrowing. I also give them a shout if we need any more plants added back in there.
The only problem was that for abut a year, no one really got that "hey, we can pick the stuff in there", and so it would get all overgrown and gangly. In fact, that's partly how it became my job - stuff was getting overgrown and clogging up the filter, so things started drying out and someone asked if I knew how to fix it. I took it over when I discovered no one was really doing anything with it, and as i was asking around I learned that no one got that you could pick stuff out of it.
So now I have a little "farm and garden" email I send out when we get a new lettuce or herb in there or something, or when I cut back the chives and bag it up for people to take. I even add a recipe so people will just take the damn stuff. (We have SO. MANY. CHIVES....)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:15 PM on June 6, 2023 [11 favorites]
I think the stories that have the most buzz are always "my boss who makes six figures steals food" and while I absolutely believe that happens, I tend to wonder if all the stories I hear are true. At least, my six-figure bosses tended to prefer expense account lunches at fancy places to boxes of discount pizza.
But then I also know that stealing other people's lunches happens, and that is a breach of trust, manners, and goodness that is so astonishing to me that I can't comprehend it. Maybe if the office was full of starving underpaid interns? But even then, I wouldn't have dared if I was one.
The closest experience I had was on a semester abroad where the hotel we lodged at for the semester was staffed by a bunch of young adults who'd escaped Bosnia. They would absolutely steal anything "good" (meat, desserts, booze) you left in the communal fridge, but not loaves of bread or cans of tuna or whatever. So you learned to eat fancy food that day or hang it in a bag out your window once it got cold.
At the end of the semester we had a huge party with them with homemade sangria that was very powerful and weed, plus food we were using up before we left, so it all came out all right.
posted by emjaybee at 12:17 PM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
But then I also know that stealing other people's lunches happens, and that is a breach of trust, manners, and goodness that is so astonishing to me that I can't comprehend it. Maybe if the office was full of starving underpaid interns? But even then, I wouldn't have dared if I was one.
The closest experience I had was on a semester abroad where the hotel we lodged at for the semester was staffed by a bunch of young adults who'd escaped Bosnia. They would absolutely steal anything "good" (meat, desserts, booze) you left in the communal fridge, but not loaves of bread or cans of tuna or whatever. So you learned to eat fancy food that day or hang it in a bag out your window once it got cold.
At the end of the semester we had a huge party with them with homemade sangria that was very powerful and weed, plus food we were using up before we left, so it all came out all right.
posted by emjaybee at 12:17 PM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
Back in the 70’s I worked for the second personal computer company, IMSAI, that had free lunch. And it was run by people who were seriously wrapped up in the est cult ($500 weekends, locked in a hotel ballroom, with limited bathroom access, all the while harangued by a look-alike dude of the founder calling you an asshole). One day I got to work and the first thing I heard was no more free lunch. Huh???? An hour later I got called into the managers office and was laid off. Along with a bunch of other people that day. The company was on the way down. Free lunch may be some metric of job security?
posted by njohnson23 at 12:26 PM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by njohnson23 at 12:26 PM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
i didn't actually do the tide pod thing i just had a desk drawer that by chance ended up getting filled with m&ms, now and laters, and tide pods and was like "this pleases me. i will leave it this way."
okay i feel better now that i've come clean sorry about that if there's anything i can do to make it up to you lmk
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 12:32 PM on June 6, 2023 [6 favorites]
okay i feel better now that i've come clean sorry about that if there's anything i can do to make it up to you lmk
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 12:32 PM on June 6, 2023 [6 favorites]
They refused. Said SEC policy was to accept no gifts from audit targets.
Most of my career has been government-adjacent, and at my last job (federally funded R&D) I was told in no uncertain terms not accept gifts from vendors, potential vendors, or government employees. We would go to multi-day design review meetings at, say, Boeing, who would cater lunch for the entire 100+ person meeting... and then pass the hat so everyone could chip in ten bucks and avoid conflict of interest. Separate checks for everyone at restaurants. In rare cases we would buy each other rounds after hours, but I think most people tended to keep a mental tally so it didn't overbalance in any particular direction.
I think the most depressing thing was the water club. I was colocated with our government sponsor for most of my tenure at that job along with a small cohort of fellow employees. The tap water was pretty vile, so our company provided us with a bubbler. However, the government employees were not allowed to use it (see - conflict of interest). So, they all chipped in to form a "water club" (similar to a coffee klatch or whatever you would call it when you want a pot of coffee ready to go but the company's not buying it for you) to install a dispenser for them.
Things are a little more relaxed at my current position, thankfully.
posted by backseatpilot at 12:33 PM on June 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
Most of my career has been government-adjacent, and at my last job (federally funded R&D) I was told in no uncertain terms not accept gifts from vendors, potential vendors, or government employees. We would go to multi-day design review meetings at, say, Boeing, who would cater lunch for the entire 100+ person meeting... and then pass the hat so everyone could chip in ten bucks and avoid conflict of interest. Separate checks for everyone at restaurants. In rare cases we would buy each other rounds after hours, but I think most people tended to keep a mental tally so it didn't overbalance in any particular direction.
I think the most depressing thing was the water club. I was colocated with our government sponsor for most of my tenure at that job along with a small cohort of fellow employees. The tap water was pretty vile, so our company provided us with a bubbler. However, the government employees were not allowed to use it (see - conflict of interest). So, they all chipped in to form a "water club" (similar to a coffee klatch or whatever you would call it when you want a pot of coffee ready to go but the company's not buying it for you) to install a dispenser for them.
Things are a little more relaxed at my current position, thankfully.
posted by backseatpilot at 12:33 PM on June 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
"because of the dumb pavlovian reaction that people would have upon seeing those "leftover food from a meeting!" emails."
Saw this a lot during my brief-ish stint having a cube at the company HQ. Folks were ready to snag any food that was up for grabs. And sometimes food that wasn't.
Every few weeks there'd be a sternly worded email about "don't take food that hasn't been declared up for grabs!" Sometimes a catered lunch would be swarmed over before the group had a chance to get at it, if a meeting ran over a little or whatnot.
We also had drinks and snacks on each floor. Every quarter there'd be a survey about which flavors of La Croix to stock. It was always gone by lunchtime. The free snacks would be almost entirely picked over by lunchtime too, except for a few sad granola bars. (Nobody wanted to deal with the crumbs, I expect.)
The worst behavior IMO was the folks who'd show up for free food that was set out during the regular New Hire Orientation sessions. The idea was to attract people to welcome the new hires and socialize. But a lot of people would just cruise down, grab a snack, and leave without making any conversation at all.
More than a few people clearly hated WFH because it meant an end to the free work buffet. It's fine with me. I provide better snacks, and I only have to compete with my immediate family for them.
posted by jzb at 12:52 PM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
Saw this a lot during my brief-ish stint having a cube at the company HQ. Folks were ready to snag any food that was up for grabs. And sometimes food that wasn't.
Every few weeks there'd be a sternly worded email about "don't take food that hasn't been declared up for grabs!" Sometimes a catered lunch would be swarmed over before the group had a chance to get at it, if a meeting ran over a little or whatnot.
We also had drinks and snacks on each floor. Every quarter there'd be a survey about which flavors of La Croix to stock. It was always gone by lunchtime. The free snacks would be almost entirely picked over by lunchtime too, except for a few sad granola bars. (Nobody wanted to deal with the crumbs, I expect.)
The worst behavior IMO was the folks who'd show up for free food that was set out during the regular New Hire Orientation sessions. The idea was to attract people to welcome the new hires and socialize. But a lot of people would just cruise down, grab a snack, and leave without making any conversation at all.
More than a few people clearly hated WFH because it meant an end to the free work buffet. It's fine with me. I provide better snacks, and I only have to compete with my immediate family for them.
posted by jzb at 12:52 PM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
I worked at a COVID testing site at the peak of all that stuff, when people were still thanking health care workers and not threatening them but I digress. A local doughnut chain would show appreciation by dropping off doughnuts for us every week. But the dropped off so many. So. Many. And the doughnuts weren't very good. And nobody wanted to be the one to ask them to stop being so generous with their doughnuts. The leads would end up trying to get us to take home entire boxes of them. So many dry doughnuts.
posted by The corpse in the library at 12:55 PM on June 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by The corpse in the library at 12:55 PM on June 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
My great aunt's wake was at the sheltered accomodation place where she'd been living. I tried to make polite conversation with some old lady sitting next to me, by asking how she knew my great aunt, and she said "Oh I didn't! I'm just here for the food!"
posted by quacks like a duck at 1:08 PM on June 6, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by quacks like a duck at 1:08 PM on June 6, 2023 [8 favorites]
The summer after my freshman year of college, I was on the paint crew at the gigantic university hospital where my dad worked. My best friend was a tuckpointer there, too. Yes, my dad got us those jobs; we didn't even attend university there. It was a nice gig!
Anyways, in a place with 6,000+ employees in the same building, especially an R1 teaching hospital, someone retires or leaves at least once a week during the summer, and there are a LOT of well-stocked farewell gatherings. Sandwiches, chips, brownies, nuts, mints, and - often - the guest of honor's favorite food. It didn't take us long to make a habit of popping in to these things for a snack or even a whole meal.
Turned out a couple of sweaty, smelly 19 year old guys don't exactly blend in amongst the surgeons and administrators and nurses. After about the first 5, someone on the catering staff figured out what we were up to, as did, a couple of medical staff. We got summoned and mock-hazed by them. One guy instantly recognized my last name, too! (My dad was a hospital epidemiologist there and practically everyone knew him.)
So, that ended our scheme. And we didn't get a party of our own at summer's end, either :(
posted by Caxton1476 at 1:29 PM on June 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
Anyways, in a place with 6,000+ employees in the same building, especially an R1 teaching hospital, someone retires or leaves at least once a week during the summer, and there are a LOT of well-stocked farewell gatherings. Sandwiches, chips, brownies, nuts, mints, and - often - the guest of honor's favorite food. It didn't take us long to make a habit of popping in to these things for a snack or even a whole meal.
Turned out a couple of sweaty, smelly 19 year old guys don't exactly blend in amongst the surgeons and administrators and nurses. After about the first 5, someone on the catering staff figured out what we were up to, as did, a couple of medical staff. We got summoned and mock-hazed by them. One guy instantly recognized my last name, too! (My dad was a hospital epidemiologist there and practically everyone knew him.)
