Dear Members and Constituents,
On the 250th week of the Friday Donut Club, snow prevented us from sharing the sweet flavor of donuts. Today, a mystery benefactor has left three dozen donuts at my desk. Also, a mystery sign (presumably by the aforementioned benefactor) reads "Donuts??!! A little bit of snow & no donuts? WTF?". Speaking of mysteries, another mystery surrounding our break room supplies has started to unravel. I ran into a Eurest employee re-stocking our break-room this week and inquired about the conspicuous absence of plasticware inventory. Plasticware, you know, that utilitarian category of break-room supplies made-up of spoons, knives and forks. Apparently, Eurest has been asked to stop stocking plasticware in the break-rooms. No need to rub your eyes, you read correctly.
My first instinct was to assume this was a cost-cutting measure, so I took a stab at calculating the savings. Shall we?
A 10 second Google search revealed 1,000 forks cost $15.52 online. Let's say with transportation costs and mark-ups we pay $20 per 1,000 or $0.02 for each item of plasticware. There are ~5,200 of us, and for argument's sake let's say even home-based workers have an opportunity to use said company-supplied plasticware. If 33% of the employee population uses a piece of plasticware every day, the company consumes 1,716 daily pieces of plasticware (let's round-up to 2,000 to avoid false precision). That's a savings of $40 per business day. With 250 business days in a year (five business days a week, fifty two weeks in a year, minus ~10 holidays), that adds-up to $10,000 in annual plasticware savings! In a vacuum, that sounds pretty good, right? OK, who am I kidding here. In practice, it would take the average employee wasting 5 minutes A YEAR fretting over how to eat their meal for the savings to be squandered away (in case you're wondering, I assumed an average annual salary per-EO of $50,000, which I believe to be very conservative).
This move must therefore NOT be about the cost savings. We are a rational company with sensible leaders who surely would have weighed the trade-offs, so clearly there must be some other agenda at play. Perhaps, it's an attempt to join the green movement? It stands to reason less disposable supplies will translate into a lower likelihood of waste going to our landfills. I think, however, I've bored you with enough math for one day, so we'll just have to take it on faith and leave it at that.
Fortunately, you don't require any form of ware (plastic, silver or otherwise) to eat a donut. Our mystery donut person (I have confirmed it's not Greg F, Friday's regularly scheduled donut boy) delights us today with a vast selection of three dozen delicious LaMar's donuts (and, assuming (s)he paid somewhere between $5.99 - $9.99 per-dozen, it cost under $30!).
Happy Fri... ahem, Mystery Monday!
On the 250th week of the Friday Donut Club, snow prevented us from sharing the sweet flavor of donuts. Today, a mystery benefactor has left three dozen donuts at my desk. Also, a mystery sign (presumably by the aforementioned benefactor) reads "Donuts??!! A little bit of snow & no donuts? WTF?". Speaking of mysteries, another mystery surrounding our break room supplies has started to unravel. I ran into a Eurest employee re-stocking our break-room this week and inquired about the conspicuous absence of plasticware inventory. Plasticware, you know, that utilitarian category of break-room supplies made-up of spoons, knives and forks. Apparently, Eurest has been asked to stop stocking plasticware in the break-rooms. No need to rub your eyes, you read correctly.
My first instinct was to assume this was a cost-cutting measure, so I took a stab at calculating the savings. Shall we?
A 10 second Google search revealed 1,000 forks cost $15.52 online. Let's say with transportation costs and mark-ups we pay $20 per 1,000 or $0.02 for each item of plasticware. There are ~5,200 of us, and for argument's sake let's say even home-based workers have an opportunity to use said company-supplied plasticware. If 33% of the employee population uses a piece of plasticware every day, the company consumes 1,716 daily pieces of plasticware (let's round-up to 2,000 to avoid false precision). That's a savings of $40 per business day. With 250 business days in a year (five business days a week, fifty two weeks in a year, minus ~10 holidays), that adds-up to $10,000 in annual plasticware savings! In a vacuum, that sounds pretty good, right? OK, who am I kidding here. In practice, it would take the average employee wasting 5 minutes A YEAR fretting over how to eat their meal for the savings to be squandered away (in case you're wondering, I assumed an average annual salary per-EO of $50,000, which I believe to be very conservative).
This move must therefore NOT be about the cost savings. We are a rational company with sensible leaders who surely would have weighed the trade-offs, so clearly there must be some other agenda at play. Perhaps, it's an attempt to join the green movement? It stands to reason less disposable supplies will translate into a lower likelihood of waste going to our landfills. I think, however, I've bored you with enough math for one day, so we'll just have to take it on faith and leave it at that.
Fortunately, you don't require any form of ware (plastic, silver or otherwise) to eat a donut. Our mystery donut person (I have confirmed it's not Greg F, Friday's regularly scheduled donut boy) delights us today with a vast selection of three dozen delicious LaMar's donuts (and, assuming (s)he paid somewhere between $5.99 - $9.99 per-dozen, it cost under $30!).
Happy Fri... ahem, Mystery Monday!
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