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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 13 2015, @05:24PM
Good sir,
I have read posts and replies to posts like this on the internet and on the compuserv of years past.
It always ends with the people working having more money than those that didn't, unless the person who rejects it is well paid.
When we read about 20 and 30 somethings living with mom and dad, you'd wonder why the technical types are unable to find positions to fill in places like that. Clearly, those jobs were not outsourced to another country if the expectation is to stay in the office late.
I do not agree with the practice, but I cannot afford to stay home; my morality doesn't feed me and my parents live hundreds of miles away, have divorced, and are not prepared for me to sponge off their retirement. In fact, the fear is I have to send THEM money before long, because people get older than they expect. Getting divorced also cost them money they didn't expect to spend when they got married, I am sure.
In any event, these issues have been a problem for years, and it seems that if these are contractors, they are likely hourly and getting pizza.
Do you have something better to do with the time of young people getting paid to get experience so that when they reach your age and tenure, they can reject such things as having already climbed that ladder? Because if they follow your advice, they'd not have climbed the ladder. They may as well be at home. Which seems to be a problem for many people as it is.
Youth is wasted on the young; many youths are wasting their youngness at home as adults. Working late seems to be preferable, but really, I too would rather see staff increased by 50% and have reasonable working hours.
But when that happens it's called Holiday Sales and then those people are laid off anyway and people bellyache about the loss of seasonal jobs.