…or if they suddenly change from manual dispense to automated.
Pop = soda. I sometimes forget not everybody is a midwesterner. 
It was definitely a case of paternalism. All non-diet soda was removed for the good of the employees’ health. (Or possibly the owner saw the health insurance costs going up and thought this would somehow help.) Now there is still diet soda, but there is regular soda as well.
Also, my department now has its own coffee maker. Things are looking up!
Taking away the free coffee. My company (which provided free coffee) was sold to a bigger one - which had a corporate policy AGAINST offering free coffee. Now, as a non-coffee-drinker this affected me not at all, but really, is coffee that expensive??? I’m reasonably sure they don’t permit coffee makers in the work areas either (e.g. no Mister Coffee for you and your cube-mate to share).
“Hoteling” - this is when a company has office space, but most employees work off site - at a client site or whatever. They provide space in the office if you need to be there, and you use an online tool to reserve a spot. No problem with that. BUT: if you’re going to be in the office several days in a row, you can NOT reserve the same space for several days. Nope - you have to pack up everything you’re working on at the end of every day.
Flex time / teleworking: These are great. I understand companies having concerns over productivity, it’s not the right answer for so many careers, and even in careers where it can work (e.g. IT), there are times where you truly need to be around your colleagues. But I have several friends whose companies explicitly FORBID teleworking - even on an occasional basis or in an emergency, and where there truly is work that could be done remotely.
I don’t think that typically a matter of suddenly getting stingy, if that’s what you mean. Things in bathrooms are getting more automated now mostly because of the currently popular hysteria about germs. All the automation is so you can flush, wash your hands, and dry your hands without touching anything.
Depends. It means they want to be all modern, or like an airport. Clean but not too clean. As far as automation:
Urinals: fine. Also the low water ones are fine. I use them for pee, not for disposing of garbage.
Toilets: no. there was a recent thread on this. I prefer pooping without worrying about what the toilet will do to me.
Soap: great.
Sinks: fine. If the company really hates you, they will add those sinks where you push the top down and it automatically dispenses water for a maximum of 5 seconds; always less than you need to wash your hands and remove all the soap you are using by trying to be clean. Thus necessitating pushing it at least 2 more times with soapy hands.
Paper towels: fine. Again, it is much worse IMHO to add hand dryers. They never work properly (and also almost never dispense bacon!), and afterwards you still have to open the bathroom door if germs are a specific issue for you (which swings inward for some reason 90% of the time).
Now that’s going too far! :eek:
Let me guess- you work in the East Wing of the White House. Naw- Michelle wouldn’t have put back the non-diet pop.
Back to the topic at hand- having management come around on the last day before Christmas and New Years, shaking hands and wishing the employees Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Our new management doesn’t do this. A minor thing for sure but it lets us all know how little they think of us.
For business travel, rather than grant us the $8 or so for lunch expenses, they now insist that we submit copies of the actual receipts from Burger King or whatever. Yeah, you trust us to disrupt our lives to do business on the other side of the state, but you don’t fucking trust us not to bill for a couple bucks more for lunch than what we spend, enough to pay someone to audit the receipts.
I provide free coffee and snack foods, along with lunches on Friday from whatever local takeout people agree on. Birthday parties at lunch time with food/drinks/cake. I recently replaced a few electrical outlets with usb outlets and everyone loves them.
“Almost never”? Is that in there from personal experience, or just to keep alive the theoretical possibility? 
Yes, I am aware of the meme this relates to, I was just amused by your choice of wording.
A lot of the negative examples in this thread seem to stem from the removal of a previous practice. I’m lucky enough to have always worked at a company where I do feel valued and they treat us pretty well - things like on the rare occasions when we are expected to work late, being given pizza on the company, the CEO buying everyone a donut on his birthday (pretty generous in an office of 500), free tea and coffee (not that I use it). I can imagine it being annoying if perks like these are removed, but if you’ve never had it you’re not going to miss it, I think.
Praise in public; criticize in private. And listen to the employee’s side before criticizing.
Twice I had a boss blame me for really bad things that (a) weren’t my responsibility; and (b) happened on my days off!
Ohhhh… This burns me too. We used to get x amount of $ per day. Do what ever you damn well please with it. Your out of town, sometimes it’s a bitch. You go over? Too bad. Go under? It’s yours to keep.
Now we have special credit cards AND have to bring back receipts. And only ‘approved’ stuff can be bought. That beer with dinner? Nope. Can’t put it on the dinner check. I have to have a separate fricking check for my beer. Makes me feel like a fool.
Pro tip: On the rare ocassions when they do dispense bacon? Do not eat it.
I work in transit. Over the past decade our union has lobbied for better breaks. The way it currently works is that your break happens during the bus layover at your route’s terminal. The problem is these layovers vary widely depending on route, time of day, and day of week. Some routes are incredibly generous- 40 minutes to drive from one end to the other, with a 20 minute break before you go back the other way. So all day you are 40mins on, 20mins off. Problem is, these are rare (and jealously coveted by high seniority drivers). Many are much worse- 2 and a half hour long route with an 8 minute break. If you are late, there goes your break. If you need to use the bathroom/eat/stretch your legs, you can let dispatch know and take your break running late, but that will have a snowball effect where you just get more passengers, more late, etc.
Recently management started agressively enforcing the “no eating behind the wheel” rule. Get caught with so much as a cheeto in your hand while in the seat, and you can get a 1 day suspension without pay :rolleyes: . Most drivers arent unsafe about this; sipping water bottle or eating a cheese stick at stoplights/bus stops. They wont make our breaks longer, and running late just screws everybody (grumpy passengers, tired stressed drivers) but they punish the drivers for trying to compromise.
