theunitofcaring:

San Francisco is trying to ban employers from offering their employees free food.. It’s a spiteful, petty and ignorant proposal. 

Free food, as a perk, is one of the  most important accommodations a workplace can offer me. I’m recovering from anorexia, and my relationship with food is still kind of complicated. I hate spending money on it, and I hate having to think about it, and lowering the friction between realizing ‘I should eat something’ and having a healthy plate of food in hand is enormously valuable. And it’s really important that I don’t just get the perk of accessible food if I’m willing to tell the company that I’m a recovering anorexic; it’s important that getting myself a free breakfast when i get into work is what everyone else does too, that going to a free lunch in the middle of the day is what everyone else does too, that if we’re working late we can grab dinner and no one will wonder why I get this accommodation, or even take note of my having it, because everyone else has it too. 

This policy, if in its final implementation it applies to setups like the one my employer have, will mean I have to triple or quadruple the share of my energy I spend on summoning up the will to get enough food every day. It will destroy something I really value – conversations around the lunch table with my coworkers. 

But that’s just me, and I’m very unusual, right? Most people aren’t recovering anorexics. But the thing is – lots and lots of people are, in fact, people for whom eating is fraught and challenging one way or another. Many of them are broke, and ashamed to be the one person who brings in a bagged lunch when all their coworkers go out to eat. Some people are even more broke than that, and will actually be hungry if you ban their free food. Lots of people have a long commute and can’t keep their lunch cold on the train in the summer. I talked to several coworkers who were devastated by this bill, and who it would significantly harm to lose their access to free food – for different reasons in each case. Lots of people are just healthier, and work better, and accomplish more, if at any time they can go get tasty nutritious free food without complications. 

Everyone should have that. It’s unjust that only some people do, but the solution is to make it available to more people, not to make it illegal to offer it to anyone. Working in tech has made me acutely aware of the fundamental injustice of tech – which is that most employers don’t treat their employees the way my employer treats me. That most people do not work in an environment that sets them up to succeed, whatever that means – that most people don’t feel trusted and affirmed and prioritized, that most people don’t work in nice environments aggressively customized for their needs, that most people can’t have nutritious free food on demand.

But banning good work environments is a despicable solution.

All the arguments for the ban are profoundly petty, utterly absorbed with improving my character by denying me food. “tech employees are too insular if their offices have food”. Eating a bagged lunch at my desk won’t make me less insular. When I have frictionless access to food, and am well-nourished without having to think of it, I leave my day with enough energy to be an active participant in my community. “tech employees aren’t supporting local restaurants”. I’m not going to pay $10 for lunch every day even if you make it illegal to acquire lunch any other way. And it’s not my job to support your restaurants. “it helps the companies control their employees” No, actually, having more energy and more resources just gives people more options. I do still bring in favorite snacks and go out for tea or coffee, whenever I feel like it. So does everyone else. You do not make me better off by shredding resources I’m using.

This matters. This ‘perk’ is not some menacing attempt my tech companies to bubble off their employees in hermeneutically sealed environments, it’s a popular perk because of how many people benefit from having it, and seek out jobs that offer it. It’s not fair that not everyone gets it. I’m in favor of policy aimed at getting companies to offer this perk to everyone who helps make them happen, from the janitors to the CEO. But efforts to ban this are efforts to make my life vastly worse, and the lives of other people – especially disabled people – vastly worse for no real gain. I hope that the supervisors who proposed it are promptly removed from office and replaced with ones who care about their constituents.