
Shenanigans in the Microkitchen - luu
http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2019/10/03/thirst/
======
Negitivefrags
We had a situation like this with chocolate milk at our company. It was
suddenly popular and there were people doing stuff like this.

The office people who stocked the fridges were talking about rules for how
many you could take and other dumb things like that.

I told them “stock twice as many”. They reply “but then people will take twice
as many”. “So double the stocks again. And keep doubling until there are some
left in the fridge at the end of the day”.

They looked at me like I was insane.

There isn’t any actual limit. The company isn’t going to run out of money
because people drink too much chocolate milk. I mean, if people want it then
just give it to them!

After a few days of oversupply, the popularity waned and now people take
chocolate milk at roughly the rate of any other soda. The fad had past.

~~~
raldi
Every company I've ever worked at that had drinks and/or snacks followed this
antipattern. At my current job it's spearmint Orbit gum vs peppermint. Last
job, blackberry Hint vs .. I think pomegranate?

They'd stock identical amounts of two or three varieties of thing, never
noticing (or deliberately ignoring feedback about) how one was the clear
favorite and disappeared immediately, and another was kinda gross and nobody
took any until it was all that's left.

Not that I'm complaining about "free" food; it just baffles me that this is so
pervasive when the solution is so obvious. Why don't companies select flavors
proportional to demand? It costs the same as buying identical amounts of each
flavor.

~~~
mattmaroon
Sometimes it's because of multipacks. We used to stock La Croix, back when
there weren't dozens of flavors and knock off brands. We'd get a 24 pack of
them at Sam's that had three flavors, six lemon, six orange, twelve lime. Over
time the limes would accumulate until one day we had a stack of them from the
floor to the ceiling of the supply closet.

We made a joke out of it, sneaking lime ones into people's fridges, replacing
their lemon or orange with them mid-drink, etc. Our company was small enough
that it never got hostile.

------
ChuckMcM
I restocked the fridge at Blekko. Its a surprisingly interesting problem to
solve efficiently, which is to say if you want to always have consistent stock
of things people want. I had set up a model with a couple of feedback loops to
set up orders such that the quantity on hand remained consistent. And adding
in new things to replace things that were out of favor.

The toughest was flavored water which came in a variety pack but not all
varieties were equally popular. If I could have the vendor make a special mix
it would have been easier.

------
peteforde
Sort of creeped out to realize how many of the folks here think that they're
being contrarian by defending socially obnoxious behaviours. Ultimately, it's
just a funny story but it's also a potent allegory about blindness to
privilege.

To everyone else on the planet, this is the literal equivalent of stealing the
red stapler.

Meanwhile, it's shocking that nobody has created a startup for employees to
request and give feedback on free snacks at startups.

~~~
TeMPOraL
The phenomenon described is a significant source of social woes in every place
on the planet. This is how you get overfishing, overgrazing, and other forms
of overexploitation of natural resources. This is how you get people not
caring about pollution prematurely killing others because hey, it's cheaper
_for me_ to burn _actual trash_ in my stove. This is how you get companies
like Uber and AirBnB, all too happy to strip mine the non-material, social
commons. This is exactly why "we can't have nice things".

Sure, in a microkitchen this is just obnoxious. But this exact - not similar,
but exact - pattern of thinking causes trouble everywhere. So I'm more than
creeped out to see people defending it.

------
jevgeni
I like how the person argues how hoarding the bottles is good for _them_,
hence it’s OK. I bet their face is getting orange.

“It saves me time, so it’s not rude” jfc

~~~
AkshatM
This is like saying it's rude to choose not to give all your money to charity
- after all, that too is a choice that is only justified by benefitting the
would-be giver.

Doing what you want with the resources available to you is a perfectly valid
choice within any system - unless there was a corporate decree saying you can
only use so many Tejava bottles, that person's not doing anything problematic.

Their behaviour may be an inconvenience to other people, but that behaviour
itself is not the root cause behind the inconvenience. The short supply in the
office is an artificial constraint, and could easily be increased at nominal
cost, which the bottle taker rightly points out.

~~~
TeMPOraL
You miss the point of the author. "Doing what you want with the resources
available to you is a perfectly valid choice within any system" isn't valid
social behavior when resources are constrained. That's how societies _fail_.
This is called "tragedy of the commons", which author explicitly references.

Sure, in this case the company could easily increase the amount of resources
at little cost. Then again, said person may then start taking a dozen bottles
home, because they've already displayed antisocial behavior.

There are two separate problems here: one is unnecessarily constrained
resources. Second is a person who defects instead of cooperating when faced
with resource constraint.