So, that ended our scheme. And we didn't get a party of our own at summer's end, either :(
posted by Caxton1476 at 1:29 PM on June 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
I worked at a place that ran a conference center as one of multiple lines of business. Every once in a while, a sharply worded message would go out about conference food being for conference attendees, and not anyone else. At the time I found it hard to believe that people were actually being blatant enough about it to get caught, but reading these stories, I'm now surprised it didn't happen more often.
posted by EvaDestruction at 1:39 PM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by EvaDestruction at 1:39 PM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
I love a good work meal. Breaks down the barriers for everyone, the calories don't count,* and it's often a lovely break in the day. Late afternoon coffee/sweets are especially excellent.
*I refuse to be told differently.
posted by Galvanic at 1:40 PM on June 6, 2023 [12 favorites]
*I refuse to be told differently.
posted by Galvanic at 1:40 PM on June 6, 2023 [12 favorites]
you are not a thing i share meals with, you are a thing i extract money from.
The people who paid my Seamless bills for several years would assure you that there is no line between the two.
Anyway, having special-occasion food is super-gauche, everyone knows the kitchens should be stocked at all times! ;)
posted by praemunire at 1:46 PM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
The people who paid my Seamless bills for several years would assure you that there is no line between the two.
Anyway, having special-occasion food is super-gauche, everyone knows the kitchens should be stocked at all times! ;)
posted by praemunire at 1:46 PM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
After working much of my career with academics, I've come to the conclusion that many, many of them, myself included, experienced food insecurity in grad school. The last pot luck that I attended featured a line of scientists at the food tables a half an hour before the tables opened. And an admin watching them like a hawk.
posted by SunSnork at 1:49 PM on June 6, 2023 [19 favorites]
posted by SunSnork at 1:49 PM on June 6, 2023 [19 favorites]
They refused. Said SEC policy was to accept no gifts from audit targets.
I was at a conference that had a lot of government employees (mostly municipal-level); there was an evening walking tour and a whole bunch of us wound up headed in the same direction looking for supper. It was fun negotiating at the door with the manager of a little family restaurant that there were like 25 of us showing up on a Tuesday, we'd take up the entire upstairs, all professionals, but you are just absolutely going to have to waive your no-split-checks policy for us.
posted by Superilla at 1:58 PM on June 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
I was at a conference that had a lot of government employees (mostly municipal-level); there was an evening walking tour and a whole bunch of us wound up headed in the same direction looking for supper. It was fun negotiating at the door with the manager of a little family restaurant that there were like 25 of us showing up on a Tuesday, we'd take up the entire upstairs, all professionals, but you are just absolutely going to have to waive your no-split-checks policy for us.
posted by Superilla at 1:58 PM on June 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
I used to work at a university department that held monthly seminars with a catered lunch. We had to have someone guard the milk and cream at the coffee station because some of the law professors would take an entire carton and drink it with their lunch. We also had to have someone guard the room with the food, because tenured professors would show up early and clear the place out before anyone else had a chance to have a sandwich. They wouldn't even attend the seminar, just grab an entire tray of pastries and take it back to their office.
At another place I worked, I stayed late one evening and caught the director of operations taking home a 2L carton of milk the admins pooled their money to buy every couple of weeks for their tea and coffee. They couldn't figure out who was taking it. Turns out it was their boss - a guy who made at least 5x what they did and who they had been complaining to about the milk theft.
posted by Stoof at 2:08 PM on June 6, 2023 [20 favorites]
At another place I worked, I stayed late one evening and caught the director of operations taking home a 2L carton of milk the admins pooled their money to buy every couple of weeks for their tea and coffee. They couldn't figure out who was taking it. Turns out it was their boss - a guy who made at least 5x what they did and who they had been complaining to about the milk theft.
posted by Stoof at 2:08 PM on June 6, 2023 [20 favorites]
"Someone who definitely wasn't me would stir a few Skittles into the receptionist's M&M bowl every now and then. It never quite got to the point where people investigated, but you would be surprised how angry people can get at that for a few minutes."
Please don't do this. Food allergies are a thing.
posted by FritoKAL at 2:15 PM on June 6, 2023 [9 favorites]
Please don't do this. Food allergies are a thing.
posted by FritoKAL at 2:15 PM on June 6, 2023 [9 favorites]
does "cleaning out" include throwing out bottles of salad dressing and stuff or just the perishables
Once it was determined that those responsible for this biweekly cleaning-out were tossing products simply because they were past the 'Best By' dates on their labels. Some of these containers had been repurposed. Incredulity and acrimony were the inevitable results.
posted by Rash at 2:18 PM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
Once it was determined that those responsible for this biweekly cleaning-out were tossing products simply because they were past the 'Best By' dates on their labels. Some of these containers had been repurposed. Incredulity and acrimony were the inevitable results.
posted by Rash at 2:18 PM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
Also I once worked in a large office where the supervisor's desk would be a pre-lunch target and his brown paper bag stolen from, when he left the room. Sometimes, the theft would be as brazen as a single bite taken out of his sandwich.
posted by Rash at 2:25 PM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Rash at 2:25 PM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
Oh man, long ago I used to be responsible for the catering for an all-day academic event. We were on a tight budget and the options were very limited and not always that great, so it was a real challenge to figure out how to order as much as possible of the tastier foods. You want to talk about watching people like a hawk - seeing the first people in line stack their plates six inches deep and worrying that the last people would be left with nothing but a last scoop of the cheapest item, and then never mind me getting anything to eat myself because I was always dead last since I had to make sure the set-up was okay. So I'd sit there being hungry and seeing the food get set up, have to worry about the people at the end of the line not getting enough and know that there would be basically nothing left for me. Then there was the year that the faculty wouldn't spring for a bartender and I had to pour drinks for these incredibly entitled people who were practically bagging the bottles by the end. After that the institution said we had to have a real bartender and I didn't have to do it anymore, but it was the worst of adminning and the worst of waitressing combined.
To be honest, even though I could in fact afford my own food, it was still hard to watch all the stuff that I had carefully budgeted for, chosen and ordered get eaten with none for me.
posted by Frowner at 2:28 PM on June 6, 2023 [18 favorites]
To be honest, even though I could in fact afford my own food, it was still hard to watch all the stuff that I had carefully budgeted for, chosen and ordered get eaten with none for me.
posted by Frowner at 2:28 PM on June 6, 2023 [18 favorites]
Every once in a while, a sharply worded message would go out about conference food being for conference attendees, and not anyone else.
I am now reminded of the Victorian studies conference I attended several years ago, which was running concurrently with some sort of swanky business meeting. A couple of us were looking for the conference breakfast and wandered into a room with all sorts of elegant-looking dishes. We were excited for about five seconds, then I said, "This can't be for the academics." So we walked out the door and found our conference spread, which was solely comprised of bagels.
We don't have a break room in our current building--the department's kitchen is completely open--so any catered leftovers or donated goodies go more to the students than the faculty, really.
posted by thomas j wise at 2:31 PM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
I am now reminded of the Victorian studies conference I attended several years ago, which was running concurrently with some sort of swanky business meeting. A couple of us were looking for the conference breakfast and wandered into a room with all sorts of elegant-looking dishes. We were excited for about five seconds, then I said, "This can't be for the academics." So we walked out the door and found our conference spread, which was solely comprised of bagels.
We don't have a break room in our current building--the department's kitchen is completely open--so any catered leftovers or donated goodies go more to the students than the faculty, really.
posted by thomas j wise at 2:31 PM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
My dad used to tell the story about how in college, he and his roommate had a mixed candy jar. One guy would come down and empty out all the chocolate. He got tired of this, so one day bought a bunch of ex-lax (a laxative that looks like chocolate, for non-US readers), scraped off all the markings, and put them in the jar. Never had a problem again.
posted by Runes at 2:41 PM on June 6, 2023
posted by Runes at 2:41 PM on June 6, 2023
Many years ago I used to work in a small public utility where, on the last Friday of the month, the union work crew would organize a potluck lunch. Some people went to considerable effort to bring in food they were proud to share, others were considerably lamer and would stop and pick up a couple big bags of chips or something on their way back to the office at lunchtime, but generally everybody understood that they were expected to contribute.
Except, of course, for the person who was in charge of the operation. Month after month he'd descend at lunchtime from his office, prepare a plate from the food his workers had brought to share with one another, and then would return to his office to eat it without socializing. As far as I could tell he never once contributed anything.
Twenty years later I still sometimes think about what a schmuck that guy was. There were many other reasons more directly related to his management but I think the potluck thing was the purest one-paragraph distillation of his fundamental failures as a decent person.
posted by Nerd of the North at 3:13 PM on June 6, 2023 [8 favorites]
Except, of course, for the person who was in charge of the operation. Month after month he'd descend at lunchtime from his office, prepare a plate from the food his workers had brought to share with one another, and then would return to his office to eat it without socializing. As far as I could tell he never once contributed anything.
Twenty years later I still sometimes think about what a schmuck that guy was. There were many other reasons more directly related to his management but I think the potluck thing was the purest one-paragraph distillation of his fundamental failures as a decent person.
posted by Nerd of the North at 3:13 PM on June 6, 2023 [8 favorites]
I have so many of these stories. One time a coworker got in trouble for bringing an electric grill plate to a meeting and cooking bacon. They said it was unsafe. Another time, same department, someone got in trouble for bringing a waffle maker because "we don't want to give people the impression that we aren't working over here."
A new team formed and hired new people but also hired people from our existing teams leaving holes on our existing teams. To make it worse, they had an elaborate catering spread one a week or so. It created a lot of resentment, seeing one team get special treatment while we were short staffed. A year later, I discovered that the manager (not a person with a six digit salary) was buying it to increase team bonding.
posted by tofu_crouton at 3:31 PM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
A new team formed and hired new people but also hired people from our existing teams leaving holes on our existing teams. To make it worse, they had an elaborate catering spread one a week or so. It created a lot of resentment, seeing one team get special treatment while we were short staffed. A year later, I discovered that the manager (not a person with a six digit salary) was buying it to increase team bonding.
posted by tofu_crouton at 3:31 PM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
okay also i get off on ignoring work food for nakedly toxic social-dominance-play reasons: it sends the message that i don't have needs and that therefore 1: the people offering the food have no handle on me and 2: the people who do take the food are marking themselves as weaker than me.
That is like that scene on Succession when.
posted by betweenthebars at 3:43 PM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
That is like that scene on Succession when.
posted by betweenthebars at 3:43 PM on June 6, 2023 [5 favorites]
Had a coworker who would magically have his kids in the office anytime there was food.
posted by mmb5 at 3:43 PM on June 6, 2023
posted by mmb5 at 3:43 PM on June 6, 2023
When I worked at the HBO transmission center, they were great about feeding the staff. Heavy snow, they'd have food brought in. Any special shows were catered.
