there's no such thing as a free lunch

I was working last week on an agenda for a client’s customer advisory board meeting and amidst all my notes about new product strategies, market feedback requirements and the benefits of JAD sessions versus more freeform focus groups, I dictated the specifics of every single meal.  Why?  When it comes to the software business, it’s all about the free food.

It’s no secret that the average tech start-up runs on 24/7 pizza and caffeine.   A well-fed geek is a happy geek;  I learned that years ago from the Mr. Fields of cookie fame.  I also learned that big bowls of chocolate chips in the reception area and on the conference room tables are a very, very good thing.

Since then, I’ve worked in places where the highlight of the day was the free lunch delivery – and not just for my dog, Geeks (yes, I used to take my dog to work – another tech company perk).  Geeks had a system worked out.  Around 11:15 am, her little internal doggie alarm would go off and she’d move from her favorite napping position under my desk to a spot in the reception area where she could keep an eye on the door.  “Food is coming!” every alert muscle in her body would say.

When the delivery man finally arrived, where, oh, where to go first?

Now a more ordinary dog might trail along after the first person to pick up his or her food.  Stake out the closest office.  Follow her favorite smell.  Not Geeks.  The Geek Dog’s begging calculations were based on a very specific formula:  likelihood of sharing divided by speed of consumption.  Using this equation, my shaggy girl could travel from desk to desk for an hour or more until every last handout opportunity was exhausted.

With 30 employees to beg from at work, Geeks was quite the rotund little dog.  She also developed quite the programmer’s taste in food.  An experiment was once performed (not by me) to see how much pizza she could eat in one sitting.  The results?  Two and a half large pies.  Whenever I’d suggest to my colleagues that perhaps Geeks should go on a diet, they’d respond, “But she always seems so hungry!  Don’t you ever feed her?  She looks at me with those eyes…”  Yes, big beautiful brown eyes, intelligent face, twitching ears – the Geek Dog is a highly evolved free food begging machine.

Unfortunately, at home there’s no one to fork food over and no catering van ready to pull into my drive.  There’s not even the possibility of a stray pizza delivery boy.  Lunch is whatever I remember to buy at the grocery store – most days tuna, yogurt and an apple.  Boring for me, boring for stand-offish cats, boring for little brown dogs.

So sometimes in the mornings, when I'm planning what I'm going to eat for lunch today, I think back to the glory years.  Those were the days, weren’t they, when Geeks lived for lunch – and so did I!