San Francisco to Future Tech Workers: Your Days of Free Lunch May Be Numbered

Megalith

Megalith

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Free food is a regular (and well appreciated) perk of being a tech worker, but San Francisco wants to end that benefit with new legislation that would ban the installation of nonretail cafeterias in office buildings. City supervisors essentially want employees to start visiting local eateries, which are “often struggling.”

One can easily see the appeal of creating an in-house oasis that offers meals: It's a chance for workers to stay on the clock longer and collaborate together, and it has become a standard perk for recruiting and retaining in-demand tech workers. But sending those same employees into the neighborhood could revitalize it, city officials and restaurant owners argue.
 
Why so many companies choose to stay in CA, let alone San Francisco simply boggles the mind. It's like they are trying to figure out ways to drive businesses out. They've already killed their tourism and convention business by turning SF into a literal shit hole...
 
The saddest part is that their citizens not only tolerate this kind of bullshit, petty tyranny, but they full on embrace it and believe they live a more enlightened life than the rest of us flyover states. This same behavior drives their housing costs higher than they would otherwise be due to insane limits set on what can be built in the bay area.
 
Fucking dumb, existing businesses will be grand fathered, new can set up kitchens they just have to charge for the food, so they charge a dollar per meal or give everyone at the work a small raise in the form of a food card, net result stuggling eateries continue to struggle

San Francisco supervisors pretending to think with their hearts, definitely not with their heads

Next up, no more free bathrooms either, due to the struggling sales of the pay toilets littered (pun) through the city.
 
DocNo said:
Why so many companies choose to stay in CA, let alone San Francisco simply boggles the mind. It's like they are trying to figure out ways to drive businesses out. They've already killed their tourism and convention business by turning SF into a literal shit hole...
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Because Bay Area has talent. Its a catch-22 really, you have lot of companies that were there, which attracts a lot of high skilled workers. So more high skilled workers move in, repeat cycle.

Right now that cycle is being enforced by their ridiculously good school system, so IMO, as long as the talent is there, companies will continue to operate there.
 
The neighborhood isn't revitalized because the lease and rental costs are obscene. So it makes it nearly impossible to survive. The same thing is going on in malls across America. People say oh the malls are dead but they don't know that the crack heads running the malls are simply being completely inflexible and predatory in their leasing with their rental rates. Because they trap people into these leases. There comes a point where the market has to correct itself, people have to go out of business and fail so that the powers that own the property start losing money. Only then will they get off their asses and start reassessing what they charge. Trying to force some other company to prop up your business will not last, it will simply cause more problems and more screwed up scenarios. its the same with low income housing in these areas. A select few lucky or corrupt poor people are awarded the gift of getting an apartment at WAY below market value, then they do what they do, make money by renting it to someone who will pay near market value. Guess what the big tech companies were giving away free food for a long time, so what changed recently? Answer property values have been going through the roof, this has caused employees in low paying jobs to either demand more money or simply give up and go live in a tent on the street or move out. Now the resturants are seeing their leases expire and renewing cost tons of money. So what is their solution? Oh hey lets try to force people to come eat here, ya Im sure that will work lol.
 
vegeta535 said:
/facepalm
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Not to mention it's easily circumvented.

Either you do really cheap food (e.g. pennies) or you do reimbursements. Employees swipe an employee card that tracks their purchases and reimburses them automatically on their next paycheck.

These are tech companies, this isn't exactly rocket science to figure out a way around this.
 
dexvx said:
Because Bay Area has talent. Its a catch-22 really, you have lot of companies that were there, which attracts a lot of high skilled workers. So more high skilled workers move in, repeat cycle.

Right now that cycle is being enforced by their ridiculously good school system, so IMO, as long as the talent is there, companies will continue to operate there.
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Can you give an example of bay area talent ? I'm honestly curious. Talent as in any manufacturing or actually making real things.
 
I'm going to say that I'm in favor of this legislation, provided that San Francisco makes one change:

1. Forbid the installation of nonretail cafeterias in office buildings, and 2. All retail cafeterias in office buildings must be Taco Bell.

(because all nerds know that Taco Bell was the restaurant that survived the franchise wars).

Seriously, people, I'm happy for San Francisco, and you should be too. San Francisco needs to be San Francisco so that the people who feel compelled to be like San Francisco have someplace to go. :) Sorry if you live there, but everyone else in the United States needs to stand up and say, "That is the dumbest piece of socialized nanny-state legislation we have ever heard of, but we applaud your reasoning because we know that you're San Francisco."


P.S. I live in a gun-friendly state, and as it happens, I like guns. I own three myself. I don't have a carry permit, I don't hunt, and frankly I don't even shoot them. I just like them, I take them apart and clean them every other week or so. I don't keep any ammunition for them.

My entire state is filled with dipshits who haven't got the slightest clue about how government, business, Wall Street and taxes work, but God bless them, they like guns. Sometimes you have to let like-minded people be.
 