But one year the word went out that there would be no food brought in for New Years eve. There was a little grumbling. I was the night shift supervisor and I thought this was wrong, so I catered it myself. Nothing grand, just a six foot hero, some salads, some chips and sodas. I wasn't working that night, so I left a card telling everyone thanks for a great year.
The next full work day, I got called into my managers office. He asked if I brought in food, I said of course I did, not bringing in food on New Years was a bullshit idea. "Well, senior management didn't like it. They said it made them look bad."
I just stared at him for a second and told him "I guess I did get a holiday bonus."
He didn't appreciate the joke.
posted by Marky at 4:00 PM on June 6, 2023 [25 favorites]
But one year the word went out that there would be no food brought in for New Years eve. There was a little grumbling. I was the night shift supervisor and I thought this was wrong, so I catered it myself. Nothing grand, just a six foot hero, some salads, some chips and sodas. I wasn't working that night, so I left a card telling everyone thanks for a great year.
The next full work day, I got called into my managers office. He asked if I brought in food, I said of course I did, not bringing in food on New Years was a bullshit idea. "Well, senior management didn't like it. They said it made them look bad."
I just stared at him for a second and told him "I guess I did get a holiday bonus."
He didn't appreciate the joke.
posted by Marky at 4:00 PM on June 6, 2023 [25 favorites]
Communal office refrigerators have also always been drama-magnets in my experience. When does it get cleaned out, does "cleaning out" include throwing out bottles of salad dressing and stuff or just the perishables, is there a warning email before the big cleanings, do nasty signs get put up in the kitchen or passive aggressive emails sent out with pictures of expired food in them...
I have NEVER gotten over the time I specifically saved half of the best sandwich I've ever eaten outside of France for a mere three hours in an office fridge, and in that three hours it was purged along with all other fridge contents as part of an unannounced fridge cleanout.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 4:05 PM on June 6, 2023 [12 favorites]
I have NEVER gotten over the time I specifically saved half of the best sandwich I've ever eaten outside of France for a mere three hours in an office fridge, and in that three hours it was purged along with all other fridge contents as part of an unannounced fridge cleanout.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 4:05 PM on June 6, 2023 [12 favorites]
Variations on Free Food: Some years ago, I worked on a long software implementation at the headquarters of a chain of US (multinational now maybe?) sandwich-based fast-casual restaurants, and for which the test and training kitchens were on another floor of the same building and they basically served as the company cafeteria (at super-discounted rates for training orders, and free if they were workshopping new menu items). My team did not have free reign to go down there, but the internal team we worked with routinely picked us up lunch (it kept us from going anywhere for lunch breaks). I was walking with one of the sysadmins once, and as we passed the break room he ducked in to get his lunchbox out of the fridge and I was like "huh?" He nodded knowingly and said, "You've never seen the version of the kitchen menu with the calories on it, have you? Some states are talking about making it a law. I don't, uh, ever eat it." And THAT was the day I learned I had been eating 1200-calorie salads for lunch several times a week.
I also had a biotech customer in an incredibly desolate business park out on an undeveloped edge of DFW, and because it would take 30 minutes just to get to the nearest drive-thru and back they catered in a nice hot lunch - sure, Fridays were pizza or tacos, but other days were an enchiladas bar, or barbecue with all the sides, or soup and salads - several times a week. That sysadmin promised me, the day we met, that he'd try to only have me come work onsite on lunch days, and that you never want to get noticed as the FIRST person screeching up to the buffet when it opened, but you didn't want to wait long. "Have you seen these nerds? It's like a wounded zebra fell in a pond full of crocodiles within about 12 minutes. They redid that conference room with a tile floor because they couldn't get the carpet clean."
My days of working onsite are over for good, but it increasingly started to irritate me how most companies seem to go out of their way to turn lunch into microaggressions against everybody but the white dudes in the place. 12 meat pizzas, one cheese with weird olives that would get put out first and at the first of the line so the white dudes took it before seeing the non-vegetarian pizzas because, I don't know, I guess it's theoretically possible they thought all the pizzas were cheese with weird olives? Literally nothing edible for those with religious restrictions. Pre-dressed salads with eggs and maybe even nuts, if they can squeeze in extra allergens. All carbs, no substance. That one place that did monthly cookouts in the parking lot and apparently did all their ordering from a pork-only butcher until I finally got pissed and took the CFO aside and explained some stuff her racist ass wouldn't have bothered to know, and to her credit she made a genuine effort and had a modest amount of fresh-grilled chicken brought in from a halal butcher...which the two guys who cooked all the sausages and ribs ate as snacks before anyone else had a chance.
posted by Lyn Never at 4:12 PM on June 6, 2023 [13 favorites]
I also had a biotech customer in an incredibly desolate business park out on an undeveloped edge of DFW, and because it would take 30 minutes just to get to the nearest drive-thru and back they catered in a nice hot lunch - sure, Fridays were pizza or tacos, but other days were an enchiladas bar, or barbecue with all the sides, or soup and salads - several times a week. That sysadmin promised me, the day we met, that he'd try to only have me come work onsite on lunch days, and that you never want to get noticed as the FIRST person screeching up to the buffet when it opened, but you didn't want to wait long. "Have you seen these nerds? It's like a wounded zebra fell in a pond full of crocodiles within about 12 minutes. They redid that conference room with a tile floor because they couldn't get the carpet clean."
My days of working onsite are over for good, but it increasingly started to irritate me how most companies seem to go out of their way to turn lunch into microaggressions against everybody but the white dudes in the place. 12 meat pizzas, one cheese with weird olives that would get put out first and at the first of the line so the white dudes took it before seeing the non-vegetarian pizzas because, I don't know, I guess it's theoretically possible they thought all the pizzas were cheese with weird olives? Literally nothing edible for those with religious restrictions. Pre-dressed salads with eggs and maybe even nuts, if they can squeeze in extra allergens. All carbs, no substance. That one place that did monthly cookouts in the parking lot and apparently did all their ordering from a pork-only butcher until I finally got pissed and took the CFO aside and explained some stuff her racist ass wouldn't have bothered to know, and to her credit she made a genuine effort and had a modest amount of fresh-grilled chicken brought in from a halal butcher...which the two guys who cooked all the sausages and ribs ate as snacks before anyone else had a chance.
posted by Lyn Never at 4:12 PM on June 6, 2023 [13 favorites]
When I worked at Walmart ages ago (2007-2014), if the power went out, the deli would start bringing in the fried chicken and other dishes on the hot bar into the break room instead of tossing the lot. We'd also do fundraising potlucks, pay a few bucks, and fill your plate up with dishes people brought in crock pots etc., and a couple of the managers would fire up the grill for burgers & hot dogs.
Occasionally, the managers would get doughnuts (from the bakery) especially for morning meetings, and the leftovers would be left for us to snack on during the day.
I don't remember anyone being weird about free food, or rampant food theft while I was there. They were weird about cashiers/service desk having water bottles. I suppose someone had vodka in their water bottle at some point somewhere. Don't blame them TBH, Walmart customers (especially churchgoers on Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings) would drive anyone to drink. Well also management too.
posted by tlwright at 4:17 PM on June 6, 2023 [6 favorites]
Occasionally, the managers would get doughnuts (from the bakery) especially for morning meetings, and the leftovers would be left for us to snack on during the day.
I don't remember anyone being weird about free food, or rampant food theft while I was there. They were weird about cashiers/service desk having water bottles. I suppose someone had vodka in their water bottle at some point somewhere. Don't blame them TBH, Walmart customers (especially churchgoers on Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings) would drive anyone to drink. Well also management too.
posted by tlwright at 4:17 PM on June 6, 2023 [6 favorites]
At my previous job we had a movie-theater style popcorn machine, and most Fridays someone made popcorn. The office manager let it be known that she was not responsible for making it every Friday, and we were expected to take turns. Instructions were clearly posted by the machine.
One day one of the sales guys came up to me at the reception desk and asked me to make popcorn, and I told him I couldn't leave the desk but feel free to make it himself. He snorted and said, "I don't get paid to make popcorn, at my salary that would be the most expensive batch of popcorn ever made."
This is the same guy who got caught on camera at the end of the workday taking all the leftovers from the company luncheon out of the fridge and packing them up to take home. When confronted he claimed he thought they were "just going to go to waste" even though he'd worked there plenty long enough to know that they always put any leftovers out in the breakroom at lunchtime the following day for everyone to enjoy. I guess he didn't make so much money he didn't need to be a scrounge... lol.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 4:20 PM on June 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
One day one of the sales guys came up to me at the reception desk and asked me to make popcorn, and I told him I couldn't leave the desk but feel free to make it himself. He snorted and said, "I don't get paid to make popcorn, at my salary that would be the most expensive batch of popcorn ever made."
This is the same guy who got caught on camera at the end of the workday taking all the leftovers from the company luncheon out of the fridge and packing them up to take home. When confronted he claimed he thought they were "just going to go to waste" even though he'd worked there plenty long enough to know that they always put any leftovers out in the breakroom at lunchtime the following day for everyone to enjoy. I guess he didn't make so much money he didn't need to be a scrounge... lol.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 4:20 PM on June 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
I stopped eating shared office food, unless it's catered with utensils (and I am early to the line), or individually packaged. I have two stories as to why:
#1 - The peanut butter:
We had bagels in the kitchen, and I finished making mine, talking to a coworker, who was putting peanut butter and jelly on her bagel after it popped out of the toaster. As she was talking to me, she spread the jelly on one slice, licked the knife, and then put peanut butter on the other slice...with the freshly-licked knife. She seemed very confused when I told her that was disgusting. Apparently, I'm a germaphobe.
#2 - I'm never eating Red Vines again...:
I went to the bathroom, and as I was washing my hands, a coworker walked out of the sit-down toilet after taking a crap, walked straight out of the bathroom without washing his hands. I followed him out of the bathroom, which was adjacent to the kitchen area. He proceeded to open a big bucket of Red Vines (the kind you get from Costco) and grabbed a handful, then nonchalantly sauntered back to his desk. Nope, not eating anything that isn't individually wrapped anymore. Nope nope nope nope nope.
posted by Chuffy at 4:37 PM on June 6, 2023 [10 favorites]
#1 - The peanut butter:
We had bagels in the kitchen, and I finished making mine, talking to a coworker, who was putting peanut butter and jelly on her bagel after it popped out of the toaster. As she was talking to me, she spread the jelly on one slice, licked the knife, and then put peanut butter on the other slice...with the freshly-licked knife. She seemed very confused when I told her that was disgusting. Apparently, I'm a germaphobe.
