Friday, October 06, 2006

The cafeteria

One of the 'perks' of our office in Hangzhou is daily free lunch served in the building cafeteria. This seems to be common practice at large office buildings. Think back to your high school or college cafeteria and imagine if it was located in a dreary windowless basement (dungeon?) and you'll have a good idea what it's like. Get in line, get a tray, point to what you want, and someone with a hair net and surgical-type face mask (a legacy of the SARS outbreak?) dishes up a portion of the mediocre fare.

In an unexpected capitalist twist, they have 2 companies serving grub competing for your business. At least there's some incentive to make the food decent.

This is one case where the setup in Bangalore (where I spent 3 weeks with my last job) was far superior. There, the company hired a catering company to fix a tasty lunch every day just for the 30 or so people in our office.

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