Poll: Does your office have a pet? | Hacker News Reader

Poll: Does your office have a pet?

2 pointstoast763 comments

Serious question: There's been a heated debate in the BugHerd office the last couple of days about getting a cat for the office. They've even set about creating a @BugHerdCat twitter account with which to taunt me.

I'm personally against it for a bunch of reasons, but the team (in all seriousness) are quite adamant that a pet for the office would be great for the team and the office in general. About half the team are cat lovers, the other half are either indifferent or dog lovers.

Aside from all the obvious difficulties associated with having a pet, I'm genuinely curious if this is a common thing for startups/businesses in general? Does your office have a pet?

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I'm not saying no, but when you start talking pets, you start talking policies. For office pets, there's what to do when somebody's allergic (which will happen day n where n is small). If it's really the "office's" cat, instead of, say, "your" cat, there's who changes the cat box, manages trips to the vet, keeps the cat over the weekend; the list is not endless but if you don't get down to "who cleans up cat piss in the server room" your list is too short.

Full disclosure: I am technical co-founder of a small lifestyle business, and my dog has been coming to the office with me since day 1, for 10 years. We allow anybody else's dogs to come in, also. Our rules are: Dogs only, on the "dog-side" of the office. Dog-side has a door that keeps dog-side dog-side. Dogs have to get along with each other. Dog messes are the responsibility of the dog owner. You can leave your dog unattended for a couple of hours if you get somebody to be responsible for walks & stuff.

A couple of folkways have arisen. No chicken bones in any dog-side garbage can is an example. If you get the dogs barking by kicking a tennis ball around, you have to calm them back down.

If you don't have customers visiting your office and plan on discriminating against all future employees with cat allergies then, yes, it is ok.

No; I like the idea, but its impractical.

Maybe if we were in a different location

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