#2 - I'm never eating Red Vines again...:
I went to the bathroom, and as I was washing my hands, a coworker walked out of the sit-down toilet after taking a crap, walked straight out of the bathroom without washing his hands. I followed him out of the bathroom, which was adjacent to the kitchen area. He proceeded to open a big bucket of Red Vines (the kind you get from Costco) and grabbed a handful, then nonchalantly sauntered back to his desk. Nope, not eating anything that isn't individually wrapped anymore. Nope nope nope nope nope.
posted by Chuffy at 4:37 PM on June 6, 2023 [10 favorites]
My company has never really provided lunches, but our cafeteria always has snacks - microwavable mac & cheese cups, cup-o- noodle, fruit cups, etc. It used to have saltines and peanut butter in big bulk Costco jars, but that ended the day the CEO walked into the kitchen just in time to see an employee lick their knife and stick it back in the jar.
We do have barbecues a few times a year. Our building is in downtown Seattle, and once a month all summer a couple departments will take turns hosting up on the roof (which recently had a pickleball court added to it). They are good about providing veggie burgers and salmon or chicken options, and there’s usually ice cream bars or root beer floats for dessert. At least once a year, one of the grills catches massively and hilariously on fire and has to be dealt with using a fire extinguisher, so that’s always fun. But it is nice to sit in the sun up above it all and have an ice cream break.
posted by skycrashesdown at 4:41 PM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
We do have barbecues a few times a year. Our building is in downtown Seattle, and once a month all summer a couple departments will take turns hosting up on the roof (which recently had a pickleball court added to it). They are good about providing veggie burgers and salmon or chicken options, and there’s usually ice cream bars or root beer floats for dessert. At least once a year, one of the grills catches massively and hilariously on fire and has to be dealt with using a fire extinguisher, so that’s always fun. But it is nice to sit in the sun up above it all and have an ice cream break.
posted by skycrashesdown at 4:41 PM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
I work at a nonprofit and we maybe get two slices of cheap pizza a year, plus the occasional doughnut I think the managers pay for themselves. I don't miss working for Condé Nast except for during conversations like this.
posted by The corpse in the library at 4:55 PM on June 6, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by The corpse in the library at 4:55 PM on June 6, 2023 [6 favorites]
I'm a low level paper pusher in a state university
Our breakroom has a basket on the table of condiment packets nobody wanted
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:18 PM on June 6, 2023 [10 favorites]
Our breakroom has a basket on the table of condiment packets nobody wanted
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:18 PM on June 6, 2023 [10 favorites]
Keeping the candy bowl restocked for manbabies looks like a classic example of a non-promotable task, which unfortunately falls disproportionately on women.
posted by jonp72 at 5:39 PM on June 6, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by jonp72 at 5:39 PM on June 6, 2023 [12 favorites]
The back office got cleaned, a sign had been posted that anything in the fridge would be tossed on a specific date, and it was. The fridge was unplugged and sitting there for days and I finally asked why, The astonishingly unpleasant and only marginally competent office manager said she wasn't about to clean the fridge, and it wouldn't be plugged in until it was cleaned. It took maybe 45 minutes to clean it and most people who used the area were really nice to me about it. She told somebody I was was trying to shame her.
Tragedy of the Commons We can't have nice things because a lot of people are jerks.
posted by theora55 at 5:47 PM on June 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
Tragedy of the Commons We can't have nice things because a lot of people are jerks.
posted by theora55 at 5:47 PM on June 6, 2023 [4 favorites]
WAFFLE PARTY
posted by flabdablet at 6:14 PM on June 6, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by flabdablet at 6:14 PM on June 6, 2023 [11 favorites]
I will say that when I was an admin, unless cleaning the fridge, cleaning the microwave and washing dishes were written into my job description I would not do them, although I made sure not to leave any of my own mess. You're already in a position where people think that if it's "beneath" them and there's a pink collar woman worker around she should do it; you have to watch out or you're scrubbing a fridge full of rotting food on your hands and knees while the men who never clean anything and leave their food to decay demand that you make coffee and where is the sandwich order anyway.
The grad students' microwave got pretty grotty and a couple of times people made noises about why didn't I clean it, but I pretended I didn't understand what they were hinting about.
posted by Frowner at 6:23 PM on June 6, 2023 [32 favorites]
The grad students' microwave got pretty grotty and a couple of times people made noises about why didn't I clean it, but I pretended I didn't understand what they were hinting about.
posted by Frowner at 6:23 PM on June 6, 2023 [32 favorites]
20-plus years ago, my first office job was in an academic health education system, The secretary for our unit was an enthusiastic party-planning type who got us into a habit of themed potlucks every few months, and her enthusiasm was contagious. The one I remember best was a bit before state fair season, where the theme was "on-a-stick." Some folks brought things not on a stick but still fitting the theme, like cotton candy or caramel corn - and went through the trouble of sourcing the correct receptacles, like those red and white rectangular "bowls" you often see fair food in, just for the fun of it. Those events were so fun to participate in that we had to invite people who hadn't contributed, or people from other divisions, because we always had way more food than we needed. Sometimes they'd be competitions, judged by, like, the Dean of the Dental School or whoever.
Then I moved on to another institution, closely related and mostly populated by alums of the previous institution, so we continued the theme potlucks (I won the chili cookoff!) and the boss of that place was teaching himself to cook so he'd often bring in his latest creations for feedback. (Did you know you can dye deviled eggs in beet juice? Delicious.)
So it's my hot take that the best work food is that which is brought in willingly by coworkers who actually like each other.
posted by cinnamonduff at 6:33 PM on June 6, 2023 [22 favorites]
Then I moved on to another institution, closely related and mostly populated by alums of the previous institution, so we continued the theme potlucks (I won the chili cookoff!) and the boss of that place was teaching himself to cook so he'd often bring in his latest creations for feedback. (Did you know you can dye deviled eggs in beet juice? Delicious.)
So it's my hot take that the best work food is that which is brought in willingly by coworkers who actually like each other.
posted by cinnamonduff at 6:33 PM on June 6, 2023 [22 favorites]
One year, my company had done especially well, and did its summer gathering at an outdoor mini-golf/volleyball/horseshoes place that I think exists only to cater to companies doing summer gatherings. The notice went out in May for the party in June, so that you could RSVP with the number of guests you were bringing and they would have the right amount of food for the lobster bake (!). On the day of the event, there were some last-second no-shows, and two or three of the big ol' steam trays full of steamed ears of corn, overboiled potatoes, and bright-red lobsters were left uneaten.
Enter Patrick, our QA engineer who I'm guessing was somewhere on the spectrum but didn't seem bothered by it. As the afternoon wore down and closing time approached, he surveyed the situation, and his eyes went wide before he dashed back toward the parking lot. Moments later, he returned with a Hefty contractor bag, which he proceeded to fill with the uneaten lobsters from the buffet. Amidst gawking coworkers and event staff, he slung the bag over his shoulder like Santa with his sack, and carried the bag back to his car, then drove off into the sunset.
The party was on a Friday. The following week, every day for lunch he brought in whole lobsters, which he reheated in the break room microwave, while loudly exclaiming over the fools who had left theirs uneaten. By the time Thursday rolled around, and the scent of slightly-over-the-hill shellfish permeated the third floor, someone must have said something, because HR had a quiet word with him and we didn't hear any more about the lobster extravaganza.
The following year, the company picnic served hamburgers.
posted by Mayor West at 6:49 PM on June 6, 2023 [12 favorites]
Enter Patrick, our QA engineer who I'm guessing was somewhere on the spectrum but didn't seem bothered by it. As the afternoon wore down and closing time approached, he surveyed the situation, and his eyes went wide before he dashed back toward the parking lot. Moments later, he returned with a Hefty contractor bag, which he proceeded to fill with the uneaten lobsters from the buffet. Amidst gawking coworkers and event staff, he slung the bag over his shoulder like Santa with his sack, and carried the bag back to his car, then drove off into the sunset.
The party was on a Friday. The following week, every day for lunch he brought in whole lobsters, which he reheated in the break room microwave, while loudly exclaiming over the fools who had left theirs uneaten. By the time Thursday rolled around, and the scent of slightly-over-the-hill shellfish permeated the third floor, someone must have said something, because HR had a quiet word with him and we didn't hear any more about the lobster extravaganza.
The following year, the company picnic served hamburgers.
posted by Mayor West at 6:49 PM on June 6, 2023 [12 favorites]
I have to say, I would not totally fault someone for gathering a hefty bag full of lobster. I mean, lobster!! I'm not even totally sure I'd fault them for reheating it and mumbling about it.
As someone who has dumpster dived, I am not really put off by the mere idea of bagging up a random wheel of brie, etc, as long as it was truly unwanted. Grabbing it before others could help themselves, no, that is not acceptable, but being a bit diligent about collecting unconsidered trifles seems good, actually.
posted by Frowner at 7:07 PM on June 6, 2023 [8 favorites]
As someone who has dumpster dived, I am not really put off by the mere idea of bagging up a random wheel of brie, etc, as long as it was truly unwanted. Grabbing it before others could help themselves, no, that is not acceptable, but being a bit diligent about collecting unconsidered trifles seems good, actually.
posted by Frowner at 7:07 PM on June 6, 2023 [8 favorites]
I work for a research institution owned by the state, so we have lots of conflict of interest rules, and can't accept vender stuff. We're self funded, though, so we're spared the worst of being a government agency. My department's been work from home since 2020. The only times we've met in person has either been for retirements, or department lunches/meetings. The food was OK. The big draw was seeing coworkers in person who I hadn't seen in years. (Or meeting new coworkers.)
At my last job, I worked with a bunch of people with (different) religious restrictions. My boss did his best to make sure that there were good vegetarian options, because almost everyone can eat vegetarian. (And one of the people was vegetarian.)
posted by Spike Glee at 8:30 PM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
At my last job, I worked with a bunch of people with (different) religious restrictions. My boss did his best to make sure that there were good vegetarian options, because almost everyone can eat vegetarian. (And one of the people was vegetarian.)
posted by Spike Glee at 8:30 PM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
This thread makes me so, so sad. I know it's kind of in good fun but really - there is enough for us all to have enough. The emotional, cultural, capitalist hellscapes we create around artificially scarce resources - this is the thing that breaks my heart for our species. The officious and cruel and obsessive and petty and needlessly paranoid compromises represented in these stories... even the Conan bit just made me sad for everyone involved.
posted by abulafa at 9:06 PM on June 6, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by abulafa at 9:06 PM on June 6, 2023 [11 favorites]
About 6 years ago, at the massive warehouse where I work, we had a free sandwich day. It turned out to be those shitty little white bread sandwiches cut in quarters.
