Many years ago (and two offices back) we acquired some sort of coffee machine (sorry, I'm not an aficionado, it crunched beans and made OK coffee) to stop everyone disappearing to Starbucks nearby. Though it was not the most reliable of machines. Then we moved out to Canary Wharf and it was joined by a similar machine, which took slightly different beans and didn't taste as good though it was somewhat more reliaable. A few years later the mothership decided we'd be moving as they had spare floor space and it suited their balance sheet. As this building has a canteen and coffee shop upstairs and to stop the current incumbants from complaining the two trusty coffee machines were banned. The is some sort of free "coffee" available now, but my god it is disgusting.
Another gripe is that when we moved from Canary Wharf we also had to leave behind our nice Herman-Miller chairs for some shitty, useless chairs as along with many other things that's how it was... their way or the highway.
Well before the coffee machines we used to have free lunch bought in every day. You ordered first thing in the morning and and luch it arrived like magic! Obviously the reasoning was to keep us near our desks. Though the office at the time was a bit out of the way, so it would be quite easy to use up your lunch hour. There used to be a few toasters too, but I think the frequent fire alarms put paid to them.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
