A friend of mine runs a
prosperous company and has been doing great business. His company
experienced substantial growth over the last decade. Although they
had built offices a handful of years before, the building became too
small and therefore they had to move. He rented a bigger office in a
brand new building. One of the eye-catchers was the big cafeteria
with an equipped kitchen, a lounge area, and flatscreen TVs. He
provided employees with a wide range of free beverages. He installed
top of the line coffee machines, placed watercoolers, and soda was
available 'à volonté.' Every week a food truck supplied baskets of
fresh fruit, weekly flowers at the reception desk. He bought fine
silverware and provided for dishwashers. When the building opened,
everybody was in awe. In short, it was a privilege to work in such an
environment.
Fast forward three months later.
The cafeteria
was a dump. Half-full soda cans everywhere. Dirty cutlery on tables,
in the lounge, everywhere except in the expensive professional
dishwasher. The desperate office manager had been hanging notes for
weeks, kindly asking employees to put dirty dishes in the machine,
and push start.
The amount of soda consumed was extraordinary. My
friend did the math on what he spent on drinks monthly. Result; it
would be physically impossible to down that amount of liquid, even if
your life depended on it. Every evening, the first job of the
cleaning crew was doing a tour, picking up dozens of soda cans, and
emptying them in the toilet.
Here are the lessons learned.
-Free
drinks suck. People take it for granted and do not respect
it—drinking half of their beverage and instead of finishing it,
getting a new cold one.
-90% of the staff did not bother to put
dirty dishes in the dishwasher. When it is too easy to obtain,
respect goes down the drain.
The story is not over yet. It
gets even better.
My friend stops offering soda for free. He
installs a vending machine and charges 20 cents per can. I don't
remember the exact price, but it was roughly a third of the
supermarket price. So no point for employees to bring their own.
The
following happened:
-No more half-empty soda cans. That problem
was solved the moment the vending machine spat out its first
can.
-The rumor started between employees that the company was in
severe financial trouble. From an employee perspective, having to pay
the meager amount of 20 cents per soda, where it used to be free,
shows how deep the owner is in dire straits.
What do we
learn?
-Giving away for free led to squandering, but charging even
a small amount resolves the problem.
-Going from 'free' to 'paid'
is a recipe for trouble. I will dedicate a separate post to it.
Top 10 about the author; Erik Victor
1. is a serial
entrepreneur and started his career in Engineering
2. currently a
majority shareholder in corporations in the fields of Industrial Real
Estate, Wealth Management & Investment funds, and International
Tax Planning
3. has a passion for the dynamics of young
businesses and actively endorses several start-ups
4. is an
engaged member of several think-tanks and an international conference
speaker
5. has a business footprint in six countries
6. speaks
five languages
7. personal life - resides in Europe
8. Erik
(48) is known as a discrete and private person, a family man
9.
loves to spend his limited holidays in the mountains or at sea on his
yacht
10. Erik has no social media accounts
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