Some of the people in the first part of the lineup grabbed so much, way much more than they could possibly eat, that by the time I has my turn I had 3/4s of a sandwich. People behind me had less. I could have grabbed more but watching some people's behaviour was vile, and I did not want to be one of those people.
Every time we have a special lunch, other than pizza day, I bring a lunch as well, just because some people are so fucking selfish it's obscene.
And, I intently dislike these free food days; why not fix the toxic culture at work instead to show staff you care?
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 9:12 PM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
Some of the people in the first part of the lineup grabbed so much, way much more than they could possibly eat, that by the time I has my turn I had 3/4s of a sandwich. People behind me had less. I could have grabbed more but watching some people's behaviour was vile, and I did not want to be one of those people.
Every time we have a special lunch, other than pizza day, I bring a lunch as well, just because some people are so fucking selfish it's obscene.
And, I intently dislike these free food days; why not fix the toxic culture at work instead to show staff you care?
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 9:12 PM on June 6, 2023 [3 favorites]
Around 2000 I worked at a small tech consultancy with its office in a non-downtown neighborhood. There were about 20-30 employees and the receptionist would use the “page” function on the phone system for office-wide announcements.
When a new local grocery store opened up in the neighborhood, they advertised their fresh sushi counter by delivering sushi platters to the nearby business offices. I have never seen humans move so fast as everyone in that office did when our phones announced that there was a free sushi platter in the kitchen.
posted by matildaben at 9:19 PM on June 6, 2023
When a new local grocery store opened up in the neighborhood, they advertised their fresh sushi counter by delivering sushi platters to the nearby business offices. I have never seen humans move so fast as everyone in that office did when our phones announced that there was a free sushi platter in the kitchen.
posted by matildaben at 9:19 PM on June 6, 2023
even the Conan bit just made me sad for everyone involved...
yeah, he's funny and everything, but that had the old boss-is-an-asshole power-imbalance vibe, sigh.
posted by ovvl at 9:31 PM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
yeah, he's funny and everything, but that had the old boss-is-an-asshole power-imbalance vibe, sigh.
posted by ovvl at 9:31 PM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
I have known people who grew up with food insecurity (and in a couple of cases, famine) and their responses to free food are far, far different to those of us who were raised with always enough to eat. I'm not saying that's driving all the bonkers selfishness in this thread, some of it is undoubtedly just selfish jerkishiness, but I'd bet that some people have back stories that make snaffling the free food much more understandable.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 10:38 PM on June 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 10:38 PM on June 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
Keeping the candy bowl restocked for manbabies looks like a classic example of a non-promotable task, which unfortunately falls disproportionately on women.
Okay, I’ll cop to one. At my first job out of college - so, I was young, but definitely old enough to know better - the woman who restocked the candy bowl had to pull me aside to say “please stop eating the candy for the bowl straight out of the bag, I’ve moved it to a new hiding place several times but you haven’t seemed to take the hint” which is how I found out that not everyone was having as much fun with the game of “candy hunt” as I was.
posted by atoxyl at 10:43 PM on June 6, 2023 [9 favorites]
Okay, I’ll cop to one. At my first job out of college - so, I was young, but definitely old enough to know better - the woman who restocked the candy bowl had to pull me aside to say “please stop eating the candy for the bowl straight out of the bag, I’ve moved it to a new hiding place several times but you haven’t seemed to take the hint” which is how I found out that not everyone was having as much fun with the game of “candy hunt” as I was.
posted by atoxyl at 10:43 PM on June 6, 2023 [9 favorites]
I've always secretly hoped someone would start stealing my food because I love insanely hot stuff and could legitimately put something like Pure Cap, which is close to scentless, on my food and say that's just how I like it. Alas, it's never happened.
My personal work food bedlam was a large departmental (~150 people) meeting at a park where they hired a super pretentious BBQ company to cook the lunch on-site. Lunch was supposed to be served at 11:45 - by 12:30 they'd only managed to finish a small amount of sausage as an appetizer that only gave about half the people a bite or two. At 1:45, 90% of the food was finished and sitting on the table but we weren't allowed to eat any of it until the remaining 10% was completed.
When I hangrilly pointed out that lunch was two hours late at that point and that it was ridiculous to make everyone wait on that tiny portion that wasn't ready yet, I was told that I and only I could have some food. At that point I just went home and made lunch.
I think the stories that have the most buzz are always "my boss who makes six figures steals food" and while I absolutely believe that happens, I tend to wonder if all the stories I hear are true.
The median salary for my building is probably at least $100K (in an area where that's about 1.3x median household income). There's definitely queues of people lining up for leftover, lousy, cold pizza. And as with other people here, there's been problems with people grabbing food for specific meetings etc. before it's been declared fair game.
I have one coworker whose total comp is somewhere in the $400K range who will have the vendors that take them out for lunch also buy takeout meals for their family (this is at least two violations of our employee handbook).
One of the local tech meetups has catered dinners as part of the program and there's one guy who's a six figure employee who's notorious for showing up with a cooler and hoovering up any leftovers (and often jumping the gun before everyone has had a chance to get a first serving).
So I can totally believe the stories.
Free lunch may be some metric of job security?
My experience was the opposite, though it may be unusual - I spent 8 months in the 90s at a company that was extremely poorly managed at the top (they'd recently been acquired by a larger company) and was paying very low wages in a high cost of living city and was bleeding talent as a result. The local management couldn't give raises but ended up throwing money at free food for employees. When I started, there were no provided meals. By the point I left, there were omelet bars several times a week in the morning, catered lunches four or five times a week, and dinners on the nights of big deadlines. (It wasn't enough to save the company obviously - the whole thing was acquired a few years later by a different company that itself failed a few years after that.) But as a youth with a voracious appetite, it was heaven.
So it's my hot take that the best work food is that which is brought in willingly by coworkers who actually like each other.
My previous workplace had a really healthy culture for that - most of us genuinely liked each other and we'd have a bunch of themed potlucks or cooking challenges that served as morale boosters.
posted by Candleman at 11:09 PM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
My personal work food bedlam was a large departmental (~150 people) meeting at a park where they hired a super pretentious BBQ company to cook the lunch on-site. Lunch was supposed to be served at 11:45 - by 12:30 they'd only managed to finish a small amount of sausage as an appetizer that only gave about half the people a bite or two. At 1:45, 90% of the food was finished and sitting on the table but we weren't allowed to eat any of it until the remaining 10% was completed.
When I hangrilly pointed out that lunch was two hours late at that point and that it was ridiculous to make everyone wait on that tiny portion that wasn't ready yet, I was told that I and only I could have some food. At that point I just went home and made lunch.
I think the stories that have the most buzz are always "my boss who makes six figures steals food" and while I absolutely believe that happens, I tend to wonder if all the stories I hear are true.
The median salary for my building is probably at least $100K (in an area where that's about 1.3x median household income). There's definitely queues of people lining up for leftover, lousy, cold pizza. And as with other people here, there's been problems with people grabbing food for specific meetings etc. before it's been declared fair game.
I have one coworker whose total comp is somewhere in the $400K range who will have the vendors that take them out for lunch also buy takeout meals for their family (this is at least two violations of our employee handbook).
One of the local tech meetups has catered dinners as part of the program and there's one guy who's a six figure employee who's notorious for showing up with a cooler and hoovering up any leftovers (and often jumping the gun before everyone has had a chance to get a first serving).
So I can totally believe the stories.
Free lunch may be some metric of job security?
My experience was the opposite, though it may be unusual - I spent 8 months in the 90s at a company that was extremely poorly managed at the top (they'd recently been acquired by a larger company) and was paying very low wages in a high cost of living city and was bleeding talent as a result. The local management couldn't give raises but ended up throwing money at free food for employees. When I started, there were no provided meals. By the point I left, there were omelet bars several times a week in the morning, catered lunches four or five times a week, and dinners on the nights of big deadlines. (It wasn't enough to save the company obviously - the whole thing was acquired a few years later by a different company that itself failed a few years after that.) But as a youth with a voracious appetite, it was heaven.
So it's my hot take that the best work food is that which is brought in willingly by coworkers who actually like each other.
My previous workplace had a really healthy culture for that - most of us genuinely liked each other and we'd have a bunch of themed potlucks or cooking challenges that served as morale boosters.
posted by Candleman at 11:09 PM on June 6, 2023 [2 favorites]
I have known people who grew up with food insecurity (and in a couple of cases, famine) and their responses to free food are far, far different to those of us who were raised with always enough to eat.
This is me. Free food is my Achilles heel, because of the periods in my youth when it was all we had. I have to really struggle with my instincts to not take more than my share.
One job used to have a table full of free pastries brought in by a caterer every Friday morning. They'd go up at ten, and the caterers would come at noon and throw the leftovers away. I kept myself from taking extra at 10 by telling myself I'd come and grab a few more at 5 minutes to 12, since whatever was left then was only going to be discarded. I didn't fill up containers like the people in the linked stories, but I would take a couple and make that my lunch.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:53 PM on June 6, 2023 [6 favorites]
This is me. Free food is my Achilles heel, because of the periods in my youth when it was all we had. I have to really struggle with my instincts to not take more than my share.
One job used to have a table full of free pastries brought in by a caterer every Friday morning. They'd go up at ten, and the caterers would come at noon and throw the leftovers away. I kept myself from taking extra at 10 by telling myself I'd come and grab a few more at 5 minutes to 12, since whatever was left then was only going to be discarded. I didn't fill up containers like the people in the linked stories, but I would take a couple and make that my lunch.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:53 PM on June 6, 2023 [6 favorites]
12 meat pizzas, one cheese with weird olives that would get put out first and at the first of the line so the white dudes took it before seeing the non-vegetarian pizzas because, I don't know, I guess it's theoretically possible they thought all the pizzas were cheese with weird olives?
