What did your workplace do that made you realize you had to run?

I had a wall of crazy where the CEO wanted to spend 20K on cool and edgy stuff for the office,

and staff could make suggestions. He wanted things like slides, beanbags, napping pods, stuff like that.

The project was scrapped when the top suggestions ended up being desks,

chairs, working heating, working Wi-Fi and health insurance. Hearing our CEO say,

compensation is only one part of the employment experience during an earnings call when he was

answering complaints about underpaying his employees after we had reported

record profits. I learned at an internship that we work hard and play hard, means that we want you to work

75 hour weeks, but sometimes we'll put donuts in the break room, if there are any leftovers from the

client meetings, that is. Not my company, but a company

from a neighbouring building. They had an entire area devoted to foosball, pinball, billiards, console

gaming, and video key booths on the ground floor, and it was clearly visible because of the glass

windows on street level. Oddly enough, nobody ever used that floor, and the place was

almost always empty, save for a few people who used the internet kiosks. When I learned a friend

worked there, I asked why nobody would want to take the opportunity to use the awesome-looking

recreational facility, and he told me that people who do use the facility often found it used

against them during performance evaluations,

even when their use wasn't excessive at all.

After a while, word got around and they started avoiding the place altogether.

The irony is that their recruitment ads always touted a culture of work hard, play hard.

Huh.

The place I'm just about to leave, handled in my notice last week, bought a pool table for the breakout space earlier in the year. It's horrible and cheap and not fun to play on anyway. But I've seen colleagues get ushered back to their desks partway through a game at 1259 because they were in danger of overstaying their lunch break. They always make sure to show potential new hires that they have it, though.

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