~~~
AkshatM
This is a good point. I hadn't considered it from that angle, and I hadn't
understood the significance of the "tragedy of the commons" remark.

In my original answer, I had talked about how choosing not to give money to
charity is a valid choice. It seems to me this is similar to choosing not to
cooperate when money is a resource constraint, and my conclusion there was
that defection is perfectly alright. However, your argument would mean that
defection wouldn't be the valid choice in this case, so I'm interested in
understanding this discrepancy/my error.

Under what circumstances would you say is defection valid?

~~~
TeMPOraL
I'd say: only when the goal people are trying to coordinate around is
something you consider invalid or wrong, so you want to shut it all down.

I think the difference between the microkitchen case and charity case is that
in the former, you're using a scarce shared resource, whereas in the latter,
you own the resources and choose what to use them for. It's a social norm that
when _shared_ resources are scarce, everyone gets to take a fair share of
them[0], and if you try to take more than it's fair, you're defecting and
considered a bad actor (a "freeloader"). It's also a social norm that the
wealth you own is for you to spend as you wish. Charities are considered
optional spending, which is why no one can _demand_ or should try to shame you
into donating. Contrast that with _taxes_ , which are non-optional. Not
donating to charity isn't defecting, because there's no cooperative situation
happening. Not paying taxes would be defecting, because there's a social (and
legal) expectation that everyone should contribute to the shared pool of money
that buys public services.

\--

[0] - For some definition of "fair". The Schelling point, when there's nothing
suggesting a fairer split, is that "everyone gets the same amount". Unequal
splits can happen too, if that ends up benefiting everyone more.

~~~
AkshatM
Thanks for the response. This helped tremendously.

I've been fairly engrossed recently in readings on moral relativism, in an
attempt to understand what ethical behaviour might look like without the
influence of social norms. Your response made me realize I've been forgetting
to take off my academic hat - I should be evaluating this from the perspective
of the society I'm currently in right now. Thanks for the reminder to go speak
to actual humans again :)

~~~
TeMPOraL
In terms of moral behavior without influence of social norms, it's also worth
investigating morality as a dynamic system - if you'd erase all existing
social norms from memory and gather a group of people, what norms would evolve
over time?

~~~
AkshatM
This is one of those questions which I actually think requires empirical
investigation.

Fortunately, Jonathan Haidt has excellent papers on the historical formation
of moral systems in culture collision events, and the argument he has is that
there are six different types of dichotomies moral taxonomies in societies
exhibit, each driven by various kinds of evolutionary challenges individual
societies faced.
([https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=3680010931100921...](https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=368001093110092112015018017070013085042059070013063074028008087113119010123125106005124031048107005109046067027010066099112117062013094005002085110004064091001094079061073003012083096102102081086117075065020098124095097031120104090031118070079097078087&EXT=pdf))

I think the conclusion that societies are built primarily on cooperative
rather than antisocial behaviour is a picture based mostly in game theoretic
analyses (per that wonderful webpage, The Evolution of Trust) - but
empirically societies do really vary in how harshly they punish or value non-
cooperative behaviour, which I don't think game theory is sufficient to
explain. Some societies hold that maximising personal utility over group
utility is a social norm, though usually personal doesn't mean individual but
individual and smaller subgroup (such as family), so they're not likely to
view non-cooperative behaviour as problematic - these societies tend to be not
influenced as much by the fairness/cheating dichotomy but are high on the
care/neglect and loyalty/betrayal dichotomy.

------
tbyehl
A company I worked for when the first bubble burst took away our free (canned)
beverages. Allegedly because some temp employees were witnessed exiting the
facility carrying significant quantities of drinks but in reality the costs
had crossed $5,000/m as we'd grown and that was the magic number where someone
began to question it... nevermind that headcount had grown from 150 -> 350
since the free beverages had been implemented and the expenses had been fairly
linear.

My current employer provides fountain drinks. BYOC.

------
machinelearning
Ideas: Install a vending machine that requires people to badge for high demand
snacks/beverages.

Stock items wrt locality based demand.

Allow users to specify a couple favorite snacks and guarantee a floor of a
certain quantity. Implement using distributed resource sharing algorithms
already used in production systems.

Lastly googles culture does already prize selflessness and sharing. It’s
surprising the author didn’t mention any pushback to this kind of behavior on
the mailing list.

~~~
millstone
A subsidized vending machine is really powerful. The 25 cent barrier is enough
to keep me from buying that candy bar that I don't reaaally want, and it
thereby also ensures adequate supply.