Reminds me of my cousin's wedding, where all the vegetarians were seated at one table. It was one of those deals where one table at a time would be called up to go through the buffet. The vegetarian table got called last, and when we got up there all the specifically vegetarian dishes were cleaned out. There was a whole table full of us having a dinner of bread, strawberries, and iceberg lettuce
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:09 AM on June 7, 2023 [7 favorites]
Reminds me of my cousin's wedding, where all the vegetarians were seated at one table. It was one of those deals where one table at a time would be called up to go through the buffet. The vegetarian table got called last, and when we got up there all the specifically vegetarian dishes were cleaned out. There was a whole table full of us having a dinner of bread, strawberries, and iceberg lettuce
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:09 AM on June 7, 2023 [7 favorites]
I can't think of a corporate practice that is more consistently infantilizing and numbing than free food. Pay workers more and give them more autonomy and respect, and you'll get far better results than the provision of a million and one bespoke yet sugary snacks will ever do.
posted by rabia.elizabeth at 1:40 AM on June 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by rabia.elizabeth at 1:40 AM on June 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
He snorted and said, "I don't get paid to make popcorn, at my salary that would be the most expensive batch of popcorn ever made."
My response would have been "Guess you'd better take all that money and go buy yourself some fucking popcorn, then". This is why I'm not allowed out of my office unsupervised. :P
(This reminds me that I have an entire rant about one sales guy at a former job, but I'll spare you.)
I don't have many weird hangups about office food, since I like most of my coworkers and my department generally treats us semi-decently and doesn't try to waffle-party us.
What is not on, though, is the custom around birthdays. We don't do the "awkward gathering in the break room", "mandatory singing of Happy Birthday to You" thing...no, what we do is arguably worse. See, the expectation is that you bring in cake and/or other snacks for people on your own birthday. I usually arrange to be out of the office on mine.
I mostly avoid birthday cake when it's brought in by other people too, but it's not so much a moral objection to the custom as a reaction to a coworker I'll call Disgusting Bob. (Not his real name.) Disgusting Bob has been witnessed on several occasions by multiple people leaving the bathroom stalls and then going straight back to his desk without even going near the bathroom sinks, let alone washing his hands.
Guess who's almost always first in the kitchen for free cake. Yeah.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 1:54 AM on June 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
My response would have been "Guess you'd better take all that money and go buy yourself some fucking popcorn, then". This is why I'm not allowed out of my office unsupervised. :P
(This reminds me that I have an entire rant about one sales guy at a former job, but I'll spare you.)
I don't have many weird hangups about office food, since I like most of my coworkers and my department generally treats us semi-decently and doesn't try to waffle-party us.
What is not on, though, is the custom around birthdays. We don't do the "awkward gathering in the break room", "mandatory singing of Happy Birthday to You" thing...no, what we do is arguably worse. See, the expectation is that you bring in cake and/or other snacks for people on your own birthday. I usually arrange to be out of the office on mine.
I mostly avoid birthday cake when it's brought in by other people too, but it's not so much a moral objection to the custom as a reaction to a coworker I'll call Disgusting Bob. (Not his real name.) Disgusting Bob has been witnessed on several occasions by multiple people leaving the bathroom stalls and then going straight back to his desk without even going near the bathroom sinks, let alone washing his hands.
Guess who's almost always first in the kitchen for free cake. Yeah.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 1:54 AM on June 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
Fresh fruit boxes at offices are definitely a "use it or lose it" situation that everyone implicitly understands: if the fruit doesn't get smuggled home to family, it'll just rot in the dish and go into the borough's composting bin.
My favourite moment was the e-mail thread around a decade ago where the office manager kept replying to themselves. It went something like this:
My favourite moment was the e-mail thread around a decade ago where the office manager kept replying to themselves. It went something like this:
- OM: Too many bananas in the fruit boxes this week, sorry.
- OM: Please could people try and finish off the bananas by the end of the week?
- OM: Okay, maybe it was inevitable, but we'll probably have to throw out all the bananas tomorrow.
- Other Employee: Good morning everyone. Hope you had a nice weekend. I made so much banana bread!!! Enjoy!
- OM: Okay, maybe it was inevitable, but we'll probably have to throw out all the bananas tomorrow.
- OM: Please could people try and finish off the bananas by the end of the week?
I was working on a large bid team and as part of the perks? of the job we got given a deliveroo account with a £15 daily credit. This activated at 1900 so we could order in whatever dinner we wanted and (presumably) keep working.
I was generally out the door by 1900 unless there was something of extreme importance, so I got into the habit of ordering a can of coke and a £14 driver tip with a note explaining the situation and telling them to keep the drink.
Though we did also at one point have a contest to see who could order the most calories on our limited budget.
At the time Franco Manca had bags of their special pizza flour on their takeaway menu for some reason. So I ordered 15 bags of flour. So on the delivery driver karmic scale I'm probably evened out more or less.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 2:46 AM on June 7, 2023 [6 favorites]
I was generally out the door by 1900 unless there was something of extreme importance, so I got into the habit of ordering a can of coke and a £14 driver tip with a note explaining the situation and telling them to keep the drink.
Though we did also at one point have a contest to see who could order the most calories on our limited budget.
At the time Franco Manca had bags of their special pizza flour on their takeaway menu for some reason. So I ordered 15 bags of flour. So on the delivery driver karmic scale I'm probably evened out more or less.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 2:46 AM on June 7, 2023 [6 favorites]
The only fun story I have regarding office food is from a coworker who recently left. We were cleaning out their desk, and opened one of the drawers to find - over a dozen bags of chips. Some of the chips had been expired for years. This person saw the free snacks in the breakroom, grabbed a bag, then went back to their desk, opened up a drawer already full of chips, and put the new bag in, instead of eating said chips. They had been doing this for a while, maybe they were prepping for a post-chip apocalyptic world or something.I once worked at a tech company that was prosperous enough to have beer taps and snack walls. When I say "snack wall" it actually was a floor to ceiling set of bins in every kitchen that was perpetually stocked with bags of chips, cookies, granola bars, and dried fruit. Though, in reality, there were certain snacks that were more popular than others, and if you cared about, say, when the honey roasted nuts were going to be restocked, it helped to know the right people who patrolled the kitchens and kept curated Slack group DMs alerting others to nuts being back in stock.
We had one co-worker who had already been burntout when I first joined the company and wound up leaving three months after I came in, and when we cleaned out their desk, they had a filing cabinet drawer that was filled with bagged honey roasted nuts. We never knew why they had hoarded all of this. The steelman argument is that they wanted a buffer of nuts to tide them over between periods of restocking. The strawman argument is that they actually enjoyed clearing out the nuts bin and listening to their colleagues bemoan a shortage while they could dip their hand in their little nut pit and treat it like a plastic baggie version of Scrooge McDuck's swimming pool. The version that one is willing to believe depends on which side of the shore one was on when this colleague burnt their bridges with us, but also probably says more of the theory holder than the subject.
(This is all to say that even in a post-scarcity economy, there are still folks who will want to generate scarcity because they enjoy having something that others don't have)
posted by bl1nk at 5:42 AM on June 7, 2023 [6 favorites]
I have two work food stories- first, I worked at a small-ish game developer, about 30-40 people. For big milestones I’d bake cookies and bring them in, and go office to office letting everyone get a cookie. Eventually the company grew to 100+, and my wife and I were baking 8-10 dozen cookies at a time. I quickly learned to go to the QA department last, as it was mainly “starving” college kids who would snarf everything they could find 🙂. But I always made enough for them too, game QA is hard work. At some point the company gave me a silver platter with the logo on it, to put cookies on. And they were insistent I took it with me when I moved on to another career. That was sweet.
Second story- I ran a very small game development company, just 5-8 programmers, almost all who lived in the same town, but we had no office and all worked at home (back in the late 90’s! We were so ahead of our time 🙂). To get some social interaction we met for lunch twice a week at local restaurants. After many months of trying to democratically decide where to eat (throw out choices and vote, everyone gets one veto, etc) and the chaos that ensued, we put all the regular places we went into a little program one developer wrote that just spit out a few months of a randomized list of restaurants. No veto’s, no fights, we just knew where we’d be each week. It was dubbed the “Frinkiac” since we were nerds, and all watched the Simpsons, as was the custom at the time.
The one kicker with the Frinkiac was it never picked the Japanese place when the dev that wrote the randomizer was in town. He wasn’t a fan, and did a little tweaking of the algorithm. We realized pretty quickly the pattern, but it was fine, since in the pre-frinkiac days we’d always get Japanese food vetoed.
posted by gmatom at 5:42 AM on June 7, 2023 [6 favorites]
Second story- I ran a very small game development company, just 5-8 programmers, almost all who lived in the same town, but we had no office and all worked at home (back in the late 90’s! We were so ahead of our time 🙂). To get some social interaction we met for lunch twice a week at local restaurants. After many months of trying to democratically decide where to eat (throw out choices and vote, everyone gets one veto, etc) and the chaos that ensued, we put all the regular places we went into a little program one developer wrote that just spit out a few months of a randomized list of restaurants. No veto’s, no fights, we just knew where we’d be each week. It was dubbed the “Frinkiac” since we were nerds, and all watched the Simpsons, as was the custom at the time.
The one kicker with the Frinkiac was it never picked the Japanese place when the dev that wrote the randomizer was in town. He wasn’t a fan, and did a little tweaking of the algorithm. We realized pretty quickly the pattern, but it was fine, since in the pre-frinkiac days we’d always get Japanese food vetoed.
posted by gmatom at 5:42 AM on June 7, 2023 [6 favorites]
They had been doing this for a while, maybe they were prepping for a post-chip apocalyptic world or something.
big gubmint is gonna band the potatochips and then i'll have the drawer with all the lastpotato chips and people will line up and give me monney for the potoat chimps and i'll be richa nd can buy an island where i will be the gubmint and i can brow potattas and people will pay mony to come to the island and see mo potatots and then apy more money for eat the potatos chipped ip
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 5:52 AM on June 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
big gubmint is gonna band the potatochips and then i'll have the drawer with all the lastpotato chips and people will line up and give me monney for the potoat chimps and i'll be richa nd can buy an island where i will be the gubmint and i can brow potattas and people will pay mony to come to the island and see mo potatots and then apy more money for eat the potatos chipped ip
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 5:52 AM on June 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
oh, and my current company has an HQ where there is a much more modest array of snacks available, but I and most of my department live hundreds of miles away, and for us remote workers, the company has agreed to give us a monthly "quality-of-life" stipend that we can use for expensing lunches, snacks and office supplies. It's basically giving us money, and that's fine; but the stipend just happens to be enough to cover a subscription offered by a local cheesemonger, so that's what I opted for.
