I think most offices in the US have free coffee for their employees. They provide a heavy-duty coffee maker (a Bunn-O-Matic), bags of pre-measured, pre-ground coffee, sugar, milk, half-and-half, etc. Where I work, we also have free tea bags (regular and decaf), free hot cocoa mix, and free powdered iced tea mix. Friday is bagel day (free). Oh, and the water is free too (water cooler). For all else, you pay (vending machines, cafeteria, coffee shop, and you have to leave the building for the really good stuff, like Mr. Tong’s Orange Beef). Other than the bagels, I think that’s pretty standard fare.
What food and beverage perks do you have where you work? Especially outside the US? Just curious. Thanks.
Dave (uni57)
P.S. - the coffee at my office is so bad that I can’t drink it.
I get free chips and salsa and soft drinks! Plus, sometimes I get to sneak into movies for free. Of course, I don’t actually work for the company, but I know what strings to pull…
I have only once been in paid employment. I went to Wellington with a friend who had a small part in the Tribes, which is a lame NZ TV series. I tagged along for something to do, and I was going to go riding in the forest when I got there. I was riding around where the set was, and the producer or director (someone) said that he was missing an actor, and asked if I wanted to don some makeup and a costume. After being convinced by peer pressure I ended up doing it. Being an extra is so easy, you just stand around for ages, and get a wicked free lunch. They wanted me to come back the next day when they were doing a party scene, and they would have shot some film of me riding my Unicycle and paid me another $100 (on top of the $60 they gave me), but I was keen to go home, since staying in Wellington another night, getting to the set, and finding a ride home would have been bothersome.
A few years ago I did some Periodic Detention work, due to being convicted for possession of cannabis. There we were not allowed to bring our own lunch, but they provided a couple of sandwiches and a cup of tea.
At the moment I am doing a course at the Polytech. There we can get free filtered water. Apparently there is free tea and coffee if you take your shoes off and go into the Maori room, but I usually just go for the water. They are having a special promotion where they have been giving out free Daily Newspapers for a month, but that ends tomorrow. Free stuff is good! The course I am doing is free, and they give us a free toolkit with some carpentry tools.
Working for Shell Research in the Netherlands, I have free and unlimited access to the ‘coffee’ machine. It serves coffee in various incarnations like mocca, decaf, regular etc, as well as hot chocolate, cooled water and hot water. There is also free syrup in some places to mix your own drinks adding water, but I don’t use that. In meetings, we usually have cookies as well and if the meeting is around 12:00 there is often a catered lunch.
Dave, I don’t think this has been true for quite a while, even during the go-go 80s and the rising stock 90s. Well, maybe in smaller offices; I’ve always worked for behemoths.
Where I work, prior to the bubble bursting, we got catering at all our meetings, but day to day coffee and such was not the rule. Our Poland Spring water coolers were paid for, but this and the meeting bagels/lunch were the first things to go. Approximately 70,000 people, a small percentage of whom got nice retirement packages, soon followed those perks out the door.
Now our only perk is that management holds fewer all-employee broadcasts than they used to.
Working as a resident Doctor in the main regional hospital I have unlimited access to the Automated Nescafe Coffee machine- powdered coffee instantly turned into the most awful dirty leftover dishwashing liquid imaginable. And we still drink it. Luckily there is also an espresso stand in the hospital corridor that makes a pretty decent flat white (my coffee of choice :p) Unfortunately it is not too good on the budget when you visit two times a day five or more days a week. That whole section of the hospital smells of an espresso bar…Mmmmmmmm
Oh and lunch is free!
Oh and sponsored drug company lunches where they feed us and give us free pens and paper
I’m not a coffee fan… but work gives us all the tapwater we could ever want. That’s about it, usually… however today was the end of some part of the project, so our boss gave us creamcakes. Hurrah!
Admittedly I’ve only been there almost three weeks so I had nothing to do with it, but I’m not one to pass on a creamcake…
Over 14 years I worked for two major insurance carriers. Neither provided free coffee. The first had a $5.00 per month coffee fund that provided very good coffee, well worth the fee. The second had nothing, had to go downstairs and pay the outrageous drip price at Starbucks (I won’t even go on about the more outrageous price of espresso, you thought smoking was an expensive habit).
My current office is just my assisant and me. We have unlimited access to the water cooler. If I need coffee I grind a bunch at home and bring it in.
I am shocked and stunned that more people do not have free coffee. My company is very, how shall we say… frugal? It’s hard to believe that they are granting us this “luxury” (really bad but really free coffee), when so few others are doing the same. Or maybe there is a correlation between people who get free coffee and people who abstain from posting about their good fortune.
TANSTAAFL - There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch
How is it that you know these things and I had to look it up? Given your mastery of the English language, I knew you were aware of the stigma of ain’t. So, I made the substitution and did a Google search – to try to understand your meaning. Sure enough, “there ain’t no such thing…” is the common expression!