~~~
machinelearning
Sure, even if it was completely free, the fact that you have to badge for it
provides an air of accountability which would prevent hoarding.

------
nindalf
I think the issue is with lack of data. The folks stocking the kitchen notice
that at the end of the day all snacks are exhausted. From that they conclude
that everything is equally popular and there is no need to change the
proportions in which each is stocked. Instead if they measured twice or thrice
during the day they’d realise that some items are more popular than others and
stock more of them.

Often this issue is cast as the company refusing to spend more money on snacks
but I don’t think it’s the money. It’s the fact that they don’t know which
snacks are truly popular and which people are eating because they’re hungry
and have no choice.

------
lph
I've never heard "microkitchen". Where I work, it's just a kitchen. A pretty
big kitchen, actually, so prepending "micro" would feel strange. Are Google's
microkitchens small?

~~~
bradfitz
We have real kitchens too. Saying "micro kitchen" distinguishes it from the
big cafes.

IIRC, there's some legal definition too: a micro kitchen can't have ice or
something. Once it does it's subject to different rules, so we need to go to
the real kitchens to get ice.

------
sneak
Unlimited vacation is the new unlimited soda. There’s actually a limit, but
we’re not going to tell you what it is.

~~~
phnofive
In both cases, your peers will shame you when you cross the line.

~~~
TeMPOraL
As it should be. It's the most basic mechanism by which groups regulate
themselves.

~~~
rainyMammoth
Isn't that mechanism broken lately with the vocal minorities playing that
game?

~~~
phnofive
> Perhaps there is some mercy in the madness. Those who wish to see vermin
> can, and those who choose to are provided with boundless purpose.

------
ergocoder
The person in the story is right.

There's a simpler solution. A company can easily stock more stuff. It's not
that hard.

If my colleague says that they need to take 6 bottles a day because it makes
them 0.01% more productive, I'll be totally fine with that. It costs so
little. I'll probably request the company to stock more.

Different people have different needs.

Why would Google want to create an environment where employees need to fight
for food?

Why would Rachel blame that person instead of Google?

~~~
TeMPOraL
The company is obviously failing to meet demand, but there are also social
rules about utilizing a shared resource. The person in question is extremely
inconsiderate to preemptively allocate all shared stock to themselves. Did you
see the argument they made? "Let me come first and take all of the popular
snack, because otherwise other people will take some and I won't have
enough.". That's defecting in a prisonner's dilemma-like situation; exactly
not the kind of behavior you want to see in a team.

~~~
ergocoder
Rachel's reasoning is blaming a particular person. It's also possibly
identifiable if you work at Google.

The person takes 6 bottles because they know they need 6 bottles. It's just so
little.

I also don't want people who aim to blame other people first, especially when
a systematic improvement is so obvious here.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Well, maybe that person should've raised the point about snack scarcity
instead of hoarding.

> _The person takes 6 bottles because they know they need 6 bottles. It 's
> just so little._

They don't _need_ 6 bottles. They won't die if they get only 2. They _want_ 6
bottles, and are willing to disregard the fact that other people want a bottle
just as much.

Blaming is a bad idea in case of _mistakes_ , because mistakes are
unintentional and you don't want people to _hide_ mistakes. Blaming and peer
pressure is absolutely a good idea when someone behaves antisocially.

The systematic improvement you're seeking isn't _that_ obvious when behavior
Rachel describes is tolerated. Say the company ups the supply. It may be that
this resolves the situation, but it very well may be that the 6-bottle-taker
now decides to take 8, or 12 - 6 for work and 6 for home. And then some extra
for their kid. Others will notice it, realize that it's apparently accepted
behavior and follow suit. Now the company has to either up the supply
significantly, in hope of saturating the leak, or start regulating behavior.
Either way, at this point a sane manager would just pull the free snacks
program instead.

You'll notice that this exact pattern of behavior Rachel is exposing here is
common enough to be recognized and named as a large social _problem_ , that
it's literally the meaning behind "that's why we can't have nice things", and
that a good chunk of laws exist to prevent or punish this kind of behavior.

~~~
ergocoder
> It may be that this resolves the situation, but it very well may be that the
> 6-bottle-taker now decides to take 8, or 12 - 6 for work and 6 for home. And
> then some extra for their kid.

Let's stop extrapolate.

Taking stuff (meant for employees at the office) for your families at home
sounds more like theft. It's a grey area, but it's clear cut when you do it
consistently in large amount over a longer period of time... It's a totally
different problem.

