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Comment by birken | Hacker News Reader

I think your point is unlikely to be accurate. The person that, by their presence in the transaction, is stigmatizing frivolous requests costs money too. Probably a lot more money than whatever minor percentage increase in equipment requests also happen. (Also if their system is anything like Google's, all requests are tracked by your employee badge, so abuse is easily caught).

You are also conveniently forgetting the cost of somebody who did accidentally spill coffee on their keyboard. Every hour they cannot work because there isn't a functioning input device to accept their keystrokes is just productivity being wasted. Obviously I don't think the fact that Zynga has these vending machines makes them a great company, but I can certainly say that having them doesn't make Zynga a bad company.

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"The person that, by their presence in the transaction, is stigmatizing frivolous requests costs money too."

That person also keeps up with the latest technologies and, ideally, would be able to advise on the appropriate type of keyboard or mouse or whatever.

"You are also conveniently forgetting the cost of somebody who did accidentally spill coffee on their keyboard."

If the spilt coffee results in keyboard damage, no qualm there. I'm referring to cases where you have a slight drop and decide to get a new keyboard rather than wiping it.

" I can certainly say that having them doesn't make Zynga a bad company."

I don't think the vending machine by itself impugns a company but it certainly matches a sense of wastefulness from other anecdotes.

You're really stretching the point here.

First, having vending machines for hardware doesn't mean that an IT department doesn't have any say on what gets ordered to go inside.

And really, is there any measurable amount of theft by employees who get a drop of coffee on their keyboard, and either just throw it away and get a new one, or go home and sell it? And would this in any way cost more than what the company saves by streamlining the basic IT hardware procurement that goes with any large company?

Quite far-fetched scenarios you're tossing out at this point.

It's not the cost of the particular item that matters, and I think you miss the overall point.

You may think it's trivial, but the same behaviors are reflected in software development (wastefulness of resources) and from what I've seen there's a strong correlation between wastefulness in life and wastefulness in work output.

And you may think it's trivial, but treating employees like inmates in a prison harms productivity. (Gee, my left sift key still works, but right shift is broken, do I want to argue with my manager about whose fault is was and make he and I both go through the paperwork for justifying a purchase over my standard allocation? I mean, if I waste his time with his, that costs money at his high salary, and won't ensure me to him...")

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