Re: Perks (was phone interview)
Why must the company buy you something in order to "improve morale?"
They don't, and the question really has nothing to do with the point. You're making too much out of a more or less random example.
However, for the record, I don't happen to think that spending money is necessarily the best way to improve morale. Some of the best atmospheres I worked in didn't have many perks, but made me feel as though the employers were interested in my opinion and consulted me where my thoughts might be useful.
Just because people don't take lunches, doesn't mean the company relentlessly
beats employees and oppresses them. A lot of people, like myself, are perfectly
happy munching away at my desk getting our work done. I'm paid to get a job
done, not expand my social life at work.
I never suggested that it did. But if most people at a company regularly eat at their desk, it does say something about the corporate culture. The atmosphere may be oppressive, or employees may simply be enthused about their work and dedicated.
Whether you like what it says or you don't is another matter.
(Before one of you points out that I own my own business and hence don't have
an "employer", remember that I have customers whom are very much my employer.)
As a contractor, I can say that having an employer and having a customer are two different relations. Relations with an employer tend to be hierarchal, relations with a customer more equal - although obviously there are exceptions to such sweeping generalities.
I think you need to look a little deeper at an organization than asking if
there are a lot of free hand outs.
You've missed the point entirely. The answer to a question like "What do you do for lunch around here" isn't important because it lets you know the perks of the job. It's important because the answer can tell you something about the atmosphere of the office.
I mentioned eating while working and companies that buy lunch, but I could easily have added answers such as "We pop down to Starbucks for a muffin and coffee" or "People like going to the local sushi cafe" or even, "I don't know. Most people around here make their own lunch arrangements."
None of these answers are good or bad in the abstract. However, each tells you something about the corporate culture and the people you'll be spending your day with.
In my own case, for example, an answer that might suggest that the company wasn't a good fit might be, "We go to MacDonald's takeout counter." I happen to loathe MacDonald's, and, without being openly fanatical, I regard it, like all fast food joints, as purveyor of cheap and unappealing merchandise, the triumph of hype over content, and generally symptomatic of some of the basic ills in our culture. I would much rather spend a little extra for one of my favorite ethnic cusines, or for something new. So a company whose employees regularly frequented MacDonald's would probably be a poor fit for me.
Obviously, I wouldn't turn down a job solely on the answer to this question, but it might make stop and think.
--
Bruce Byfield bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com 604.421.7177
http://members.axion.net/~bbyfield
"To purchase a clear and warrantable body of truth, we must forget and part with much we know."
-Thomas Browne, "Pseudodoxia Epidemica"
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