Yeah, my place of work (chemical plant) does this a lot. People on my floor get anxious if two or three weeks go by without free pizza – they’re chowing down on free Imo’s (which is vile) today. Every Friday the contractors leave boxes of Krispy Kremes in every building.
For some reason, the company is concerned about obesity. The plant keeps having weight loss contests, which everyone else really appreciates, too. I can hear them down the hall complaining about how hard it is to lose weight… while they’re eating their pizza.
It’s about $2/person to get Imo’s, so I can’t say I’m impressed with how much the company cares about me. I appreciate good managers, competent co-workers, and reasonable expectations far more.
The biggest morale-destroyer, for me, is the performance evaluation scheme: only 10% of employees may be rated as “Exceeds”; 10% of employees must be rated as “Does not meet”. Everyone else is “Meets”, with an optional + or -. This is by employee level, and if there are not ten employees of your level in your department, you’re grouped with others of your level in other departments. And then, the managers must argue over which one gets the Exceeds, and which one has to give a Does Not Meet.
If you have multiple high-performers of the same level? Too bad, only one can Exceed expectations. No under-performers? Too bad, someone has to be rated poorly.
Furthermore – as I just found out this year – if you finally get a promotion… you automatically get rated “Meets Expectations”. No possibility of being rated higher (not even with a +). Even if you’ve been performing well above your level for years.
This all seems designed to crush employee morale and loyalty.
I see what you did there… I don’;t buy them, but I think they’re still too pricy to cost less than lost productivity from shiftless shift workers using the frivolity of a bathroom break.
Some things that a company can do just amount to fairness.
My previous job was at a manufacturer where I spend 30 years through three ownership changes. It started as a group of 3 guys who owned it, then it was bought by a major Japanese corporation, and then was purchased again from the corporation by a couple of the managers.
One policy that used to grate on my attitude was sick leave. Under the corporation we were allowed 10 days of sick leave per year, and we had employees who either had lousy immune systems or were just milking the system, who took all 10 days, essentially getting 10 extra days off work per year. The healthy employees who didn’t miss work got nothing.
Once the last two guys bought out the corporation they announced a slightly different policy. Everyone still got 10 health related days off, paid. You could use them in half day increments to got to the doctor or dentist or stay home if you were sick, or to sit with a sick family member. The reason didn’t matter.
But, at the end of the year whatever un-used sick leave you had in the bank would be cashed out before Christmas.
Allergies were cured, pets no longer needed to go to the vet, the immune system of everyone’s children took a dramatic boost. And the people who were milking the system came to work most days.
The prior policy benefited slackers and penalized good workers. With a policy of everyone getting the same paid time, used or un-used, the system became fair again.
Today I joined a new project.
- My computer was waiting for me, all loaded up and ready to go. Well, ok, one script file was missing, but that took all of five minutes to fix: compare with other places where the computer took a month.
- There was also a good-quality, comfortable headset, since international calls go through the corporate IM/VoiP/screenshare system.
Something as apparently silly as “getting the tools you need before you even need them” is extremely valuable.
The company I worked for (before we were bought) didn’t pay for lunch when you were travelling.
Their attitude was: “you’d buy lunch if you were at the office, we’re not paying for you to buy lunch THERE”. Never mind you might be one of those folks who brown-bags it (sigh).
The later on (after the takeover), the travel guidelines were “actuals, up to xxx dollars”. Realistically we all wrote down the xxx dollars, as receipts were at least not required. But the kicker: we were on a Federal contract, and were legally (and contractually) allowed to charge up to the Federal per diem - which was significantly higher than the corporate “per diem”. BUT because the Federal amount exceeded the corporate limit, we couldn’t exceed the corporate amount, or we’d get scrutinized and Calls Would Be Made. Sigh. I mean, it quite literally was NOT costing the employer anything, the money would be billed straight through to the client, who paid without a quibble.
Yeah, I’m seeing the differences in my new office from my old one, and although there are small differences, they’re really making a difference in morale. Our old office was downcast because of constant office politics, but people were staying–I was the first supervisor to leave of his/her own accord in ten years. My new office doesn’t have a single person in it who’s been there more than three years. (Wish I’d known that before I signed up.)
What’s going on with morale in our office? We’ve got free coffee, so it’s not that. (Oh but they are taking that away when we get new carpeting, allegedly.) Our office is about as ugly as you can imagine–it reminds me of a bus station, and there are bugs in the common room so free food doesn’t exist, so that could have something to do with it. No, I think the real problem is because at we all feel like we’re insignificant cogs in the machine. There is no recognition of what most people do. Most people don’t even understand what other people do in the office. That makes people feel like replaceable parts. Our boss inhibits creativity, probably because he is so insecure he thinks that any idea that isn’t his potentially puts his job at risk. And so when you feel like you have a great idea that could really help the company, you know you’re not going to be lauded; instead you’re going to be shouted down, and so you throw your idea in the trash…or save it for your next job.
I’m presenting at a conference later this year on what I think is a great idea that could help our office. It’s already been rejected by our boss. I already know that several other companies are going to be on board with this idea, having discussed it with them, and many more will do so after my presentation. But I’ll come back to an office that wouldn’t even look at it. If you want to kill employee morale stone dead, that’s a perfect way to do it.
… or if a disembodied voice from dispenser says “You have exceeded you allotted allocation for this visit …”