Working lunches

[lnr]

When Julia and I recently moved office we took advantage of the new space to buy a kettle and a really small fridge. This means my lunch can now involve such exciting things as pot-couscous and salads which would be a bit grim if left at room temperature until lunchtime. But I still can't manage soup unless I bring a flask, or anything as exciting as a ready-meal or a jacket potato. Still, it means I'm no longer living on sandwiches, soup and crisps from our mini-canteen.

What cooking/catering facilities do *you* have at work? (NB your "canteen" could just be a vending machine). [Poll #1405942]

We still have to do the washing up in the sinks in the Ladies mind, which is mildly off-putting.

Comments

[emperor]

The canteen is quite expensive; the blanks are things I'm not sure whether they do or not - I don't usually eat there!

We also have access to a sink near the kettle and fridge, so don't have to wash-up in the loos' toilets. Oh, and we have a water cooler (fed from the mains, I think).

[lnr]

I'd count a (mains) water cooler as just a special instance of a drinking water tap. I did wonder if I should ask about sinks :)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Yes, although I wouldn't count a non-mains water cooler as it always just feels wrong to drink special imported water, so I wouldn't be able to quaff as much as I actually need to drink. (And it has to be able to provide less-chilled water for the quaffing also :))

[simont]

[X] A toaster

(Like emperor, some of the unticked items on question two are things I wasn't sure if they did or not.)

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

I think you should include a sink for washing up within your facilites list.

Oh, and we have a toaster. And the microwave is able to grill, too, if suitably programmed.

And we have a freezer.

When working at Acorn, I remember there being a freezer containing frozen pizzas. You were permitted, if working late, to take pizzas from the freezer and nuke them - you were supposed to list who, what and when in an associated book, so the stock could be kept up to date, but you weren't charged.

Sinclair used to have a free vending machine (if 'free' + 'vending' makes real sense), and hot canteen lunches were free too. On the other hand, wages were relatively low.

[caramel-betty.livejournal.com]

The canteen proper doesn't do hot drinks normally, but you can get tea/coffee in the tea rooms (free), and the canteen sells hot chocolate sachets.

No boxed salads, although the canteen will make something up for you in advance if you ask. Savoury or fruit salad, covered in cling film or similar if you don't collect it early. Since I now work a few minutes from the canteen, they also bring up some stuff like that if you order it specially. (e.g. they'll bring up a half-dozen fruit salads every day, with post-its on for the people who order them.)

Oh, also:

[x] A toaster.
[x] Cereal.
[x] Fruit (salad, and apples/bananas etc.)
[x] Cooked breakfast (from toast+jam, through bacon sandwich to fry-up)

[lnr]

Oh god, I remember temping for the benefits agency up in Leeds, and having a bacon and egg butty from the canteen every morning for breakfast. Not good for you to eat them that often but oh was it *nice* when you'd left the house just after 7am when it was still dark and spent 50 minutes on the bus.

[sparrowsion]

Not that I'd want to drink the tap water without it having been through at least the filter, preferably the kettle too. We have not one but two kitchen sinks, but approximately no hot water.

We also have a toaster. And a smoke alarm.

[lnr]

How often do the two interact badly?

[sparrowsion]

Slightly more often than the toaster interacting badly with the trip on the fuse box.

[mhoulden.livejournal.com]

What the "canteen" offers depends on what I have in, but at least I know no-one's going to nick the milk because I work from home.

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

What they said.

[nja.livejournal.com]

I could in theory use the microwave in the technicians' tea-room downstairs, but although I don't think they would overtly object, it would be seen as not quite the done thing. I have my own kettle (which is filled from a water filter which is filled from the drinking water tap in the toilet next door). Academic staff have no common room (there are meeting rooms in the other two buildings, one with a fridge and kettle and one with an adjacent kitchen, but if they are booked for a meeting at lunchtime, tough luck).

