<story><title>The Elves Leave Middle Earth – Sodas Are No Longer Free (2009)</title><url>http://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-earth-%E2%80%93-soda%E2%80%99s-are-no-longer-free/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jemfinch</author><text>Smuggling?  Really?  Why does Microsoft &lt;i&gt;care&lt;/i&gt; where I drink my soda?  My brain doesn&apos;t turn off at 5pm: last night I was up until 3am, at home, figuring out some bug my change introduced.  Yes, I drank an employer-provided Diet Mountain Dew that I brought home.  No, my employer doesn&apos;t care.  Perks are for &lt;i&gt;people&lt;/i&gt;, not &lt;i&gt;locations&lt;/i&gt;: as long as &lt;i&gt;I&apos;m&lt;/i&gt; drinking the soda, Google doesn&apos;t care where I drink it.</text></item><item><author>ajross</author><text>Hm... more like: someone was smuggling sodas out of the building that were offered in good faith as an office perk.  Frankly that would affect my morale more than even the removal would.  What does it say about an office culture where that kind of petty thievery is tolerated?  Honestly my feeling (and to be clear: like this whole subject this is subjective) would be that this response is not enough: better to name and shame the offenders.</text></item><item><author>jmduke</author><text>This reminds me of a great blog post, &lt;i&gt;Goodbye Microsoft, Hello Facebook&lt;/i&gt; by Philip Su (&lt;a href=&quot;http://worldofsu.com/philipsu/goodbye-microsoft-hello-facebook/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://worldofsu.com/philipsu/goodbye-microsoft-hello-facebo...&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;We used to get Dove Bars and beers all the time.  It felt like free food was on offer at least once a week, usually with a pretense of some small milestone to celebrate.  Why did we cut stuff like this?  (I know the boring fiscal reasons why.  I’m asking the deeper why, as in, “Was it worth the savings?  Is Microsoft better now that we’ve cut these costs?”)&lt;p&gt;One day, a sign appeared on a soda fridge in RedWest saying something to the effect of, “Did you know that drinks cost Microsoft [ed: millions of dollars] a year? Sodas are your perk at work.  Don’t bring them home.”  This depressed me on too many levels to enumerate, but I’ll toss out a few:&lt;p&gt;- Someone had enough time to get these signs professionally printed and affixed to our fridges.&lt;p&gt;- It was someone’s salaried, 40-hour-a-week job to do things like this.&lt;p&gt;- Someone thought soda smuggling was a big enough “problem” at Microsoft to draw attention to it.&lt;/i&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rdtsc</author><text>What if you sold it?&lt;p&gt;That would be ridiculous right you could be thinking, programming and improving the product to get a better bonus in the end rather than sell soda off of craigslist or ebay.&lt;p&gt;But you see that is how they think about it. You are stealing it and could be doing &amp;#60;insert the worst possible thing&amp;#62;. That is what management might come to conclusion about.&lt;p&gt;Another perspective + a story. (Warning: getting a bit prejudiced here). I have heard of foreign H-1B workers (won&apos;t name a country will stop at a vague level of prejudice) stuff their backpacks with soda. Stay late, look around, see if anyone is looking start shoving soda cans to fill the backpack up as much as they can carry.&lt;p&gt;It wasn&apos;t that management was upset, you see, it was other co-workers that were disturbed by that. Why? Because they realize they are working with &quot;that&quot; person. That would be disturbing to me. Is the company not paying them enough. Are they a kleptomaniac. Did they grow up poor and learned to steal food. What else are they stealing? Are they sabotaging our product? Do I want them around? Questions like that.&lt;p&gt;They complain. How does management react. Well they could lay off so and so. But heck he is chugging along programming and we got him on H-1B sponsorship. Laying him off because of a soda issue is worse than just making everyone pay for soda and, in return we get to save couple of thousand dollars a year.&lt;p&gt;That is how I heard about* (from another party, so this might have been made up, I don&apos;t know, take it for what it is worth).</text></comment>
<story><title>The Elves Leave Middle Earth – Sodas Are No Longer Free (2009)</title><url>http://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-earth-%E2%80%93-soda%E2%80%99s-are-no-longer-free/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jemfinch</author><text>Smuggling?  Really?  Why does Microsoft &lt;i&gt;care&lt;/i&gt; where I drink my soda?  My brain doesn&apos;t turn off at 5pm: last night I was up until 3am, at home, figuring out some bug my change introduced.  Yes, I drank an employer-provided Diet Mountain Dew that I brought home.  No, my employer doesn&apos;t care.  Perks are for &lt;i&gt;people&lt;/i&gt;, not &lt;i&gt;locations&lt;/i&gt;: as long as &lt;i&gt;I&apos;m&lt;/i&gt; drinking the soda, Google doesn&apos;t care where I drink it.</text></item><item><author>ajross</author><text>Hm... more like: someone was smuggling sodas out of the building that were offered in good faith as an office perk.  Frankly that would affect my morale more than even the removal would.  What does it say about an office culture where that kind of petty thievery is tolerated?  Honestly my feeling (and to be clear: like this whole subject this is subjective) would be that this response is not enough: better to name and shame the offenders.</text></item><item><author>jmduke</author><text>This reminds me of a great blog post, &lt;i&gt;Goodbye Microsoft, Hello Facebook&lt;/i&gt; by Philip Su (&lt;a href=&quot;http://worldofsu.com/philipsu/goodbye-microsoft-hello-facebook/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://worldofsu.com/philipsu/goodbye-microsoft-hello-facebo...&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;We used to get Dove Bars and beers all the time.  It felt like free food was on offer at least once a week, usually with a pretense of some small milestone to celebrate.  Why did we cut stuff like this?  (I know the boring fiscal reasons why.  I’m asking the deeper why, as in, “Was it worth the savings?  Is Microsoft better now that we’ve cut these costs?”)&lt;p&gt;One day, a sign appeared on a soda fridge in RedWest saying something to the effect of, “Did you know that drinks cost Microsoft [ed: millions of dollars] a year? Sodas are your perk at work.  Don’t bring them home.”  This depressed me on too many levels to enumerate, but I’ll toss out a few:&lt;p&gt;- Someone had enough time to get these signs professionally printed and affixed to our fridges.&lt;p&gt;- It was someone’s salaried, 40-hour-a-week job to do things like this.&lt;p&gt;- Someone thought soda smuggling was a big enough “problem” at Microsoft to draw attention to it.&lt;/i&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nostrademons</author><text>It&apos;s generally not considered Googley to smuggle soda out of the office.  Nobody will stop you because Google by-and-large trusts their employees, but I&apos;ve heard coworkers complain about people who take home food from the microkitchens, and I&apos;ve gotten friendly ribbing when I brought a microkitchen soda to an off-site where everyone else was drinking beer (which I don&apos;t drink).</text></comment>