How We Share Meals At Ridejoy | Hacker News Reader

How We Share Meals At Ridejoy

blog.ridejoy.com

39 pointsjasonshen20 comments

How nice. On my first day 27 years ago as a programmer, I followed the team to the bank op center cafeteria at lunch time. I loaded up my tray and went to join them at the long table. As I sat down in the only empty seat, someone said, "That's Linda's place." I looked around and saw no Linda, but they were all staring at me with hostility. I dumped my tray and went back to my desk. Some years later during a review, my boss nailed me for not being more sociable with my colleagues. I told him I did not want to upset Linda.

For some reason that story makes me feel really sad. I know us geeks are not supposed to be the best with social skills and awareness, but treating a new junior hire like that is tremendously insensitive.

There are always jerks, geeks or not.

Actual experince at my secnd job:

First day: No one talks to me, lunch alone, leave withou having said a word to anyone apart from my manager who showed me my desk and introduced me to everyone.

Second day: Walking in past the desk of a long time employee... Me: Good Morning! Her: You came back?

...again: this actually happened.

I have to wonder if these forced-socialization companies have a hiring filter for the asocial or otherwise uninterested due to time or whatever, woe betide those who slip through and risk an ignominious culture-firing.

The worst part is that there was no Linda at the company.

The BEST part was that some years later, the cops busted a coke ring that was operating out of the cafeteria. Lots of cafeteria workers and IT folks went down. Not me--I was at my desk with Campbell's Soup every day. I realized my post made me sound a pathetic loner. I actually made some friends there who I still lunch with today, though they are of course pushing retirement age now. Business IT was very different from now in the 1980's. At 24 I was by far the youngest on the mainframe team. I kept that distinction on into my early 30's at different employers, before "youngsters" in their late 20's started showing up. The mainframe IT guys/girls (at least in bank IT departments) of the 1980's tended to be older than 30, very much relics of the 60's and 70's. This means I also witnessed the Y2K bug being crafted. I was zapped quite a few times for carelessly allocating 8 bytes for date fields. "You're wasting 2 bytes carrying the century." My bad! I worked on the same system (for a different company) 20 years later and made good money helping upgrade all the dates. Things changed over the years, but in my experience, I have never been at a place that has any kind of food culture aside from ad hoc lunch groups that form outside the office. Certainly never any company-funded food.

I think it's a very positive thing that people invest this much time in nurturing staff; That said, there seems to be some companies whose sole purpose is to convert VC money in to full stomaches? I'm not knocking on Ridejoy specifically (I thought the whole community manager shebang a while back was very entertaining, and I like their idea) but there's a lot of posts on company eating on HN. Hackers and Gourmands?

Thanks! I wouldn't worry about our investors, the food is 2-3% of our total burn. Everyone loves food (see Pinterest) and it's a fun and occasionally enlightening way to find out more about a startup from the outside.

(note: if you haven't seen the community manager shebang, it's at http://blog.ridejoy.com/how-to-woo-a-startup-the-best-resume...)

I'm trying to get something like this going in my office. It seems funny to me that so many days we're all busy chowing down in front of our keyboards while we read HN. I think a day a week to get together and enjoy everyone's company in a more relaxed setting is a good idea.

No not really. It's more cash efficient for a company to pay for their employee's meals in bulk than it is to pay them that ~$10k in after tax income (So around $13-15k per person). The company also gains 'free labor' by saving the employee's time from walking out of the office, and saving the employee time in food prep time at home. Many employee's are going to eat out almost every day when they're at the office.

It may be good for the 20something not married no kids kind of guy, but for me, 30something married, kids - I'd rather not eat dinner at the office. My wife is an excellent cook, and personally, I'd rather go home and be with my wife and kids than to sit around eating with my coworkers.

Here at Munchery, our independent chefs have been cooking healthy balanced meals for a number of startups, most of which have no time nor staff nor facilities to make food in-house.

We have found a way to make it extremely affordable too. It's usually no more expensive than if you order takeout elsewhere. On top of that, we deliver directly to your office.

We currently offer first 5 dinner meals as complimentary to ANY startup based in SF (and we discount the rest if you have more than 5) with no strings attached. We have had a bunch of companies signed up. See details here: http://blog.munchery.com/heres-to-the-crazy-ones

Please have a diet meal option (keto, atkins, south beach, paleo, etc) available every day. Loosing weight on automatic would be a very tempting perk for many employees. Office managers can order 10 diet meals and 30 normal meals and it wont be any extra work for the office manager to implement.

Thank you for the feedback. As we expand, we'll introduce specific diet plans for sure.

As you add people, you'll find that you will also need to deal with some vegans (which means some form of vegetable protein at every meal) and a less well-defined set of preferences ("Joe can't stand Indian food - he just doesn't like it.", "Patty doesn't like the texture of seitan.", "Fred only eats hamburgers, hot dogs (if they've been cut up), and plain pasta with butter on it.") which will end up defining a small set of meals that will please everyone, save for the adventurous ("Let's go to DeeDee's (in Santa Clara) and see what they're serving today!") eaters on your team.

My hat's off to you for making a go at it. I've done restaurant (catering) ordering (to make sure it gets done right) for a company of 70 people (40 local folks staying for dinner) and it's difficult to get a menu with enough variety that everyone feels included — people left out get cranky and make faces at you in the morning if you are both getting coffee at the same time. (They won't kick your dog, however.)

At the company I work for we have two people employed to cook lunch (which is basically the same dishes most people eat at dinner) and breakfast (which means I get to enjoy home-cooked bread).

The result is employes who know each other well and who like each other. The cost is properly pretty high, but it is worth it.

But what's the cost to the company when everyone disappears "at lunch" to eat their mid-day meal (whenver "lunchtime" is - Fred gets up early, so he eats at 11, Constance chows down at noon, and Paul, who arrives at work by 12:30pm every day, skitters out at 1350 every day to catch his favorite restaurant before it closes for the afternoon), and how much longer will people stay if you feed them dinner? (In a former life, the figure was at least an extra hour worth of productivity a day)

Getting people's meals in sync is a productivity bonus, even if they don't socialize during those meals.

Ask HN: Who is Hiring? (Chef Edition)

This is a surprisingly interesting post. It was clever to post it before lunch too :)

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