As I’ve said before, writing about work in your blog is typically asking for trouble. But I guess some things are not only not confidential, but much too absurd to keep quiet about. There was this long e-mail thread over the past couple of weeks about our parking woes at the Mountain View campus. The downlow is this: it’s extremely difficult to find parking if you come in after 11:00 a.m. You know, I’m pretty casual about work and even I see a few glaring issues with this, the fact that you’re coming into work at lunchtime only being the minor one.
Yesterday I came into work at around 10:30 a.m. and cars were already circling the underground parking garage for spots. Crap, I thought, it’s starting earlier. I exited the lot on the other side, turned right, and there were at least 45 open spots outside. Odd. I parked, got out, and walked back into the garage to go upstairs. Inside, a guy was trying desperately to squeeze his shiny black Land Rover into an illegal parking spot between a beam and another car, wedging the other poor schmuck into his space. While I’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt, that perhaps he didn’t know there were a ton of spots outside open, I have this sinking feeling he just didn’t want his shiny new Land Rover outside in the hot sun and dust.
You want more examples of brattism? The parking complaining got so bad, they’re now going to offer free valet service for people coming into work after 10 a.m. Oh my God. This would be like if you were a kid still living at your mom’s house, and every time you missed the school bus she’d drive you to school in her Mercedes with the video game/DVD console in the back seat and the mini fridge with the sodas. What incentive would you have to ever go to school on time?
There’s more. The last thread was complaining that our brand new made-to-order breakfast service (yes, omelettes, smoothies, sausages, french toast, the whole deal) started too early in the morning and ended too early. My only guess is that the same people coming in at 11 a.m. and can’t find parking also aren’t making it to breakfast. I wonder if that guy in the Land Rover wrote in to voice his complaint. I’m assuming that next, the people who come in late and can’t find parking will want a drive-in breakfast service, with waitresses on rollerskates hanging trays on the side of their car windows. “Yes, I’d like an omelette with everything, and also could you bring my laptop over here and um, push my car closer because the wireless signal is sorta bad here.”
I always have great intentions of adding my two cents to these threads, usually along the lines of “Why don’t you just all shut the hell up and appreciate what you have?” Seriously, not only do no other companies I know of offer these “perks” (although I’d rather call them “immoral luxuries”), but there are people lying around in Rwanda with flies all over their faces waiting to die while we complain about breakfast and parking. Alas, I never actually contribute to the threads, because I feel like it would be useless to point out that we’re totally unappreciative, especially to that one guy who keeps demanding the company cupcakes.
I’d mostly let this stuff slide, but as I was driving into work this morning I almost got into an accident staring out my passenger side window at the carnival that had magically appeared on campus. I had gotten some e-mails a few weeks ago about a company picnic, but a ferris wheel? I shook my head and went into the office and sat down. Everyone seemed to be typing away as usual. I checked my e-mail and there was a note about the Zipper, carnie games, and life size monopoly. I leaned around my adjacent cubemate’s huge LCD displays and said “They have the Zipper outside.” “What?” he said. I said, “You know, the Zipper, that carnival ride where you get whipped around upside down in these stand up cages.” “I got four hours of sleep,” he said, “I don’t know if I can go on that.”
I furrowed my brows and leaned back into my chair, staring at the e-mail. Around noon I asked anyone if they were going to get food. “The cafe is closed,” one of the designers said, without looking up from her computer. “Uh yeah,” I said, but there is some kinda carnival out there.” Eventually, everyone got up begrudgingly from their desks and we went outside. And this is what we saw:
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The Zipper, a Ferris Wheel (the last photo shows the office from the wheel), inflatable slides, free food, booze, ice cream, a giant monopoly game, dunk tank, weird actors and clowns, carnie games, prizes, two live bands. Whole families were there, dogs, all of Mountain View. We picked up our free visors and walked around, the new guy in our group with a “What the hell is this?” expression on his face the entire time. One of the designers told me it was bigger and badder every year. We agreed we should definitely complain via e-mail that Ben & Jerry’s was a monopoly on campus and that the ice cream stands marked “ice cream” only had popsicles inside. This was very deceitful, and you know, we had to walk all the way over there thinking we were getting free ice cream. I wondered when it would get to the point where it’d just cave in on itself, like bay area real estate, yet at the same time, I was glad I was there to say I lived it.
Hopefully, no one at work reads this and cans my ass for pointing out the carnival. I don’t think you can keep a ferris wheel confidential, though. As I rode on it and we reached the highest point of its rotation, I looked across the street and was sure in some office building over there, an employee of another company was filling out a job application right now. There isn’t an 8 year old alive who saw the spoiled 8 year old in another family and didn’t wish he was that kid, whether or not it was good for him.
