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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?
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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."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Marco2G on Friday November 13 2015, @06:21AM
I'm a bit surprised that it's allowed to leave company premises for such things as getting snacks. In Switzerland, you're expected to prepare for your daily routine at home and bring what you need. You are allowed to take time off for important business like going to the doctor, for government business or dealing with emergencies and such.
If you want to go out to get snacks, that sure as hell will happen on your own time, as it should, and your employer will have valid reason to write you up if you do it repeatedly.
On the other hand, I find it almost funny how the smallest of comforts get thrown out. You're left with one ply toilet paper, tree bark for paper towels and a badge reader on the coffee machine. The Swiss will literally spend a hundred bucks to make sure their neighbour can't save fuve cents he isn't truly entitled to... So we actually can't complain much when CEOs are of a similar mindset...
The truly ironic part, though, is the fact that almost nobody is productive for more than 4 to 6 hours. Because humans just can't be working efficiently for that amount of time especially when their jobs are rather repetitive.
(Score: 2) by physicsmajor on Friday November 13 2015, @06:26AM
Honestly I agree with this. It seems entirely reasonable to bring in a Clif bar instead of expecting to be paid to leave.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Friday November 13 2015, @07:02AM
Yeah, cause treating people like human beings is a terrible thing. How dare they want breaks, how dare they LEAVE the premises.
Seriously, do you not see the slavery parallels here? Well, wage-slavery I think its called nowadays.
Ok, that was over the top. In reality people just need to get their work done. If someone is missing deadlines because they're out for hours every day buying snacks halfway across town, then sure, I'll give you that its reasonable for that person to be fired or put on probation. But 10-15 minutes twice per day accounts for federally mandated break periods (her ein the US). If they are going up to 5x per day to the vending machine down the hall, probably still not over the break limit.
So, where do you stand on not burning out employees? Is France insane with its 35 hour work week (and pushing for less I hear)?
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 2) by Marco2G on Friday November 13 2015, @07:42AM
For your average cubicle worker, that may very well be true. I am in IT. Part of my salary goes toward being available in emergencies. It's great if our customers can't work because storage is acting up and the storage dude is out of the office getting Starbucks, isn't it?
Don't get me wrong, it really depends on the job and the company size and so many other things. But we're a company of twenty in a bit of a rural part of Switzerland. If I go out to get a snack, I'm gone for twenty minutes. If I was a smoker, I could be called out of a break in five minutes. Now multiply the difference of fifteen minutes by about two thousand people who can't work in a worst case scenario.
I completely, utterly understand if my employer expects me to take my snackage with me beforehand, especially if those snacks are part of my daily routine and thus quite predictable.
If it is a once in a long while occurrence, I agree. I have made an assumption in my post so I apologize for that.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Saturday November 14 2015, @09:41AM
Wow, can you teach a class in online discussion? :)
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 2) by Marco2G on Sunday November 15 2015, @12:23PM
I could, but you shouldn't judge me from this one post here. I can be very, very spieteful and hurtful when people don't show a modicum of fairness in their arguments. I believe to be truly great at discussions, you need not only be fair in your own arguments but you should be able to make other participants WANT to be fair as well. I am not that kind of person :).
(Score: 4, Insightful) by physicsmajor on Friday November 13 2015, @04:04PM
I'm going to engage you despite feeling you may not be receptive to any counter arguments. My position is very simple.
You are paid to work. Depending on your job and management, that may entail sitting in a cubicle, doing a certain amount of a productive task, keeping up with a service queue, or something entirely different.
For the purposes of this discussion, let's assume you are paid for your time. In this specific situation, leaving the premises for non-work purposes is inappropriate unless you punch out and back in. I have no issue whatsoever about people leaving if the time away isn't assumed to be paid, out of some sense of gross entitlement.
Do you see the difference? Aside from situations when availability is critical, I have no issue with this.
In many other work situations - self employment, work for results instead of hours, contact work - leaving at any time would be fine.
The employer/employee relationship depends on both parties getting what they agreed upon. There are no echoes of slavery here, as both parties agreed without coercion. As described, the employee would be in breach of this agreement without making up that time.
I'm usually the first to hate on corporations, but discourse about this stuff requires intellectual honesty and it is a two way street in the ideal case.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday November 13 2015, @06:57PM
For the purposes of this discussion, let's assume you are paid for your time.
I think that's a poor assumption to make. The article speaks of eliminating office snacks. It's probably safer to assume these folks are salary. "Work for results instead of hours" is what salary (supposedly) means.
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Saturday November 14 2015, @09:52AM
What DeathMonkey said, along with the fact that federal law allows for 30 mins of "breaks" for every 8 hours, along with 30-60 mins of unpaid lunch time (not researching specifics, sue me :P).
