
My company signed up for a $1000/year subscription-based water cooler - Immortalin
https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/7cfywp/my_company_signed_up_for_a_1000year/
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tschwimmer
Everyone likes to blame loose VC money for silly stuff like this, but I have a
slightly more nuanced theory about ridiculous office perks:

Office managers/office teams have very few concrete metrics. Beyond a binary
"is the office functional" (e.g. are there enough desks, does the electricity
work) there is pretty much no way to measure job performance. That's not to
say their work doesn't have any impact. Anyone who has worked in a poorly laid
out office has dealt with the corresponding productivity drain. However, it's
really hard to measure that boost/loss and nearly impossible to accurately
attribute it.

The solution is for office managers to do ridiculous but easily quantifiable
things like spend money on subscription water coolers, an on-demand smoothie
blending machine [0], potted plants that cost $800 [1].

If you are an office worker frustrated by this trend, you should invent some
performance metric for office managers and then sell something that improves
it. You'll instantly suck up all the VC money going to these other startups.

[0][http://getreplenish.com/#1](http://getreplenish.com/#1) [1]
[https://www.leonandgeorge.com/plants/large-desert-
cactus/](https://www.leonandgeorge.com/plants/large-desert-cactus/)

~~~
mythrwy
That $800 plant isn't even a cactus as advertised (much less a desert cactus).

Cactus are native to the Americas. The plant in the photo is a Euphorbia
(closely related to the poinsetta sold around Christmas) and is from Africa.
It looks like a cactus but isn't related at all.

One way to tell the difference between cactus and these "imposters" is that
real cactus have spines protruding from a detachable pad that can be pulled
cleanly off (the spines are an evolved leaf and detach in a similar way). The
spines of the Euphorbia on the other hand are part of the main body of the
plant and can't be cleanly detached.

Probably only a few plant nerds really care, but for $800 they shouldn't call
it something it manifestly isn't IMOP.

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sjcsjc
No doubt I'll feel silly for asking but what is IMOP? Google didn't provide
any sensible answer.

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zeta0134
Given the context, most likely "In my own opinion."

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sjcsjc
Aha, thanks. Even though that would be IMOO, you switched the context for me.
If the P had been omitted it would have been obvious to me. Perhaps it's just
a typo.

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hellofunk
As I get older, I really wonder why people do this to other people. In this
case, I'm talking about the manufacturer of this product. They know other
human beings are going to spend a lot of money to use their products? It's
important to make money, but at what consequence?

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dokem
It's like evolution. Why does some weird, seemingly useless creature exist?
Because it fills some crack in the ecological economy. Someone was willing to
buy this piece of shit and that is explanation enough for its existence.

~~~
hellofunk
I read about apples exported from China, covered in a toxic paint so they look
red and beautiful, even though it is harmful, all to make a buck. I just
wonder why humans have not evolved to, at a minimum, actually show some caring
attitude toward others of their same species.

I think we're all doomed.

~~~
philliphaydon
Red apples usually are coated in ground up beetle to give the bright redness
colour. It’s considered non toxic. Donno if that’s the same as what you’re
referring to. I think it’s called Shellac.

~~~
hellofunk
I’m talking about a scandal from a couple years ago where apples were
submerged in buckets of toxic paint to get a red color.

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philliphaydon
OH, I've not heard this story, got a link??? Unsure what to google for.

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hellofunk
I think it was a Vice video or similar, undercover at a chinese apple export
"factory" showing what they did.

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erpellan
Office design is highly vulnerable to bikeshedding. It _seems_ obvious so
everyone has an opinion without realising the implications.

I saw a costly office refurb that made everything open plan including the
kitchen/breakout area. Within a week there were noise complaints from nearby
teams and memos not to hang around, in the space that was literally designed
to be hung around in, because open plan is currently fashionable.

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nradov
When I see transactions that don't make any economic sense I tend to suspect
kickbacks.

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oldcynic
This seems to be a Sodastream made to be barely functional.

A Samsung fridge with built in Sodastream seems a far better home for $1000,
or even just an actual Sodastream which would leave enough change for a few
years worth of flavours.

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lopmotr
His comments on the radiator grill aren't fair. The temperature of steam won't
exceed 100 degrees C which some plastics are fine with. And the downward slope
is to stop spilt water dripping inside. The fan (if it's working after that
error!) will push the air through enough.

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JBorrow
Steam can be whatever temperature it wants. There is no 100C limit. Either
way, there should be no steam near a radiator.

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noir_lord
Yep beyond steam as most people know it there is dry steam/superheated steam
(in the hundreds if not thousands of Celsius).

A principle that's been used in steam engines for at least a century.

It's horribly dangerous stuff to work with as well, it'll flay flesh straight
off the bone.

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philliphaydon
I remember reading the book, the inmates are running the asylum. Where it
talks about how Engineers take things like the alarm clock which just works
but we make it over complicated.

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taneq
Nobody forces you to buy the overcomplicated clock.

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dorkwood
I tried to buy a set of scales the other day and could only find electronic
ones. I chose not to buy any of them. But still, I was pretty close.

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justin
I'm a customer of Bevi. I got it for our office after seeing it in another
startup.

I think Bevi is pretty great - cuts down on La Croix can wastage at the
office.

Some things could be improved: sometimes it runs out of CO2 and everything
comes out flat.

~~~
raverbashing
> I think Bevi is pretty great - cuts down on La Croix can wastage at the
> office.

This sounds way entitled.

But there are carbonated water machines that are not "smart" (meaning they
aren't online and don't cost an arm an a leg to have a sw button running on a
tablet)

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verylittlemeat
What's entitled about that? La Croix is just flavored seltzer water, you can
buy a 24 pack for $10 at costco. It's not like they have champagne on tap.

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megaman22
Things like this make me wonder about our Keurig, which could have been
replaced years ago with a Bunn dual burner for less money and probably better
coffee. Plus if everybody went to the breakroom at 9, 12 and 3 for coffee,
collaboration would improve.

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deedubaya
Remember stuff like this when you decide to build something yourself instead
of subscribing to a SaaS which does the same thing better.

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steviecleveland
Yes, in terms of sanitation like 2500 years ago with that SaaS company called
"the Roman Empire."

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rdlecler1
Something like this showed up in our gym about a month ago. Individuals pay
$6.99/month for fancy water. The dismay says “9 bottles saved from
landfill”.... ouch....

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goatherders
Not everything in the world is a problem needing a better solution.

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trumped
The "solution" is a bigger problem then the original problem, but that doesn't
mean that it's impossible to do it better...