> Now the company has to either up the supply significantly

significantly? Please avoid exaggerating to make your point.

> Either way, at this point a sane manager would just pull the free snacks
> program instead.

Nah. A junior engineer at Google is paid ~$1000 a day. These bottles' cost
isn't significant.

It seems more productive to make things more abundance and avoid scarcity.

> Blaming and peer pressure is absolutely a good idea when someone behaves
> antisocially.

Nah. Even Rachel (the blog post owner) would disagree with this...

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _It 's a grey area, but it's clear cut when you do it consistently over a
> longer period of time... It's a totally different problem._

It's not a totally different problem, it's an extension of the same. There's a
shared resource meant for employees to be used _in a reasonable way_ , and
someone decides to take it all for themselves. The difference between this and
taking extra for family starts with "I'm taking 6 bottles home, but I don't
really need 6, might as well give one to my kid".

> _significantly? Please avoid exaggerating to make your point._

Significantly, i.e. to account for growing demand caused by unrestricted
freeloading. I can imagine it easily being 5x+ if more people decide to abuse
the system too.

> _Nah. A junior engineer at Google is paid ~$1000 a day. These bottles ' cost
> isn't significant._

On the one hand, fair. Maybe this is how it works at Google. On the other
hand, all other companies I had personal experience with agonize over
spendings that are fraction of their developer's salaries, and most people
wouldn't quit over _just_ cancellation of free sodas.

> _Nah. Even Rachel (the blog post owner) would disagree with this..._

Well, she just did put a post that's chastising such behavior _and_ that post
can probably identify a person at Google to their peers, so I'd disagree with
you here.

~~~
ergocoder
> Well, she just did put a post that's chastising such behavior and probably
> can identify a person at Google to its peers, so I'd disagree with you here.

Fair.

I'm disappointed in her blog post; she didn't even offer a systematic fix. The
blog is, at best, unbalanced, and, at worst, screams public shaming.

It's just so unlike how google/facebook thinks about management in general.

So, I'd still give her some benefit of the doubt; and say that she doesn't
believe in shaming/peer pressure.

~~~
TeMPOraL
My impression was that the blog post wasn't intended to discuss all the
possible ways to approach the problem of undersupply in free snacks, but just
to highlight an instance of tragedy of the commons out there "in the small".

Were I working there, I too would push for increasing the supply of the
constantly out soft drink, though I'd still consider the behavior of that
person inconsiderate and would expect of _them_ to raise that issue too,
instead of _just_ hoarding.

------
posix_me_less
> _it was me - taking 6 Tejava bottles and stocking them into our team 's
> minifridge... if I don't stock up in the morning, there is no Tejava left in
> the fridge by noon and I have to scavenge ALL surrounding microkitchens in
> the same building and in ALL adjacent buildings to quench my thirst._

While the article and comments here suggest that one should get outraged by
the perpetrator's selfish behaviour and shameless response, it is good to
realize the power dynamic here. The stuff is provided by the employer as an
advertised benefit. By taking what he needs and defending his actions, he is
clearly signalling to the coworkers and to the management that if they want to
have cool as-advertised working environment, they should stock the fridge with
more stuff. This kind of behaviour empowers the employees and forces the
employer to put the action where the words are. Any other interpretation is a
mistaken application of socialism in a capitalist enterprise.

In other words, the stuff is provided by employer for every employee there,
not for some imaginary community of employees which then should organize and
share in socialist way. The company does not want employees to organize.

In a coop enterprise I would agree that this was wrong, but if you're working
for capitalists, you should strengthen your power and negotiating position
because otherwise the managers will wipe the floor with you.

------
eugenekolo2
Free snacks is all fun until somebody ruins it by deciding they can take an
exorbitant amount of them home.

------
auiya
A co-worker once admitted to me she uses the communal tea kettle to make hard
boiled eggs. I now have to go to another part of the building for my hot
water. :/

~~~
jiofih
Why? A metal kettle will not contain any trace of whatever was in it after
washing.

------
alanbernstein
Simplest solution: stop providing the snacks that people want to hoard

~~~
cbsks
Or just buy more? Then people won’t have to hoard them.

