Occasionally you have to pity those who work in the civil service, not for their lack of corporate perks or thankless working conditions, but for the fact that our taxes can no longer extend to supplying them with complimentary sugar for their coffee and tea.
So while you and I are paying more tax than we ever have in our working lives the poor employees at the Home Office in Croydon now have to pay for sugar if they take it in their hot beverages thanks to the latest initiative by caterers Charlton House.
Apparently light-fingered Home Office employees have been using and abusing the sugar supplies so much that a charge has been put on its head – although it is unclear what the price comparison is between brown and white.
Meanwhile an incentive to get staff to buy said hot drinks from the staff canteen, instead of the nearby coffee houses, has backfired.
The “get your tenth drink free” promotion has by all accounts been subject to some pretty extensive abuse. Customers would buy nine cups of tea (the cheapest drink) from the canteen only to claim the most expensive drink, a large cappuccino, as their tenth.
An edict from above has cracked down on this behaviour after emails were sent round claiming the tenth drink could only be that customers’ “regular purchase” and such abuse would not be tolerated. The canteen’s staff have found this decree somewhat difficult to enforce as remembering the regular purchase of some 2,000 employees is London’s most difficult round of drinks, and are giving away as many large cappuccino’s as they can make. Charlton House pride themselves on providing a unique service with free cappuccino’s for all apparently the latest cutting edge development.
