Free Food: Work Perk or Boundaries Blur?
For most young professionals, non-compensation workplace perks that translate to financial savings are a huge incentive. When you’re trying to manage living independently and paying off student debt without starving, free lunch at work is pretty helpful.
In many companies today, it doesn’t stop with free lunch. Some corporations even offer free breakfast and dinner as well. Corporate buildings may have fitness centers, pools, meditation rooms, and even fully stocked bars - all free to employees. Again, to the young adult who can’t afford these quality of life luxuries yet, these perks seem like a dream come true. But are these treats really beneficial, or do they blur your work/life boundaries to the point where you can’t tell the difference?
Is Free Lunch at Work Really Free?
In the corporate world, salaries are based on a 40-hour work week. But most businesses actually operate on a 9-hour day. When you sign on to an 8am-5pm workday, an unpaid lunch hour is typically written into your agreement. This is a generalization of course, as many offices are structured a bit differently. But the bottom line is, based on your salary, you are not technically being paid for your lunchtime. In some company policy manuals, it is even explicitly stated that you should take advantage of your lunch hour to rest from work and enjoy a break.
When free lunch gets factored into the equation, however, everything changes. According to a 2019 Indeed article, for the low cost of a free lunch, employees are likely to work an extra half-hour per day. Free lunch often means employees will eat at their desk, or only take a brief trip to the staff cafeteria before returning to work through much of their lunch hour. The company increased the number of hours you work without paying you for your additional time. When you do the math, your lunch is actually very expensive to you in terms of lost wages.
The other perks work in a similar way. If you come in to use the gym before work, how often do you get to your desk well before your scheduled start time? Or if you take 45 minutes in the middle of the day to work out, do you stay an extra hour into the evening? This is not to say that these perks have been created to take advantage of employees, but it is important to recognize whether or not you are giving away more of your time than you are deriving in benefits.
Blurring the Boundaries Between Work and Home
Many workplace perks are designed to foster teamwork and cooperation among the staff. People from different departments get to know one another better in the centralized cafeteria or gym spaces. People who become friends can schedule hangouts during the workday. And when teams are putting in the effort to finish a project on deadline, they can continue meetings over lunch, or even celebrate after work with a beer.
It’s generally a net positive to have good relationships in your work environment. Countless people continue lifelong friendships with someone they first met at work. But when your entire social life revolves around work, it may be time to pause and see what’s out of balance. Is that Friday office happy hour starting to affect your non-work relationships? Are you dating office mates and experiencing awkward encounters more often than you’d like? Can you remember the last time you left the office to have lunch with a parent, school friend, or cousin?
When the workplace becomes an all-encompassing environment that strives to meet your every personal and social need, it’s time to reset your boundaries. Career satisfaction is a vital aspect to overall happiness, but we still need to keep the perspective that we work in order to live. Your work life should support your ability to have a happy and healthy home life. So if you find that the office is getting too much of your downtime, it may be necessary to set limits on how much time you spend there.
Appreciate Perks Without Losing Your Balance
Work perks are often a lifeline to the young professional, so embrace them if they are offered! Just be sure to keep in mind that you have agency to manage the tradeoffs. If you feel like you’ve lost yourself to your career, or if you are starting to wonder if you really are in the best company for your dreams and goals, contact me for a free strategy session. In my work with young professionals, I help them take a broad look at where they are now, where they want to be, and set some actionable steps to get started.