Is Your HR Dept Getting Pushy About What You Eat?

The lawyers at the boutique law firm Littler Mendelson have always liked their carbs. For years the firm's sumptuous San Francisco headquarters overflowed with endless trays of Krispy Kremes, gooey sweet rolls, and gigantic muffins. Then one day the attorneys showed up for a firm breakfast and found...hard-boiled eggs, yogurt, mini quiches, cottage cheese, and fresh fruit. "Where's the donuts?" ranted the associates.

Littler Mendelson's human resources chief, Suzanne Perez, feared mass sugar withdrawal, but she yanked the junk anyway. And while she's not too popular at the office right now, she's in good company. Google (GOOG), Yamaha Corp. of America, Caterpillar (CAT), and others are putting health food in corporate break rooms, cafeterias, and vending machines; dumping donuts in favor of organic fresh fruit deliveries; and slapping "calorie taxes" on fatty foods.

For several years the company wellness police--the folks obsessed with bringing down exploding health insurance costs--have confined themselves to targeting chunky cube dwellers with subsidized cholesterol drugs, free gym memberships, and New Age-spouting health coaches. But what good is all that if the office vending machine is filled with candy, cola, and chips--or cookies and cake are served at every meeting? "I didn't think we were being aggressive enough," says Carol Baker, the HR boss at Yamaha. But getting junkies to detox isn't easy. "People aren't ready to give up everything," she says.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[vandegrasse]

Oh yea, with the controlling, anorexic, overpaid executives in charge of every aspect of their miserable lives, I'm pretty sure that these control freaks will try to take away the poor workers' last luxury, food. I'd like to take their skinny, overpaid asses and....take a deep breath. Ah, serenity now!

[wm1066]

In the last twenty years I have watched the HR department go from friendly (mostly) women workers to unfriendly lawyers hold up behind locked doors. The friendly women workers actually helped employees but the lawyers saw that as a weakness and fired anyone that showed any compassion.
Look at any big company and the HR department has one of the highest turnover rates within the company.
The big companies view thier employees not as assets but as the enemy. The last company I worked for cut off buying spring water and made everyone drink tap water, and the tap water was yellow and smelly, so everyone had to bring in thier own drinking water.

[1will]

Who can complain about what kind of free food their company provides?

[WorkingClass]

You're already a corporate pin-head. You know they own you. So just suck it up and eat your fuc*ing vegetables.

[maggiemae656]

Beggars can't be choosers...I guess if you're eating for free, you can't really say anything about what they feed you. Unless you decide to make it a condition of employment--if you've got the "science and math skills" that the high tech companies want, I suppose you would be able to have all the fat-laden foods you request delivered right to your desk.

[DrVeruju]

... if you've got the "science and math skills" and you start trying to alter your conditions of employment you'll suddenly find yourself "competing" with a boatload of H1B visa holders.

[BigJake]

Free food? Who works for a company that gives out free food??? Other than coffee, it's a BYO where I work. If you're getting fat, it's on your own dime.

[BlackbirdHighway]

Last place where I worked the HR dept. would schedule our free health screening, complete with a body fat analysis, on Nov. 1st. Nothing wrong with that, except that they would celebrate Halloween, the day before, with huge numbers of orange and black decorated donuts, enough for everyone to have about five each. Feed us donuts, then the next day measure our body fat. Nobody but me ever noticed the irony.

[SusanRen]

People want free or cheap health care but still want to eat garbage. You cant have it both ways.

[WorkingClass]

yes I can.

[berensma]

cheap food = expensive healthcare

[maggiemae656]

Making people eat food they don't want to eat = slavery.

The system should be set up to accomodate US, we should not live to accomodate it. Education of what is healthy and not healthy is all that's needed. When insurance concerns guide us to the point that what we consume is an issue, we have too much insurance.

[dadw5boys]

Soon Corporation will be able to pull up your spending records and if you eat a lot of junk food adjust your insurance fee accordingly.
So enjoy homeland seciruty when they pass along your records to private interest since they have access to all private records.

[elcojonu]

Donuts, sweet rolls and muffins.
How low class.
The eating habits of juveniles.