<story><title>What Google&apos;s Famous Cafeterias Can Teach Us About Health</title><url>http://www.theatlantic.com/life/print/2011/07/what-googles-famous-cafeterias-can-teach-us-about-health/241876/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>cletus</author><text>One correction and one comment:&lt;p&gt;The article says cafeterias are available 24/7. That is not technically correct. The cafeterias are open for various meals on various days (eg one might do breakfast and lunch 5 days a week, another might do lunch 5 days a week and dinner 4 days a week).&lt;p&gt;What are available 24/7 are the micro-kitchens, which have coffee machines, breakfast cereal, various snacks, sodas, ice tea, etc. It is true that these do tend to have a healthier focus but it depends on what office you&apos;re in.&lt;p&gt;Also, I don&apos;t know what vending machines there are. I haven&apos;t seen any but then again I&apos;m based on New York (although I&apos;ve spent quite a bit of time in Mountain View).&lt;p&gt;So I&apos;m not sure how the article reaches the conclusion it does because, at least in Mountain View, it&apos;s entirely possible to eat nothing but Oreos and Kit-Kats from the MKs 24/7.&lt;p&gt;It is true however that those items do tend to be on the lower shelves.&lt;p&gt;Lastly, this article seems very focused on Mountain View but that&apos;s only one of many offices, although it is by far the largest. In New York for example there are no bikes but there are scooters (the building we&apos;re in is an entire downtown city block and one of our floors is the entire floor so scooters actually do come in handy for traversing level 4).&lt;p&gt;I haven&apos;t seen bikes or scooters outside of these two offices however.</text></comment>
<story><title>What Google&apos;s Famous Cafeterias Can Teach Us About Health</title><url>http://www.theatlantic.com/life/print/2011/07/what-googles-famous-cafeterias-can-teach-us-about-health/241876/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>scottyallen</author><text>The vending machine isn&apos;t quite what the article makes it out to be.  For starters, it&apos;s one vending machine in all of Google (as far as I know).&lt;p&gt;It magically appeared one April Fool&apos;s day, and has been attributed to some of the SREs in charge of keeping web search running, but credit has never been claimed.  There was a rather funny &quot;I am spartacus&quot; thread about the vending machine that appeared on a major email list after one of the facilities or kitchen management asked who was responsible, ostensibly so they could congratulate them.&lt;p&gt;I no longer work at Google (though I used to work downstairs from the vending machine), so it&apos;s awesome to hear it&apos;s still up and running and being stocked.  I believe, at least for a while, facilities/cafe staff were officially condoning it if not restocking it.  Definitely one of the more clever pranks I saw around campus.</text></comment>