Also: the canteen (common room) covers most things, but as the vegetarian option is "cheesy tomato pasta slop" 90% of the time (under various names, but that's what it really is), I think the vegan option would always be salad or possibly soup.

[addedentry.livejournal.com]

No common room! My workplace doesn't have a common room (sorry, combination room) for staff, either, but I thought that was an Oxford oversight.

We do have free meals in hall and a buttery selling snacks, so I don't complain.

[nja.livejournal.com]

The common room referred to in my edit is the central SCR (we also had a DSCR for departmental staff, which was a central facility for the clerical and technical staff, but the two merged a few years ago when pay scales were unified). The technicians get a tea room in the department because they can't eat or drink in their normal work areas, the rest of us are assumed to be able to make our own arrangements in offices or labs. I think that's probably the same throughout the university - space is a problem (which is why I make an effort to keep as much junk as possible in my office, to avoid anyone deciding that they could move someone else in here with me).

[lnr]

Yes, our little canteen is technically a counter in the North Common Room, which is available for assistant staff and technicians to take their breaks in. The rest of us are thankfully still allowed in to buy things to eat in the South Common Room (for academic and academic-related staff), or to take back to our desks. They're not big enough to branch out into actual meals though, not even cheesy-tomato-pasta-slop.

[sweh.livejournal.com]

On my work floor we have 2 copy rooms. Each room has a sink, a coffee making machine (Flavia), a microwave, a fridge, an ice machine and a filtered water dispenser (hot+cold). The larger room also has a coke and a snack vending machine. The coffee is free; the coke/snacks aren't :-)

Two floors below is the main cafeteria which has premade sandwiches, a deli bar for custom made sandwiches, premade salads, a salad bar, a pizza (and related) bar, a burger bar, a changing "international" bar (sometimes Indian, italian etc etc) with a hot desert option, a veggie bar, a fish bar, a speciality bar (odd things show up there), a sushi bar, premade deserts ("cookies", cakes, cold deserts) and "fountain soda" (coke, etc).

[pir.livejournal.com]

The food at work drops my cost of living in London by a significant amount.

[sphyg.livejournal.com]

[x] dishwasher

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Oh yes - one of these too.

[pjc50.livejournal.com]

Our office has a sink with tea+coffee facilities, some plates, cutlery, mugs etc, and a pile of free snacks and fruit that is delivered by Tesco every Monday. If that runs out, there's a vending machine elsewhere in the building.

If I go outside, then in one direction is Thoroughbreads, who sell sandwiches, panini, etc at just under £3; in the other direction is the Innovation Centre's canteen. They usually manage to offer 2 or 3 different hot dishes, of which 1 is vegetarian. Cost averages £4. I usually eat there anyway as it's uncomplicated, quick and tasty. The vegetarian option is not shortchanged, I sometimes choose it if I feel like more veg in my diet or the meat option is not to my taste (e.g prawn fishcakes).

[lnr]

It's interesting whether you should count other stuff in the Innovation Centre that isn't technically provided by your company. I don't count the cafe across the road from Engineering for example, and very very rarely eat there.

[scat0324.livejournal.com]

[x] wine, beer, etc

[naath.livejournal.com]

We have a tap that we are assured is drinkable... and a sink that's a lab sink really but we use it for washing up (the drinking-tap sink is teeny). We should get a fridge sorted out but have teh lazy so at the moment there's just the kettle.

There's a woman-with-a-van who comes and sells sammiches in the car park for lunch, but other than that just a drinks vending machine. Of course we're right in the middle of town, and if I had Effort I have loads of choices for places to eat.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Hang on a minute, I suspect you have been working on the same site as me for a long time and I never realised...

[naath.livejournal.com]

:) I'm over in Anatomy.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Yes, just across the road!

[lnr]

Sounds like you're worse off than me! The advantages of at least working in a *large* department.

[naath.livejournal.com]

Well, I suppose *technically* we have a break room with a fridge an' stuff but it is *in the other building* which means we never use it...

