Yet another trivial poll

[ladyofastolat]

At work, there is a kitchen about 20 steps from my desk, and at any time I like during the day, I can wander in and make myself a hot drink, and bring it back to my desk to drink while working. I was quite horrified to discover the other day that Pellinor has to buy any drink that he consumes from the staff canteen, and can only do so at designated break times. I'm curious to find out if his situation is normal and I'm just very lucky, of if I'm the normal one, and he's horribly deprived.



[Poll #1493344]

Comments

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

Work also supply all the hot drink ingredients. Plus plates of fruit. And occassional plates of sandwiches...

From time to time individual employees also buy additional stuff, such as donuts and cookies, to augment the above.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Waves hand - working from home!

[bunn.livejournal.com]

... though when I worked in an office, I usually took in my own supplies. This is because office coffee tended to be foul stuff bought for the lowest common denominator.

Having to wait for a designated break sounds like something you'd do in a call centre - though I suppose when I was running courses, that would also apply AND you'd end up having to have coffee with the trainees and answer 9999 questions in between slurps.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Oops. I did think of you when writing the poll, but failed to transfer that thought into the action of including an "I work at home" option.

Having a designated break would also apply to people working directly with the public, when you need ensure that the counter/till/ticket office is staffed at all times. All our public libraries have designated break times - though the exact timing tends to drift, since you can't just up and leave the counter when there's a queue of 20 people.

When I went to the showroom of our old library supplier to do a big book buy, breaks were announced by a loud klaxon, which was followed by an enormous stampede as all the backroom staff dropped what they were doing and literally ran to the canteen. It felt very nineteenth century.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Thinking on, this also tends to be the case in museums where you can't really have mugs of hot liquid inside your nice climate controlled store rooms ready to spill on your priceless artifacts (or, more likely endless sodding boxes of medieval spur parts and Victorian flatirons...)

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Similar rules apply in places where there are young children. On those rare occasions when a pre-schools offers me a cup of tea, I generally have to drink it standing up in a corner of a well-barricaded, tiny kitchen, while staff members bustle around me cutting carrots into tempting little pieces, as part of their ongoing attempt to persuade children that raw vegetables are yummy, and not the manifestation of pure evil that they truly are.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Mmmmmm carrots.

Re the tea, I remember a child I was at primary school with who as a toddler had pulled a kettle full of hot water over himself. He was one of twins, Gareth and David: they looked identical when clothed, but when we went swimming you could see that one of them was sort of - melted. Gareth, I think it was.

That said, I'm sure parents must drink hot drinks in their houses. Maybe that will be prohibited soon.

[firin.livejournal.com]

Basically, they should prohibit parents who don't pay attention to the proximity of children to hot liquids.

A previous partner of mine told me of an occasion where an infant daughter of his (for whom he did not have custody), pulled his cup of tea from the coffee table in front of him and burned her face and chest. He felt that his partner, who yelled at him for his inattention, was wrong...

I can see why public places would want to minimise the risks though.

[firin.livejournal.com]

(places where there are young children)...and in health care environments, where any type of food, drink or container of either is viewed as an infection control risk and thus outright banned.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

..and why flatirons, anyway? As opposed to bumpy irons? Ridge-and-furrow irons? Spiky irons? Irons embossed with a 3-D representation of Queen Victoria?

[bunn.livejournal.com]

ISTR that the flatiron was the first version of the iron, the box iron, which was taller cos it had a box that you put charcoal in, came in later. So, flat thing that you stuck into the fire to heat up, compared to tall boxy thing - "still using a flatiron Deirdre? I've got a box iron now, stays hot so much longer" etc etc?

Could be wrong. I never iron anything.

[intertext.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, I have more trouble getting _cold_ drinks (even water) at work. The pipes in the building where my office is are old and the water tastes foul, so no one wants to drink the water out of the tap, except when boiled for tea or coffee (we have an electric kettle in the staff room, which is across the hall from me). For a while, we had a water cooler with water delivered once a week, that we all paid into a kitty for. But someone got antsy about the bottled water thing, so that was stopped and now we have to bring our own if we want it.

[firin.livejournal.com]

The ward where I used to work has now instituted the rule that staff are not even allowed to bring in their own bottled drinks, even if clearly labelled, as there is a 'risk of confusion and cross-infection' from people drinking from the wrong bottles.

Sometimes I worry about the health service.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Though when I did work I could have drinks any time of the day I wanted, in whichever building I worked. The Department supplied hot water boilers for this purpose, plus fridges, dishwashers and, latterly, microwaves.

[louis-soul.livejournal.com]

It would have to depend on your work and your boss. In places where a call center enviroment is the norm you have to stay chained to the phone and can only take breaks in five minute increments which take away from your overall thirty minute break per day.