I don’t understand why someone’s first reaction would be to email the group
asking people to stop taking multiple items, instead of emailing the person in
charge of the snacks and requesting more.

~~~
millstone
Right, it's bimodal. Absence or abundance; just avoid scarcity!

------
jasone
This would have to have been at Facebook. Rachel and I worked in close
physical proximity for quite a while, and as it happens, I was a major Tejava
consumer (but not an actor in this particular incident). For years, Facebook
routinely maintained ample Tejava supplies, but then suddenly the 0-6 bottles
per day stocking became the new norm. Many here fault the participants for
making the commons tragic; my take remains that someone made a terrible
decision to limit supply (probably due to cost), and it turns out that several
of us employees countered with negative sentiment that made it a net loss for
the company. I did not begrudge those who beat me to the inadequate supply,
but I did begrudge the shortage.

~~~
mhb
This Tejava must be amazing stuff!

------
quickthrower2
> You can pick your jaw up off the floor now.

I certainly can ... my jaw dropped that this deserved a blog post.

~~~
MoronInAHurry
Somehow rachelbythebay links always seem to jump to the top of HN, no matter
how banal they are. I never understand it.

Not being able to get the specific type of free iced tea that she wanted
annoyed her so much that she saved an email about it for (presumably) years so
she could make a blog post complaining about how mildly rude her coworker was.

~~~
akhilcacharya
It’s pretty bizarre, but I guess it’s instructive about the bubble many HN
users are in.

(My company doesn’t have a micro kitchen...)

~~~
luismedel
You're right.

Adults debating about an imaginary problem, while it's a mere education issue.

I find more than normal not taking the last piece of cake or choosing another
flavor of tea (or drinking water) if my favourite flavor is out of stock.

Oh, and I don't find _so offensive_ going to the nearest supermarket or café
to buy any groceries I need.

------
LargoLasskhyfv
I don't get it. Is it in a food desert? Can't they bring their own, or restock
from a shop/kiosk nearby during breaks? I mean it's not like the sites are in
Area51, or are they?

------
RandomBacon
Either supply more, or encourage employees to bring their own if they're
addicted to it.

~~~
jonbronson
Or that employee could just stop engaging in selfish behavior. Company
cohesion matters more than one toxic employees fixation on a bubbly drink.

------
ejcho623
All I know is that now I want to try out a bottle of Tejava

------
alex_young
We used to call these First World Problems.

I guess it just shows you that privilege doesn't magically create culture, and
that post-it notes are something like the workplace equivalent of YouTube
comments.

------
bww
Your company should provide enough of a given amenity that everyone can enjoy
it as much as they like or it shouldn’t provide that amenity at all. Offering
an insufficient amount invites this kind of behavior and the animosity this
kind of behavior engenders.

~~~
jcims
That's ridiculous, sorry. I spent a very short time at one of those places you
hear of and enjoyed the little bags of dried mango that I had never had
before. I took one a day because anything beyond that started to be
gluttonous. Same with the 'Dang' coconut chips...so good. Point being that
it's obvious these are provided for convenience and a way for folks to get a
little break. If you just horde everything for yourself when it's obvious
you're denying everyone else a share, you've achieved pathological status in
your behavior.

On a side note the floor also had a location where folks could bring in their
spirits of choice to share with the 150 or so folks that they worked with. It
was a beautiful thing.

~~~
ergocoder
Horde everything seems exaggerated. It's 6 bottles.

If we substitute the story with 6 bottles of water (as in I need to drink 6
bottles of water to be productive), we would immediately shift blame to Google
as to why Google doesn't provide abundant drinking water for everyone. Because
we can easily imagine that we need to drink water to be productive at work.

We only think this story is ridiculous because we couldn't possibly imagine
how these sodas help with productivity.

I don't drink soda (which isn't healthy), so I can't imagine how it helps with
productivity. But people are different...

This story just screams extreme lack of empathy.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Lack of empathy is hoarding. There are other people who may need that
water/soda for productivity just as much. And if one has so specific needs
that they really _need_ 6 times the expected allocation of something that's
meant for more people, why don't they buy it themselves? Or at least raise an
issue with management that they _need_ more of the drink to stay productive?

~~~
ergocoder
I agree that lack of empathy goes both ways. But that's the environment the
company creates.

This is like a company provides only one toilet room. Then, there are 10
people who want to poop, and one is publicly shamed for using the toilet for
too long.

Can we hold the poop? absolutely. But it would be more productive if everyone
gets to poop.

Directing the blame at a specific person is just bad management/environment.

~~~
TeMPOraL
More like, one person "pooping" for 30 minutes because they like playing
roguelikes on their phone while on the toilet. Had a guy doing exactly that at
my previous workspace. Fortunately we had enough toilets on the floor so
nobody minded it that much, it was only considered slightly pathetic.