[mobbsy.livejournal.com]

[x] A plentiful supply of pheasants in the grounds

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

[x] Rabbits on the back lawn

(But using a shotgun on them would probably makes the Tesco customers the other side of the fence a little wary, so they (the rabbits) get left for the local cat instead.)

[lnr]

Can you cook a pheasant with only a kettle?

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Bit like jugged hare, isn't it?

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

[x] the world's most ridiculously overcomplicated coffee machine that still doesn't do the washing up for you

I love our microwave a great deal. Working in a dungeon, it is so good to have a hot meal.

[lnr]

Soup in a cup from the canteen was definitely very welcome on cold days. The one thing I do rather miss is the toasted-sandwich vending machine though: ham and cheese or cheese and tomato or both in less time than it takes the canteen to toast a pannini for only £1.50 each. Sadly the machine broke down and they can no longer get parts for it. So it sits, empty and turned off, in the row of vending machines outside the lecture theatres.

[fanf]

I'm only counting CS facilities - not the social club nor the grad pad etc. :-)

[lnr]

Oh indeed, I'm only counting departmental facilities on the main site at Trumpington Street. And only counting kitchen facilities available to me in particular: some groups have better arrangements and there are even some actual real small kitchens around the place, but they're not for us :)

[aldabra]

Microwaves are cheap. If they let you have a kettle and a fridge I think you should go halves on a microwave too (I'm surprised about the kettle and the fridge, TBH; I thought there were all sorts of electrical testing rules).

This reckons £29 in Tesco:

http://www.pricerunner.co.uk/cl/3/Microwave-Ovens?sort=3

[lnr]

We were bad, and didn't bother to get them tested, but being brand-new they're almost certainly fine. And Paul has a kettle too.

The fridge is however about half the size of a microwave, and between it and the kettle and the tea/coffee they're already taking up most of our available free work surface. Plus I'd feel less like we can get away without mentioning it :) And of course after 7 years of having no cooking facilities beyond a glass of water a fridge and kettle is already rather luxurious.

It's certainly worth considering in the future though.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

You have to get things PAT tested* but any technician in a science/engineering department can quickly test stuff like that - whether they want to is another matter...the reason we have a kettle, two coffee machines, a fridge, a microwave and a toaster is because we have a very nice technician who tests them all for us.

*relishes at the sound of pedants squealing since I just said Portable Applicance Test tested

[aendr.livejournal.com]

We have a freezer too, and a large stock of blackberries from the bushes outside.

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

Our kitchen has a wack hot drinks machine. And we have a watercooler thing, with no water on the top so I guess... from the mains? I have no idea.

[pm215]

Although work has a canteen it's expensive enough (four or five quid for a meal, couple of quid for a sandwich) that I never use it, which is a shame as it'd probably be healthier than my usual ready-meal-heavy diet. When I did summer work at BT's research labs they had a good subsidised canteen...

[mstevens.livejournal.com]

I still find the idea of work canteens slightly weird.

I think I've had access to one for about 2 months in my life.

[crazyscot.livejournal.com]

[X] A daily sandwich van
[X] A second, competing daily sandwich van (wonder how long it'll last?)
[X] Washing-up facilities
[ ] A staff room (common room, combination room, etc) *sob*

[X] Fresh fruit
[X] Milk
[X] Boxed/bottled juice

I didn't tick soup 'cos our van sells packets of cup-a-soup, which I don't really rank.

[thorfinn]

What's a hob?

[lnr]

A (set of) gas burners or electric rings for cooking on with a pan. Often part of your cooker (on top of the oven) but you sometimes see a 2-ring electric hob which just plugs into the normal mains in student kitchens with no oven for example.

And a post elsewhere has reminded me that "stove" is another word for what I mean.

[thorfinn]

Oh right. No stove, but we have a Barbecue... which is essentially a semi-portable stove. :-)