To me, the sign of a civilised workplace is the provision of a kettle, milk, sugar, coffee and teabags. In a day and age when the morning and afternoon break, certainly in office culture, is routinely ignored, going to make a cuppa is as close as you get to punctuating a long and tedious day.
Alas, this is no longer the case where I work. The kettle, teabags and coffee have been confiscated and a hulking great big machine has been installed. Yes, one of those rotten shit heaps that dispenses watery tea, retch inducing hot chocolate and a dozen varieties of coffee, all of which taste roughly the same and all of which scour the lining from yr stomach. The only thing remotely drinkable was the chicken soup, which they proceeded to remove and replace with 'hot water'. Aye! Great fucking idea! It's my belief that the people who run the company probably think we all got down on our knees and prayed to the machine like it was a God when it was fitted.
"Oh great mechanical dispenser of rancid hot beverages, hear our prayers and piss out gallon after gallon of toxic smelling effluent for us, so that we may spend a little less time in the kitchen making tea and coffee, and a little more time fucking about on the internet while the boss isn't looking."
Buncha useless bangers!
"Oh!, but it's still free!" they'll exclaim. I should ruddy hope so! Can you imagine if they actually tried to charge you for the pleasure of feeling slightly ill after half a cup of what they amusingly refer to as 'Choco-milk'? If theres chocolate or milk in it, I sure as hell didn't taste it...........
In the next six months this machine will:
1)Make someone violently ill with one of it's brews
2)Malfunction catastrophically
3) Gather dust in the corner of the kitchen like an unwanted wedding gift.
I'm bringing in a thermos until they see sense and bring back the fucking kettle.
9 comments:
Evil fucks.
All part of the 'harmonisation process'.
Chuckleheads!
Well I used to work for a well known large coffee company who used to provide the contents for these machines.
The fuckers used to charge us to use the vending machines.
I suspected you were about to say they were charging you as well. Not that it helps. I'm sure it'll break soon enough. You can help it along the way by filling it with bakiong soda, or something, and when it starts to spew foam everywhere somebody can sneak in a kettle while the management takes six months to get it fixed.
My old work place was like that, my new one isn't. Hooray!
Pewari - If they charged us to use the machine I think there would be heads on sticks before the day was out.
LYG - It's actually out of commission just now. Rain damage or something........the area around the vending machines is a soggy mess of broken ceiling tiles and other crap. Hurrah!
Billy - I have had decent stuff from vending machines in the past. There has to be soup of some sort for it to be viable, as the coffee will suck big style. The problem with ours is that the tea isn't bags, it's the instant crap they tried to flog in the shops years ago, also the milk is UHT or powdered...........ech!
Coffee and tea making are exact sciences, from one person to the next. If I don't trust a work colleague to make me a brew, then what chance has Metal Mickey in the corner of the kitchen got?
They've left the kettle seemingly, so I'm just gonna take my own tea and milk in.
Morning and afternoon breaks? In many offices there are effectively no lunch breaks either as workers are too scared to leave their desks.
The sub-editors at the evening newspaper I worked for sat down at 7.30am, had a half-hour break at 2.30 and went home at 3.30 - how mad is that?
The company provided us with a hot water machine that was forever breaking down and a chocolate/crisps vending machine. I think they wanted us to die.
Not only these machines take away the taste of some real tea/coffee, but they take away socialization within a working place as well.
Consider that one of the primary objectives of installing machines like these.
Malc - No problems with lunch breaks for me. That sounds horrendous........
Unfortunately, most large companies are run by utter, utter wankers. They have no concept of how to harness worker efficiency, instead believing that the more hours someone works, the more work they will do.
Szelsofa - Indeed! One of the best things about making tea and coffee is that you'll maybe bump into someone in the kitchen and have a chat for five minutes. Rather than being an integral part of your day, it's come to be regarded as a waste of valuable working time. Bullshit!
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