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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: 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 :).