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posted by martyb on Friday November 13 2015, @04:15AM   Printer-friendly
from the the-price-of-free dept.

To boost its bottom line, Sprint decided last week to end the era of free office snacks for its employees. The move represents a tiny fraction of the struggling telecom's effort to cut $2.5 billion from its total operating expenses. Axing the free food will shave $600,000 from the budget. But at what cost?
...
From the most cynical point of view, however, this isn't just a case of corporate largesse. Snacks keep workers in the office working instead of out foraging for sustenance during working hours. A 2011 study by Staples found that half of all workers left the office to get snacks at least once a day, with some people making as many as five trips to get their munchie fix. Snack runs account for 2.4 billion hours in lost productivity in the U.S., according to the study. It should be noted, of course, that Staples and your boss have a shared interest in keeping more people in the office.

There has been no economic study on the elasticity of perks. Proposing Phoenix's Law: "When free coffee, soda, and snacks go, so should you."


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Whoever on Friday November 13 2015, @05:42AM

    by Whoever (4524) on Friday November 13 2015, @05:42AM (#262519) Journal

    I haven't worked at a company like that for a long time, but what always seemed unfair to me was companies that only provided vending machines, which sell snacks and drinks at a price which is clearly profitable for the company. Making a profit center out of the employees: not cool.

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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by q.kontinuum on Friday November 13 2015, @05:59AM

    by q.kontinuum (532) on Friday November 13 2015, @05:59AM (#262526) Journal

    One company I worked for in the past had a refrigerator, but no free snacks. One day I started buying big packs of ice-cream cones, put a per-piece price on the box and a small container next to it. I sold basically at cost (rounding up to next 10 cent). My effort was as neglectable as my financial gain. Other benefits (personal reputation, satisfaction of seeing everyone paying honestly, no-one touching the unprotected money, perceived gain in team moral) were price-less.

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    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by riT-k0MA on Friday November 13 2015, @08:41AM

      by riT-k0MA (88) on Friday November 13 2015, @08:41AM (#262561)

      Slightly off-topic, but I thought I'd share it anyway.

      I work for a company that develops a mobile payment platform. We have a vending machine in the office. One day the vending machine was accidentally left unlocked by the owner (This machine is not the company).

      After being contacted the owner rushed back as he was extremely concerned that the vending machine would be looted by unscrupulous individuals. When he reached the vending machine his worst fears were concerned: a mob of people was crowded around the open machine, sticking their hands into the interior. On closer inspection he realised that not a single item in the machine had been stolen. Instead the geek-types were trying to understand how the machine worked and were discussing whether or not is would be easy to integrate the company's mobile payment solution into the machine.

  • (Score: 2) by hankwang on Friday November 13 2015, @02:39PM

    by hankwang (100) on Friday November 13 2015, @02:39PM (#262657) Homepage

    "Clearly profitable" is not so black and white. Someone still needs to be paid to go around and refill those machines, repair them, pick up or deliver pallets with snacks, and so on. The floor space (at €€/m^2) taken by the machine cannot be used for other things and you have the depreciation of the machine.

    If it's too cheap, you'll need to refill them twice a day and you contribute to obesity and diabetes (At least I would need a lot of self-control if we had free soft drinks here). Healthy snacks are usually perishable, although one could consider things like apples.

    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday November 13 2015, @05:33PM

      by bob_super (1357) on Friday November 13 2015, @05:33PM (#262762)

      Healthy is expensive: A huge company I regularly visit has 25-cent cans of soft drinks, but $1.25 water bottle.

      Oddly, they also provide free fruits (bananas and apples), and a water fountain next to the vending machines. It's still profitable for the external vending company, though.