Now, every month, my wife and I get a shipment of three different cheese pieces, a couple of savory snacks and some kind of chutney or jam, and it's actually pretty nice? I used to avoid snack walls because I didn't want to normalize that much unhealthy eating, but I like that this is a very prescribed portion of snacking and it's just our household so it's not all caught up in Tragedy of the Commons issues. So +1 for giving people money, especially for remote workers.
posted by bl1nk at 5:57 AM on June 7, 2023 [7 favorites]
Now, every month, my wife and I get a shipment of three different cheese pieces, a couple of savory snacks and some kind of chutney or jam, and it's actually pretty nice? I used to avoid snack walls because I didn't want to normalize that much unhealthy eating, but I like that this is a very prescribed portion of snacking and it's just our household so it's not all caught up in Tragedy of the Commons issues. So +1 for giving people money, especially for remote workers.
posted by bl1nk at 5:57 AM on June 7, 2023 [7 favorites]
I told this story before, but it's worth reporting so I can explain the evil it means.
I had a candybowl on my desk at work, usually with gummy bears, and there was a guy who would work late (because he was bad at his job and had to stay late to finish his work) and along the way, find pretty much everyone's candy left out for cube visitors to snack on and completely empty it. (He also would check your drawers and finish your reserves while he was at it.)
(if you haven't read this before you probably see it coming.)
So I went to the (late, lamented) Sweet Factory, and got a quarter-pound bag of the sugar-free gummy bears. I warned everyone except that guy. And I put them in the dispenser just before I left work.
I came in the next morning to him sitting in my cube, raging about what happened, how he was there until almost 1 AM in the bathroom, and then almost physically assaulted me. He got so close to me he was just barely not touching me and screamed into my face so loudly my ears rang. I told him that he needed a breath mint and to improve his brushing habits, and to let me get to work. Before things could escalate, my manager showed up to get him out. He was moved to a different floor, and our snacks were safe.
(I got a "don't do that again" but nothing formal.)
posted by mephron at 6:34 AM on June 7, 2023 [12 favorites]
I had a candybowl on my desk at work, usually with gummy bears, and there was a guy who would work late (because he was bad at his job and had to stay late to finish his work) and along the way, find pretty much everyone's candy left out for cube visitors to snack on and completely empty it. (He also would check your drawers and finish your reserves while he was at it.)
(if you haven't read this before you probably see it coming.)
So I went to the (late, lamented) Sweet Factory, and got a quarter-pound bag of the sugar-free gummy bears. I warned everyone except that guy. And I put them in the dispenser just before I left work.
I came in the next morning to him sitting in my cube, raging about what happened, how he was there until almost 1 AM in the bathroom, and then almost physically assaulted me. He got so close to me he was just barely not touching me and screamed into my face so loudly my ears rang. I told him that he needed a breath mint and to improve his brushing habits, and to let me get to work. Before things could escalate, my manager showed up to get him out. He was moved to a different floor, and our snacks were safe.
(I got a "don't do that again" but nothing formal.)
posted by mephron at 6:34 AM on June 7, 2023 [12 favorites]
Oh, hang on, I've actually thought of a bad office food story at work finally:
We do a thing where lunches are all catered for us 3 days a week, but it's more like a group Grubhub order (we're presented with a menu of options for each day in advance, we each place our order, and on the appointed day they all arrive with our selections labeled accordingly).
Usually it works pretty well (except the company we're using is kinda not great about screening for somewhat unique food intolerances), and the biggest issue we've run into is that you have to order at least a day in advance - and some people are just a little too scattered to remember. So we've had a few instances of "Bob forgot to order lunch, and he's hungry, so he takes Sid's". The guy who's overseeing placing the orders usually gets a few extra meals just in case to try to stop that, but still every so often has to send out a mass "yo, guys, don't be a jerk and take food that isn't yours" email. We also allow people to expense their takeout lunches if they have to get a sandwich elsewhere on one of the appointed days....but I don't think everyone knows that.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:37 AM on June 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
We do a thing where lunches are all catered for us 3 days a week, but it's more like a group Grubhub order (we're presented with a menu of options for each day in advance, we each place our order, and on the appointed day they all arrive with our selections labeled accordingly).
Usually it works pretty well (except the company we're using is kinda not great about screening for somewhat unique food intolerances), and the biggest issue we've run into is that you have to order at least a day in advance - and some people are just a little too scattered to remember. So we've had a few instances of "Bob forgot to order lunch, and he's hungry, so he takes Sid's". The guy who's overseeing placing the orders usually gets a few extra meals just in case to try to stop that, but still every so often has to send out a mass "yo, guys, don't be a jerk and take food that isn't yours" email. We also allow people to expense their takeout lunches if they have to get a sandwich elsewhere on one of the appointed days....but I don't think everyone knows that.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:37 AM on June 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
Oh, I have another one:
The Sales team wanted to have a lunch sit-down with Support, so they asked us all for our orders from Shake Shake. I asked for a normal burger and fries, which was accepted.
I get there a little late due to being on a phone call (support, yes?), and not only is all the food gone but I walked in with my cane and all the chairs were taken and no one even looked at me, or moved, so I had to stand for an hour.
And then... our department manager told us to get back on the phones. I pointed out that someone grabbed my lunch and was told, basically, "too bad, we need to take calls". My desire to be a "good employee" there died that day.
(When, in my yearly review, I was asked if I felt "appreciated", I brought that up first, and said, "Does that sound like being appreciated to you, because it sounds like being told you don't matter with a shit to me.")
posted by mephron at 6:53 AM on June 7, 2023 [11 favorites]
The Sales team wanted to have a lunch sit-down with Support, so they asked us all for our orders from Shake Shake. I asked for a normal burger and fries, which was accepted.
I get there a little late due to being on a phone call (support, yes?), and not only is all the food gone but I walked in with my cane and all the chairs were taken and no one even looked at me, or moved, so I had to stand for an hour.
And then... our department manager told us to get back on the phones. I pointed out that someone grabbed my lunch and was told, basically, "too bad, we need to take calls". My desire to be a "good employee" there died that day.
(When, in my yearly review, I was asked if I felt "appreciated", I brought that up first, and said, "Does that sound like being appreciated to you, because it sounds like being told you don't matter with a shit to me.")
posted by mephron at 6:53 AM on June 7, 2023 [11 favorites]
This thread is reactivating my office work PTSD, both when I had to deal with passive-aggressiveness from others regarding what food I took from communal offerings, and when I had many jobs as the "girl" who was responsible for both ordering lunches and providing birthday cakes and passing around cards for people to sign, etc.
I did accept a job once where I would be sitting in a small office-within-an-office that had three desks in it, although the department no longer had the funding for two of those positions. So that space had become the "party food room" and at the end of the week, or on holidays everyone would bring in their favorite junk food, set it up in there, and just go in and out of that space all day.
I was like - you want me to work in the party food room with all the party food and people coming and going in and out every week and every holiday? NOPE. I know myself well enough to know that would never have gone well.
(They ended up moving the party food to the actual break room, where the fridge and the sink were, which made much more sense to me. It was fine.)
posted by 41swans at 6:58 AM on June 7, 2023 [3 favorites]
I did accept a job once where I would be sitting in a small office-within-an-office that had three desks in it, although the department no longer had the funding for two of those positions. So that space had become the "party food room" and at the end of the week, or on holidays everyone would bring in their favorite junk food, set it up in there, and just go in and out of that space all day.
I was like - you want me to work in the party food room with all the party food and people coming and going in and out every week and every holiday? NOPE. I know myself well enough to know that would never have gone well.
(They ended up moving the party food to the actual break room, where the fridge and the sink were, which made much more sense to me. It was fine.)
posted by 41swans at 6:58 AM on June 7, 2023 [3 favorites]
Oh! I want to share a really good food at work story. I worked at a hosting company for about 18 months, in the Network Operations Center (NOC) and (of course) the NOC has to run all the time. So somebody had to staff holidays no matter what.
The owner of the hosting company was a pretty good person, IMO. He did care about the staff, and was very approachable, etc. On holidays he'd personally deliver a turkey dinner or similar for the folks on shift. That may or may not seem like much, but I found it to be a pretty nice touch.
I didn't mind working holidays at all - it was, IIRC, double time, quiet, and I was living well away from family at the time anyway. If I wasn't working I'd have been sitting at home watching movies and having dinner alone anyway, so working the holiday wasn't a hardship at all.
posted by jzb at 7:05 AM on June 7, 2023 [4 favorites]
The owner of the hosting company was a pretty good person, IMO. He did care about the staff, and was very approachable, etc. On holidays he'd personally deliver a turkey dinner or similar for the folks on shift. That may or may not seem like much, but I found it to be a pretty nice touch.
I didn't mind working holidays at all - it was, IIRC, double time, quiet, and I was living well away from family at the time anyway. If I wasn't working I'd have been sitting at home watching movies and having dinner alone anyway, so working the holiday wasn't a hardship at all.
posted by jzb at 7:05 AM on June 7, 2023 [4 favorites]
I work for a research institution owned by the state, so we have lots of conflict of interest rules, and can't accept vender stuff.
I used to be an on-site government contractor in the DC area. The rules about what was off-limits vs. what was OK could get ridiculously arcane very quickly. I remember hearing about "the toothpick rule," which meant that Congressional staffers could eat something from a lobbyist party, but only if it was small enough to be served on a toothpick. I seem to remember rules about what food we could eat with government employees, such as bagels & muffins might be OK, but you couldn't have an omelet bar. I'm probably garbling some of the rules, but I'm not kidding about how granular they could get.
posted by jonp72 at 7:36 AM on June 7, 2023
I used to be an on-site government contractor in the DC area. The rules about what was off-limits vs. what was OK could get ridiculously arcane very quickly. I remember hearing about "the toothpick rule," which meant that Congressional staffers could eat something from a lobbyist party, but only if it was small enough to be served on a toothpick. I seem to remember rules about what food we could eat with government employees, such as bagels & muffins might be OK, but you couldn't have an omelet bar. I'm probably garbling some of the rules, but I'm not kidding about how granular they could get.
posted by jonp72 at 7:36 AM on June 7, 2023
Another free food story I'm not particularly proud of (see comments about the aftereffects of childhood food insecurity above) - I worked in a building where a lot of conferences were held. When they were catered with box lunches, sometimes I'd go through the discarded boxes at the end of the day and take any unopened packaged food like drinks, chips, and cookies. Also fresh fruit. I didn't hoard them in a drawer or anything; they'd get eaten with the next few meals I had. It's the main reason I don't like to buy large packages of perishable foods; I know that wasting the portion I can't finish before it goes bad will bother me.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:02 AM on June 7, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:02 AM on June 7, 2023 [3 favorites]
These stories (and the ones in AAM) are really interesting, and I sorta wish that I had something worth putting up. I sometimes go months or years in between reading AAM, and thanks to this thread I found this recent story which is like a delve into every expose of the private lives of the spoiled-rotten rich and/or famous that you've ever read, minus any sex stuff.
