The following is not a rant (else it would be in the Pit) but just a lament:
I’m a simple man of simple tastes. I like my coffee black and my donuts powdered. And I like them spelled “donuts.” Nothing fancy. Coffee and donuts.
Coffee and dounts used to be available from my company’s cafeteria. On the outside chance that I missed breakfast on a given day, I could stop by the cafeteria and order coffee and a donut. Mmmmm. Sixty cents for coffee and fifty cents for a donut. A nice powdered cake donut.
But that was in the past. A while back, the cafeteria went through a makeover and decided to become the “cafe,” or in the words of my Dad, “hoity-toity.” Gone is the good ol’ cup a Joe. In it’s place now is a selection of gourmet coffees, each no doubt made from hand selected beans, carefully roasted one bean at a time in a secretive centuries-old manner by Peruvian bean-masters (or whatever). My cup a Joe now comes with names like Guatemalen Cocoa-infused Sunrise Roast and costs $1.75 for a 14 oz cup. Gone too are the donuts, replaced by “pastries” and “scones.” Those run $1.25 each. They are not noticebly any larger or better tasing than the old donuts.
I missed breakfast this morning, so I stopped by the cafe to get my fix. Three dollars. Three dollars for coffee and a pastry. At the supermarket three dollars gets me a can of ground coffee that lasts two weeks and a bag of bagels. What the heck is my workplace turning into? If I want to pay through the nose for fancy gourmet coffee I’ll go to Steep & Brew, or Victor Allen’s, or even (God forbid) Starbucks. But when I am at work, I just want coffee, dammit. I spend two thirds of my waking hours here, and the least they could do is provide coffee that won’t break the bank.
What’s next, replacing the vending machines with little kiosks where artisans craft homemade potato chips for five bucks a bag?
[sub]If you don’t get the joke there, don’t worry. Only me, racinchikki, and mechanichik do–it’s from a fingerpuppet play they wrote and I acted in.[/sub]
I know your lament. My husband works for a pretty huge corporation here in Chicago. So big, they have their own building even! WOW! And it’s tall!
That isn’t the point.
The point is, not only are they required to pay for each and every cup of coffee they consume…they’re NOT ALLOWED to have coffee makers on each floor or in each department. So he either has to trek down to the ‘cafe’ three times a day and pay $1.25, or carry the big ass thermos I picked out for him to work each day.
he opts for the latter, but I’ve never worked at a company that didn’t give complimentary coffee. Good god people, is society breaking down?
Gunslinger, how do you act in a fingerpuppet play? On second though, I don’t want to know.
On coffee. Work in a lab. I just about died when I saw the “coffee hood”. One big slab of metal over open flame with three pots (regular, decaf, water) in a fume hood. (It was the plastics lab, they use the hood in the lab across the hall.) You clean and re-start the pot if you finish it. Bring your own cup. Donate change toward buying coffee.
I’ve got the opposite problem. I quit coffee and all pastries (on the Atkins diet) and coffee is abundant while coworkers constantly bring in donuts and bagels.
A few months back, my company switched over to these rockin’ instant-brewed coffee makers. Every floor got one. Except for ours. They left us with our antiquated piece-o-shit machine, and then to add insult to injury, stopped delivering coffee for us, since the company had switched over to the new system.
Now to get coffee you have to go to another floor and steal a cup like a thief in the night. Unbelievable.
jarbaby - Arrrgh. We have the same rule here. We aren’t allowed to have coffee makers in our departments, which really sucks. I usually bring in a thermos every morning too, but some days (like today) I don’t have time to brew a pot before I rush out the door.
Damn straight! I keep hearing Dr. Johnny Fever’s voice in my head:
“Free coffee is a constitutional right! Look it up – Juan Valdez vs. The State of California!”
Well, I’m with ya on the anti-expensive coffee thing. The first time (uh, make that the only time) I stopped by a Starbucks, I nearly choked. Now, I don’t usually consider myself an uncultured redneck or anything, but the first time I saw the coffee prices I nearly choked. Every depression era instinct my parents carefully instilled in me kicked in. For anything over $1.50 a cup, I want my coffee to sing and dance for me, damnit.
I feel for you on the office thing. I haven’t been through the same thing, but its gotta suck.
Don’t want to make anyone feel bad, but since we’re sharing…
My company is great about this aspect of employee relations. We get coffee (reg/decaf–though they try, both are bitter to a true coffee-lover), hot chocolate with and (since I casually mentioned vegetarians can’t have 'em to the HR team who LOVE me) without marshmallows, tea (reg/decaf), and drink mixes for iced tea and pink lemonade. Recently, after some building plumbing problems interrupted water to our floor, they’ve opted to introduce water coolers to our lunch room as well, which incidentally houses not only microwaves, but a dishwasher, two standard stacked ovens and two vending machines.
As if that isn’t enough, one of their selling points are free-lunch Fridays. Every Friday they have lunch caterered in from a different local restaurant (nothing too fancy and often not too vegetarian friendly–like the Popeyes Chicken Fridays–but thoughtful just the same).
They believe that making employees comfortable in the workplace makes them better workers and helps with retention. Of course, as the company keeps growing some of these might be fringe benefits we have to do without…we’ll see.
As for the other aspect of the discussion, I think a regular ol’ cup of joe should be affordable. The higher prices for the fancy coffee beverages, which I happen to like, should reflect the additional time and training required to make them properly; regular (plain) coffee doesn’t require THAT much time, energy or training to brew.
Here where I work, coffee is provided for us. Most every dept. has it’s own machine. We drink a lot of it. It is a good thing too, as I am for the most part trapped in here and can’t get out. At least I have Coffee to keep me wired up.
We have a cafeteria here too. They ususally have a daily lunch/dinner meal (choice of two things) or you can go to the grill for burgers or sandwiches and sides. It is a good deal. The company subsidizes the the cafeteria, so a meal with drink is about $3.50.
Of course we have the usual vending machines and microwaves and bottled water machines placed here and there throughout the plant. They take pretty good care of us around here.
Sorry for those of you with less, but sometimes it be’s that way.
We have a community coffee pot on our floor. I pitch in $5 every year and that goes towards whatever is needed for the machine. Pretty cheap even if I rarely drink coffee.
I brought an iced-tea maker to work a couple of years ago and a co-worker brought in a small coffee pot. Now we just make hot water for tea every morning and we don’t have to worry about the slobs who make a mess in the kitchen. Every other afternoon we make a big pitcher of tea. We’re trying to figure out how we can fit a water cooler and a small refrigerator into my office.
We’re not allowed to have small appliances in our offices but since my office isn’t off the main hallway, we get away with it.
