I don’t get excited over free food
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Cheese PizzaThey have decided that ‘free food’ is a great motivator for employees.  Who are ‘they’?  I have no idea.  But ‘they’ are responsible for the lion-share of bullshit in this world.  (I don’t have the numbers to back that up)

They: “If you [insert onerous task you would not ever normally do like work a bazillion hours without a break or do cartwheels through a minefield] we’ll bring in [shitty, cheap food/pizza] for everyone!”

People: “Yay!” [goes crazy trying to complete onerous task they would never normally do]

Me: “Meh.”

They: “Hey! We have plenty of shitty pizza here!  Who wants some?!”

Me: “Meh.”

They: “Here!  Have some shitty pizza!”

Me: “Um. No.”

They: “DRINK THE FUCKING KOOL-er, have some pizza!”

Me: “. . .”

I just don’t get it.  Why is free food such a motivator?  Especially bad free food.  Like, the cheapest pizza in town.  Or the state.  Or the country.  Possibly the world.  I swear to god they make this shit in a factory somewhere overseas and ship it prepackaged or something for like a dollar.

So, yeah.  Cheap pizza.  The kind of shit Chuck E Cheese’s says, “oh no – we can’t serve that shit… we have standards…”

O_o

I don’t know why free food doesn’t resonate with / motivate me.  My first reaction to ‘free food’ is that I didn’t choose it, I didn’t order it, I don’t know where it came from and I don’t want it.  When I get pizza, I don’t like the cheap shit.  Maybe I’m a pizza snob.  Well, we KNOW I’m a pizza snob, but you get what I mean.  Probably.  Right?

Someone once told me that she wouldn’t eat food prepared by someone she didn’t know.  I asked about restaurants and she said she had to be comfortable with them.  Okay.  Maybe I’m uncomfortable with the idea of food I didn’t order from places I wouldn’t order from.

Or maybe I overthink things.  Maybe I see the ‘free food’ for what it is, or what it’s intended to be; a motivator to get you to see value being offered where really there is no intrinsic value at all.

It’s like paying for a discount.  What the fuck?

“If you join our blah blah club for just BLAH BLAH MONEY MONEY MONEY per year, you an enjoy a 5% discount on all your purchases and I won’t press this cattle-prod against your testicles…  Sound good?  Mmkay…?”

(weird mood)

~P

1 Comment

  • Paul (@princejvstin) Posted May 2, 2013 10:55 am

    A point to this, Patrick.

    A couple of times a year, as a member of the Employee Committee, I help organize an employee breakfast catered by a local restaurant. It’s very good food but expensive. We floated a trial balloon of saving money by going with something cheaper.

    The cries of outrage caused us to back off of changing the breakfast.

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