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Maxx said:
They want to get rid of these so they can universally enforce the plastic straw ban.
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Rathor said:
What gives the government the right to tell businesses they can’t give employees free food or have cafeterias. California is becoming the USSA!
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Dear $$$ job creator, we the local government will bend over backwards, and even pay you, to setup shop in our area.

Local government is not happy when that leads to "google city" where the local infrastructure now has a higher burden, but the local city ends up with zero "spreading of the wealth".

Whats the point of having the city cater to the big dogs, and end up with zero growth.

I guess they could just 1up that. Have work, logistics, housing, and food all under one dome, and the workers never ever leave the place.
 
Rattle said:
Can you give an example of bay area talent ? I'm honestly curious. Talent as in any manufacturing or actually making real things.
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What do you mean by making real things? Google, Apple, Intel, AMD, and a plethora of tech companies have their home bases (with tens of thousands of employees) in the Bay Area. And I'm pretty sure they all have a hand in making tangible things.
 
dexvx said:
What do you mean by making real things? Google, Apple, Intel, AMD, and a plethora of tech companies have their home bases (with tens of thousands of employees) in the Bay Area. And I'm pretty sure they all have a hand in making tangible things.
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You know they hire people from all over the country/world? You people from tech colleges like MIT that are on the east coast.
 
umeng2002 said:
Commie-fornia.

Why do people even bother living there?
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Hi All

Depending what part of California you live they have Great weather. I'll grant you it's expensive & all, but if you have the money, it can be very nice. My Brother has been trying to convince me to come to San Diego for a while now. Have to say I'm really getting tired of these NY Winters, so you never know
 
jtm55 said:
Hi All

Depending what part of California you live they have Great weather. I'll grant you it's expensive & all, but if you have the money, it can be very nice. My Brother has been trying to convince me to come to San Diego for a while now. Have to say I'm really getting tired of these NY Winters, so you never know
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The Weather is about the only thing going for California, although the last couple summers have been hotter than usual.
We hit 114 early last month here in Orange County, and have had a couple mid 90's heat waves since.

Homes and rent are beyond expensive.
Taxes are high (We have sales tax, income tax, property tax and just about any other tax you can imagine)
Electricity is also expensive and so is gasoline.

Unless you have a 150,000+ income you will be struggling anywhere close enough to the coast to have good weather.

It's cheaper inland, but then you are dealing with 100+ temps most the summer. You might as well live in Arizona or Texas if you can deal with that much heat.
 
nutzo said:
The Weather is about the only thing going for California, although the last couple summers have been hotter than usual.
We hit 114 early last month here in Orange County, and have had a couple mid 90's heat waves since.

Homes and rent are beyond expensive.
Taxes are high (We have sales tax, income tax, property tax and just about any other tax you can imagine)
Electricity is also expensive and so is gasoline.

Unless you have a 150,000+ income you will be struggling anywhere close enough to the coast to have good weather.

It's cheaper inland, but then you are dealing with 100+ temps most the summer. You might as well live in Arizona or Texas if you can deal with that much heat.
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It was 115F here today, in Ontario Canada.. in a county considered "northern". So lol @ your heatwave.
 
DocNo said:
Why so many companies choose to stay in CA, let alone San Francisco simply boggles the mind. It's like they are trying to figure out ways to drive businesses out.
They've already killed their tourism and convention business by turning SF into a literal shit hole...
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And that is largely why the restaurants are having trouble.
Tourism is down, conventions are down, and business people are afraid to venture out to eat due the aggressive homeless population and all the needles and SH on the street.

Shutting down office cafeterias will just force people to bring their own lunches or use something like grub hub to order in.
 
nutzo said:
The Weather is about the only thing going for California, although the last couple summers have been hotter than usual.
We hit 114 early last month here in Orange County, and have had a couple mid 90's heat waves since.

Homes and rent are beyond expensive.
Taxes are high (We have sales tax, income tax, property tax and just about any other tax you can imagine)
Electricity is also expensive and so is gasoline.

Unless you have a 150,000+ income you will be struggling anywhere close enough to the coast to have good weather.

It's cheaper inland, but then you are dealing with 100+ temps most the summer. You might as well live in Arizona or Texas if you can deal with that much heat.
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Hi All

What you're describing sounds like where I'm at now Long Island NY minus the 100 plus degree temps. Everything else is pretty much the same
 
So this puts staff cooks and food service workers out of jobs (and probably well-paying with good benefits) and puts them back in the "$15 minimum wage" pool with shit benefits. Which means they'll probably be a drain on the SNAP program and other state/federal "freebee" handouts (including EIC), meaning we'll be subsidizing them instead of them being self-supporting.

It also increases traffic problems by a sizable amount as all those FAANG types jump in their cars to flee the campus at lunchtime, obviously causes more pollution, and gives the Silicon Valley corporations yet one more incentive (in a growing list) to relocate their headquarters to areas that are more attractive for them and their employees.
 
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