And I'm someone else for whom office food was significant mostly when I was food-insecure myself; the time when I really cared about office food was when I was there after hours as the janitor, way back in the day, and we got to eat whatever treats (like birthday cake) were left in the offices. Some of the cleaning staff would also check the cafeteria garbage cans for whatever wrapped food was thrown out at the end of the day. Since I started work in libraries, I've had my share of office drama and problems at work, but food insecurity was thankfully not one of them.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:12 AM on June 7, 2023 [3 favorites]
And I'm someone else for whom office food was significant mostly when I was food-insecure myself; the time when I really cared about office food was when I was there after hours as the janitor, way back in the day, and we got to eat whatever treats (like birthday cake) were left in the offices. Some of the cleaning staff would also check the cafeteria garbage cans for whatever wrapped food was thrown out at the end of the day. Since I started work in libraries, I've had my share of office drama and problems at work, but food insecurity was thankfully not one of them.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:12 AM on June 7, 2023 [3 favorites]
"Another free food story I'm not particularly proud of"
Why not? So much of that would've gone to waste otherwise. If I was responsible for the event I'd be really pleased if somebody had a few meals they wouldn't have otherwise had / couldn't afford rather than the food going to waste.
I made a comment upthread about WFH and "an end to the free buffet" at the HQ. I want to be real clear the folks who were loud about return to office weren't food insecure. They were making well above median wages. They just liked grazing on free snacks and catering, which is fine, but not worth risking COVID over or forcing everybody else to RTO.
I'm super happy if somebody who is food insecure is able to benefit from the wasteful practices around putting on conferences.
posted by jzb at 9:19 AM on June 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
Why not? So much of that would've gone to waste otherwise. If I was responsible for the event I'd be really pleased if somebody had a few meals they wouldn't have otherwise had / couldn't afford rather than the food going to waste.
I made a comment upthread about WFH and "an end to the free buffet" at the HQ. I want to be real clear the folks who were loud about return to office weren't food insecure. They were making well above median wages. They just liked grazing on free snacks and catering, which is fine, but not worth risking COVID over or forcing everybody else to RTO.
I'm super happy if somebody who is food insecure is able to benefit from the wasteful practices around putting on conferences.
posted by jzb at 9:19 AM on June 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
Awhile back my boss’s wife worked as a nurse somewhere they had a catered event every Thursday. There was usually a large amount left that would sit in the fridge and then thrown out on Monday. He asked her to bring it home if that was alright. Then he bought takeout containers and would load them up with the leftovers and bring them to work and put in the freezer. We do shift work here, and sometimes unplanned events, or situations meant someone might not be “food prepared” for their time at work, and this alleviated that. Went well for a couple of years until boss’s wife changed jobs.
I know I was thankful on many occasions for that food being available.
He has since taken to having some canned goods available and maybe some ramen and makes the occasional large pot of chili or pinto beans.
We also used to have vendors want to take management to lunch. Boss didn’t want to take that much time away from the site, so he finally said that you can bring pizza or burgers enough for my crew and I’ll talk all the business you want. Leftovers went in freezer as well.
Great guy, my boss.
posted by kabong the wiser at 9:50 AM on June 7, 2023 [11 favorites]
I know I was thankful on many occasions for that food being available.
He has since taken to having some canned goods available and maybe some ramen and makes the occasional large pot of chili or pinto beans.
We also used to have vendors want to take management to lunch. Boss didn’t want to take that much time away from the site, so he finally said that you can bring pizza or burgers enough for my crew and I’ll talk all the business you want. Leftovers went in freezer as well.
Great guy, my boss.
posted by kabong the wiser at 9:50 AM on June 7, 2023 [11 favorites]
@bl1nk I would like to hear more about this cheese subscription!
posted by SeedStitch at 12:46 PM on June 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by SeedStitch at 12:46 PM on June 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
@bl1nk I would like to hear more about this cheese subscription!It's Curdbox.
They're great! Only $50+shipping and every box has had some solid choices. They're not far from me, and I really wish that they had a "pickup in store" option, but that's my only grump about the setup. Also the boxes comes with reusable freezer packs, which are fine, but it's been almost a year now and we have too many freezer packs.
posted by bl1nk at 12:56 PM on June 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
These are always mind boggling to read, but that story in part 2 about the executive straight up taking people's food from their plates is less "weird" and more "dick power move".
I remember when I was a starving student in our fancy research lab at MIT in the mid-90's, there was a building wide paging message setup that got used for many purposes, but also to tell everyone when catered meal leftovers had been put in the building kitchen. If you weren't there in 5 minutes (less if it was from Elephant Walk), you were out of luck. (But at least in this case, it made a ton of sense with RAs being paid less than bupkis)
posted by drewbage1847 at 3:59 PM on June 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
I remember when I was a starving student in our fancy research lab at MIT in the mid-90's, there was a building wide paging message setup that got used for many purposes, but also to tell everyone when catered meal leftovers had been put in the building kitchen. If you weren't there in 5 minutes (less if it was from Elephant Walk), you were out of luck. (But at least in this case, it made a ton of sense with RAs being paid less than bupkis)
posted by drewbage1847 at 3:59 PM on June 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
My dad had a custom at Christmas time of putting a bowl of red and green jellybeans in his office, except they were cinnamon (red) and jalapeño (green) flavored.
posted by bendy at 4:29 PM on June 7, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by bendy at 4:29 PM on June 7, 2023 [3 favorites]
All these anecdotes about people deliberately and more or less covertly contaminating communal food with their own effluvia are weird and disturbing.
Unless you’re willing to entertain the notion that your microbiome is capable of manipulating your behavior to make itself more likely to be passed along — and this manipulation would be more crucial the more pathogenic an organism happens to be, of course — which makes them less weird, but more disturbing.
posted by jamjam at 6:54 AM on June 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
Unless you’re willing to entertain the notion that your microbiome is capable of manipulating your behavior to make itself more likely to be passed along — and this manipulation would be more crucial the more pathogenic an organism happens to be, of course — which makes them less weird, but more disturbing.
posted by jamjam at 6:54 AM on June 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
(But at least in this case, it made a ton of sense with RAs being paid less than bupkis)
But it doesn’t, even there. Grad students should be paid a living wage too. Yes, maybe that means fewer students get hired until granting agencies and fancy private funding learn that they have to provide enough money to pay the people actually doing the research appropriately.
So it’s the same as a corporate situation— better to have less free food and more actual pay. (Free food is significantly cheaper though).
posted by nat at 9:56 AM on June 8, 2023
But it doesn’t, even there. Grad students should be paid a living wage too. Yes, maybe that means fewer students get hired until granting agencies and fancy private funding learn that they have to provide enough money to pay the people actually doing the research appropriately.
So it’s the same as a corporate situation— better to have less free food and more actual pay. (Free food is significantly cheaper though).
posted by nat at 9:56 AM on June 8, 2023
Fascinating thread. Bit reminded of the kinda? reverse.
In (fancy-ish) college there was mandatory meal service for everyone living on campus (which was 98%). Catered by Marriott - we students would complain about it, but in retrospect, even for the cost, it was more than a decent canteen given AYCE decent cafeteria with hot foot (and later, made-to-order hot food), chaffing dish options including various soups, self-made stuff (quesadillas, wraps, hot sandwiches - with multiple panini presses).
There was an incredible amount of food waste.
The dishwashers (a pretty large crew) were known to eat the un-bitten end of hotdogs, hamburgers, wraps because the positions were so underpaid.
posted by porpoise at 7:35 PM on June 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
In (fancy-ish) college there was mandatory meal service for everyone living on campus (which was 98%). Catered by Marriott - we students would complain about it, but in retrospect, even for the cost, it was more than a decent canteen given AYCE decent cafeteria with hot foot (and later, made-to-order hot food), chaffing dish options including various soups, self-made stuff (quesadillas, wraps, hot sandwiches - with multiple panini presses).
There was an incredible amount of food waste.
The dishwashers (a pretty large crew) were known to eat the un-bitten end of hotdogs, hamburgers, wraps because the positions were so underpaid.
posted by porpoise at 7:35 PM on June 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
It's true - I, a struggling 'townie' worked in my university's main dining hall as a minimal-wage dishwasher. In fact my position was often cleaning 'the belt', knocking the contents of dishes placed on it into a powerful garbage disposer and I was sometimes unable to resist sampling the whole, intact hamburgers being discarded. There were lots of them; the food waste was appalling.
posted by Rash at 12:18 PM on June 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Rash at 12:18 PM on June 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
I appreciated this comment:
...this behavior *reminds* me of an attitude I often perceive in people who are gifted with a certain amount of financial privilege: they believe they have earned their financial gains entirely through their own virtuous cunning and thriftiness, and are oblivious to the fact that they are profiting from an unbalanced system biased against those who don’t start the race several steps ahead. And sometimes as a result they focus so much on the moral good of being thrifty that they blind themselves to the moral cost of being a jackass.
I recognize this is a LOT to read into a post about funny food scuffles, but the guy honestly thought he’d be patted on the back for being smart enough to put food aside for himself that was meant for other people! “Good job buddy, you saved money by passing the cost on to people who are paid less than you!”
posted by magstheaxe at 12:15 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
...this behavior *reminds* me of an attitude I often perceive in people who are gifted with a certain amount of financial privilege: they believe they have earned their financial gains entirely through their own virtuous cunning and thriftiness, and are oblivious to the fact that they are profiting from an unbalanced system biased against those who don’t start the race several steps ahead. And sometimes as a result they focus so much on the moral good of being thrifty that they blind themselves to the moral cost of being a jackass.
I recognize this is a LOT to read into a post about funny food scuffles, but the guy honestly thought he’d be patted on the back for being smart enough to put food aside for himself that was meant for other people! “Good job buddy, you saved money by passing the cost on to people who are paid less than you!”
posted by magstheaxe at 12:15 PM on June 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
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posted by box at 9:41 AM on June 6, 2023 [28 favorites]