Posted on 03/23/2013 1:15:07 AM PDT by thecodont
Last July, Google threw an office party. But this being Google — the third largest company in the world as of January — it wasn't really a standard ice-cream-cake-and-canned-beer office party. The event was luau-themed, so the company hired staff to dig big holes in its Mountain View campus' lawn and fit spits inside for the purposes of roasting pigs, according to people who were there. There were tables full of food and drinks scattered around. Also on offer: a sophisticated wave machine so employees could try their hands at surfing — miles away from the ocean.
In the tech world, nearly everyone has these stories of inordinate wealth. They're repeated — in a tone somewhere between sheepish, astounded, and proud, depending on who's doing the telling — so much they get passed around and fossilized into legend. In the course of several months and more than two-dozen interviews for this story, I heard plenty of them: the time Airbnb flew Ashton Kutcher in for a meeting. That one company party with the ice luge, or the one with a surprise appearance by Jane's Addiction. The guy who lost his iPhone several times over the course of one hedonistic weekend, buying a brand-new one each time ("you know, because he can," the storyteller added, wide-eyed), or the one who just bought a $5,000 bicycle, or the one who flew halfway around the world on a moment's notice, just to get away for the weekend. At a party for a midsize San Francisco startup whose employees happened to have an office in-joke about Smirnoff Ice at the time, an entire room was filled with buckets of it.
(Excerpt) Read more at eastbayexpress.com ...
Never heard of an office party held on office grounds serving alcohol.
“Never heard of an office party held on office grounds serving alcohol.”
They buy event insurance. Companies I’ve worked for hold their “holiday” (not Christmas) party at hotels and get a cut-rate for people who get drunk and want to stay. The companies also arrange cabs which they typically pay for.
Really? Every firm I’ve worked for held office parties with alcohol.
How pissing and moaning about how other people spend THEIR OWN MONEY is making this writer a living... If this writer got a nickel every time she muttered “it must be nice” under her breath during her miserable ongoing pitty-party life, she would be/would have been a billionaire by the time she’s 40. Why didn’t she interview the owner’s of the business or businesses that put on the party for Google and find out how important it was for them to be able to put on a function like this? What it means to their employees to be able to work? If this were about a government agency doing this with our tax dollars, it would be a great article. Instead it’s piece of crap hit piece on capitalism...
Sounds like these liberal companies were emitting a lot of carbon and causing global warming.
Alcohol is the only thing that gets me through an office party.
Indeed. What was the tab for a 1 night stay in Paris for Biden? $500,000. Makes Google look like pikers; plus Google is blowing my tax dollars.
...make that Google is *not* blowing my tax dollars!
Not mine. Only off site.
I know the companies i worked for did the same. Alcohol was permitted at parties off site.
Good correction!
Most of these techies are the worst kind of liberal. Their egineering backgrounds give them a false sense of godlikeness. They’re manipulative and totally enamored with the current economic/business fad of “incentives” as a control method.
That’s in complete contradiciton to Christian charity, choice and moral restraint.
Oh, yeah, they’re all atheists. Well, not quite, they do worship themselves, but miss their true master in the fog.
A guy I know pretty well (I don’t think he was making it up) told me he went to a corporate office party a few years ago where they had a keg and guns laying out for the employees to shoot. I was shocked, to say the least.
“A guy I know pretty well (I don’t think he was making it up) told me he went to a corporate office party a few years ago where they had a keg and guns laying out for the employees to shoot.”
Throw in a tamale, fish tacos and cocaine and he’d be working for a Mexican drug gang.
And for the record, I think your post is more reality than satire. :-)
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