I think I did a good job of covering those bases, and if an employee is going beyond such allowances then penalties are allowed and expected. Fascist policies that infringe upon the 30 mins of paid break time (in the US) and 30-60 min lunch break (unpaid) should be dealt with accordingly. Namely sued out of existence...
You seem to be part of the crowd that was raised to believe in the wage-slavery ideal. PSA: they pulled the wool over your eyes. The profits aren't going to some American Dream, they are going to a few rich bastards squeezing everything they can out of their workforce. A lot of those profits have actually gone to making sure the quality of life does NOT get better, because that would mean lost profits.... Keep your idealism, but accept reality as well. Its tough, and only the strong can withstand the emotional and intellectual onslaught of the true scam.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 1) by Knowledge Troll on Friday November 13 2015, @07:05AM
is the fact that almost nobody is productive for more than 4 to 6 hours.
Six hours is actually the holy grail for productive work performed by an employee in an 8 hour typical day. When teams start performing time tracking and are actually honest about it
...
It seems entirely reasonable to bring in a Clif bar instead of expecting to be paid to leave.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Knowledge Troll on Friday November 13 2015, @07:15AM
Arrrgggg misfire on preview.
is the fact that almost nobody is productive for more than 4 to 6 hours.
Six hours is actually the holy grail for productive work performed by an employee in an 8 hour typical day. When teams start performing time tracking and are actually honest about it then two hours of actual real work being done in a day is not an entirely unreasonable value. It needs to be improved but it should not shock anyone that most employees waste most of their time or have most of their time wasted by others at most of the places.
...
It seems entirely reasonable to bring in a Clif bar instead of expecting to be paid to leave.
I suppose for an hourly employee it would be important to clock out before you left the premises to get some food, or drinks, or what ever. It has been a long time since I have punched a time clock. I wonder though if you are thinking in terms of hourly or salary wages with the employee that is leaving to pick up drinks or smokes or what ever. Because in the case of a salaried employee this isn't logical at all.
A salaried employee is supposed to not have hourly requirements and it is not supposed to only be a one way street (though it is commonly abused) where people work for free because they made $N over 40 hours before at an hourly wage, got a "promotion", and now work 50 hours a week for 40 hours pay. In fact if the salaried employee role is working well you might have highly compensated individuals that you hardly ever see because they appear to do very little.
If you sweat a guy taking off for 20 minutes to buy a coke because he is getting paid to do it something is wrong. Can they do their job? Are they doing they job? Are there blocking issues that originate at them? Can they meet their responsibilities? Is stuff on time? Are they predictable?
Being gone from the office isn't a problem. Not being able to or simply not doing your job is a problem.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 13 2015, @08:18AM
Depends on management.
Some prefer workers that sit in the office looking at the screen, though their brain is out, lacking energy.
Others prefer that the worker in question does what's needed to get back to being productive.
two hours looking like you're working, but getting nothing done, vs ten minutes out of the office. It doesn't take much math to tell which is more productive, but it is a lot more math than some managers can handle.
Personally, I've had a manager tell me that he would rather that I look at code while thinking about the beach, than looking like I'm not working, while thinking about a code problem.
(Score: 2) by Tramii on Friday November 13 2015, @05:08PM
Personally, I've had a manager tell me that he would rather that I look at code while thinking about the beach, than looking like I'm not working, while thinking about a code problem.
After twenty years of programming jobs, I've never had a boss who didn't think this way. Most of them would not admit it, but every single one of them enforced policies that encouraged this kind of behavior.
(Score: 1) by Alias on Saturday November 14 2015, @12:26AM
And this is why people who were once naive to the ways of corporate America find it hard to get a job once they are no longer naive. Either that or they go into management.
At least your manager "managed up." It is too bad that management and executive culture lowers the honesty bar so far, (while making insanity by claiming the exact opposite.) It might actually be possible to allocate resources toward the most valuable endeavors per the capitalist ideal if everyone could actually have access to all the (correct) information.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 13 2015, @01:20PM
I leave the building at least 5 times a day for smoke breaks. The other day I walked down the block and got myself a bagel and a good cup of coffee. I was gone fifteen minutes.
Clock out? Nope. Tell anyone? Nope. Get in trouble? Nope. I work between 4 and 8 extra hours a week on my own time. I do not get paid for those hours. If I want to screw off for fifteen minutes every couple of hours I am going to do so. It helps me reset my thinking and I come back in with a game plan.
If anyone so much as whined about it I'd be out the door down to the next job. Plenty of IT jobs in my area. Most of them pay better. My boss knows this. The reason I am sticking around is until I am fully vested in my profit sharing in two years. I could make that up fast elsewhere though so it wont take much to nudge me out the door.