BEER HERE

I’m used to getting free coffee at work. This seems to be a pretty universal perk of the American workplace. I wonder if people get free tea in England? So anyway, when I came to the new agency and they had free coffee, it was no big deal. Of course, it was free Starbucks coffee in five different flavors, but since I think Starbucks’ coffee tastes burnt, I wasn’t impressed. They also offer free tea, hot chocolate and microwave popcorn. These are all nice things… but they offer one other thing that I wasn’t expecting:

Free beer.

During the orientation the HR manager was running down the list of services, and she casually said, “Oh yeah, there’s also free beer in the kitchen.” To which I’m like, oh, okay, ha-ha, free beer, but she says, “No, really. Free beer. We know that creative people sometimes need a little something extra, so if you feel like you need a beer at 10am, it’s perfectly okay.”

That’s totally ridiculous, of course. Free beer? There’s soda and juice for sale, but you get the beer for free? Now, I’m not a beer drinker, so it’s no great perk for me, but I do appreciate the sentiment. The agency is so focused on making the workplace a loose, easy-going environment that they’re not above liquoring up the workers.

Now if they’d only get some different coffee.