Today's cackness

[Mich the Tester]

Ours is awful, the staff take lunch breaks. I kid you not....

I’m guessing that those posters who are satisfied with their canteen are working at places where they haven’t outsourced it. Yet.

[Sysman]

I’m guessing that those posters who are satisfied with their canteen are working at places where they haven’t outsourced it. Yet.

The worst one was 20 years ago - you could tell when the contract was up for renewal as the quality suddenly got better, only to plummet a few weeks later. A mate working for another large corporate nearby had the same catering company and told exactly the same story.

The last canteen for me which got outsourced started out by charging externals full whack. They then moved to charging for the salads by weight rather than plateful and it became a seriously expensive proposition; restaurant prices but with self service. The place emptied within a matter of weeks and they took it back in house in the end.

[Mich the Tester]

They then moved to charging for the salads by weight rather than plateful and it became a seriously expensive proposition;

Shocking coincidence! They're doing that here. They've also installed utterly cack self-service tills, with eagle eyed sodexo personel swooping on anyone to check they're totting up the food (loosely applied term) correctly AND they've 'adapted' the assortment (read; taken away the only pudding I liked) to only include the stuff they can program into the tills.

[norrahe]

yeah, sodexho are pretty naff. I've had a gig at a place and the food was grim and a tad overpriced, even with subsidies.

I think they do the catering at my other half's place and he avoids it like the plague as there's been several incidences of food poisoning.

I make him soup to take in (i'm on the bench, i have the time).

[expat]

...The last canteen for me which got outsourced started out by charging externals full whack. They then moved to charging for the salads by weight rather than plateful and it became a seriously expensive proposition; restaurant prices but with self service. The place emptied within a matter of weeks and they took it back in house in the end.

Trouble is, that makes beetroot or tomatoes more expensive than salmon or meat.

The whole thing is a microcosm of outsurcing: if you do not have a comprehensive SLA then you will not get the satisfactory outcome that you might have in mind, because the outsourcer's interests are different from yours, or certainly your customers'.

[Mich the Tester]

Trouble is, that makes beetroot or tomatoes more expensive than salmon or meat.

The whole thing is a microcosm of outsurcing: if you do not have a comprehensive SLA then you will not get the satisfactory outcome that you might have in mind, because the outsourcer's interests are different from yours, or certainly your customers'.

Yes, and that’s why it’s a microcosm of what I think has really gone wrong with the world’s economy. A mass movement of about 6 billion people have coincidentally, without discussing it together, all decided to stop buying overpriced worthless corporate cack at the same time. Whether that cack is credit-defaulty-obligation-swappy-thingies or crap cars or cheapo porcelain from Elbonia dressed up as Wedgwood doesn’t matter. People have lost trust in corporations to provide them with the service and product they want in an honest way.

And SLAs are all bulltulip. They're nothing more than an excuse list.