I work in an office so I can have breaks whenever I please.
Your incredibly priviledged if your work supplies free things everyday. If you want something you have to bring it yourself here though they do have a kitchenette, which I wish had a sink but they do supply free filtered water, the delivered kind in the huge jugs.

Sometimes I wish people wouldn't bring in their own things though, this morning the women next to me brought in her Christmas decorations. She's got lights strung up, probably everywhere by noon and has a motion sensing singing toy moose and frog singing carols as people walk by. She's had to turn them off though now because it's driving people crazy. :) In a bit she'll have the tinsel strung up.
It's a bit much in my opinion but since I'll probably not bring anything it will make up for my area.

Excessive decorations

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

Yes, I hate that too. Thankfully we've only got one person here who goes anyway towards overboard on Christmas decorations. A small amount of decoration I don't mind, but when they start to impinge on others it gets a bit much.

[gramarye1971]

Our office has hot water dispensers and can provide coffee or tea of the industrial sludge variety. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, I bring in my own tea and go to fetch hot water for myself -- on very rare occasions, I'll leave the office to get a cup of better coffee at the coffeeshop round the corner. To avoid having to keep getting up from my desk to refill my mug, I have a small thermos (an IKEA find that's almost six years old now) that holds enough hot water for about two mugs' worth. No specific break times, thankfully, but there are times when I wish we had a small canteen or something more than an overpriced vending machine that dispenses only carbonated beverages.

[segh.livejournal.com]

When I was at work we had a "free vend" machine which you could go to whenever you liked. We had burglars one day and they broke it open, despite the conspicuous "free vend" notice - perhaps they just didn't understand oxymorons.
G.'s bank had a kitchen, but now they've got one of those machines with the little pots. G. said he thought that it was bad for the environment to have that much packaging. His clerk said, "Oh, don't be so green!", which is funny, because she's usually quite green herself.

[evilmissbecky.livejournal.com]

Obviously this doesn't apply to me now, but where I was, the company provided coffee and all the necessary accessories, free of charge to the employees. We paid a vendor to come in every week and restock the communal kitchens.

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

Not working now so I can make them whenever Na'Quis lets me ;-) at work though the office used to have a tea-kitty which as the admin bod I used to collect and then use to buy tea, sugar, coffee, milk. As it was a fiver each a month and had been running since before I started there we had a nice surplus and used it to pay for Christmas meals leaving do's etc as naturally it would get topped up again during the year.

[pellegrina.livejournal.com]

Work supplies tea and coffee at more or less designated break times. Colleagues can make themselves hot drinks to take to their offices* but I am not allowed drinks in the library, and cannot go make and drink them elsewhere if there are library visitors. This rankles.

*Upstairs staff. The warders are restricted to break times but I think/hope that the tea/coffee is supplied by work.

[kargicq.livejournal.com]

We have a coffee machine that produces a variety of coffee and chocolate hot drinks, and several different types of tea-bag are also provided. Biscuits are provided (but vanish fast) at breaktimes, and Danish pastries at staff meetings. The cost for this is our (optional) £1/month membership fee to the Staff Common Room. (Lunch is free; we pay for things [e.g. bacon rolls] from the tuck-shop but get to jump the queue.)

[sally_maria]

I'm obviously the stand-out "working with the public" person. Breaks only, definitely.

We used to have a vending machine with cheap drinks, but it died, and they've never got round to replacing it.

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

we don't have designated break times, the canteen's open all day.

What I *do* have, though, is a boss who's very fond of detail and routines and so on... :-)

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

We have a water cooler that dispenses three different types water (still, sparkling, fruit flavoured) and a hot drinks machine that dispenses various types of tea, coffee (ground fresh from beans inside the machine), hot chocolate and various different combinations ('espressochoc' for example). This machine has a clever feature that each possible drink combination has a three digit code, so that when you do a drinks round, people can just say "239" or "330" instead of "cappucino with two sugars" or "weak tea, milk and one sugar".

Oh, we get a lunch allowance of £2.85 a day as well, which in Plymouth gets you freshly made sandwiches, baked potatoes, various other hot food, crisps, fruit, chocolate etc.

[firin.livejournal.com]

When I was working, I had one 20 minute break during an 8 hour shift, during which all purchasing, eating/drinking and walking to/fro canteen had to be accomplished. Usually this left about 5 minutes to actually do any consuming.

I and my colleagues always found it ironic that we were expected to expound the virtues of healthy eating and/or lifestyles to our patients, yet were left high and dry (literally) when it came to nutrition and avoidance of dehydration for ourselves. All this while doing a demanding and physical job!

I remember the availability of food and drink in my previous job roles fondly.