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That’s kind of depressing compared to Ireland (specifically Dublin). Things are just so expensive here.
Consider that all these lunches are subsidised by the company, which if you think about it could have either completely subsidize or pay workers more and make lunches full price. This lunch format easily costs 8€ or more full price.
Side note: I actually do like for companies to subsidize lunch since it's usually money that is exempt of taxes up to a point (depending on the region) so the workers save money by doing so.
I do like it as well when companies subsidize lunch, but one downside is that in practice, people with certain allergies can't enjoy those schemes some/most/all of the time. While seeing their coworkers enjoying cheap food.
Most people are allergy aware these days I think ?
Plus in many cases, the food service is outsourced.
It all depends on the company for sure. I'm not sure about the laws in EU, but in the US you genrally have with X amount of employees you must have a space for eating, break room, etc, and with X more employees the company must provide food service on site.
Some choose to subsidize some or all of the food. Basically the FS provider would submit a bill at the end of the other to the company to make up the difference. Boy, let me tell you, those meetings were super fun!
We had one company provide coffee to each floor (4, plus exec level), and said coffee was kept in unlocked cabinets in the coffee room. Our first bill to the company on coffee alone was 10k (for about 600 employees), and then it went up from there.
Flash forward to an average 20k in coffee a month and the meeting with the CFO to see what feasibility to take out the coffee machines and replace them with soda fountains... GOOD GOD CFOs are the most dense, single minded motherfuckers on the planet.
I'm no longer a part of US corp. life and I feel cleaner for it.
That's a fair concern. I think it could be fixed by asking workers about food allergies and avoiding those foods. Unless it's an absolutely massive company it should be feasible.
It's win-win for the business. They use the money that could go to salaries to encourage employees to work more hours by staying in the office for lunch.
That's not how it works in most places, working hours are fixed and breaks are typically mandated by law anyway, so you don't get to go home early just because you skipped lunch.
Plus, a healthy and tasty meal, subsidized by the employer, certainly beats me shopping for the ingredients and cooking when it comes to price and time invested. An actual problem is rather having access to a place that provides food like that.
What I mean is workers who leave for lunch are more likely to come back later. Coming back late from lunch happens all the time and no one is fired from Accounting for taking 45 minutes instead of 30 minutes.
Workers taking lunch with other workers in the office are also more likely to talk about work as compared to meeting friends outside of work for lunch. If you are talking about work during lunch with coworkers, that's like having an office meeting during lunch.
Yes, that makes more sense. I can agree with that, thanks for clearing that up.