Give Me Water or Give Me Death

My office took away the water. It's not that the water they had was so great – it was just tap water, but at least it was filtered and cold. Now there's just tap water. It's warm. I do not like it.

I tried to console myself with the knowledge that it at least contains all kinds of good stuff like fluoride, but that doesn't change the fact that it's warm, bad-tasting water.

We considered starting a petition to demand that the management return water to us, whether in filtered form or in bottles, but we became concerned that such a petition would end up on some kind of legal gossip site, leading people all around the world to denigrate our firm as the kind of place that doesn't care enough about its employees to provide water.

I mean, think about the impact on recruiting. Meanwhile, it can't be great to having interviewees come in to discover no water. I wouldn't know, actually. I don't interview people unless that means taking them to lunch, because I can think of few things more horrible than being stuck in my office for half an hour interviewing someone and then running out of questions to ask at the 10-minute mark and having nothing to say for the next 20 minutes.

Of course, having no water is worse than that would be. Much, much worse.

I know that people out in the non-big firm world don't get free beverages. I feel for you, really I do. Actually, I don't, but it seemed like the right thing to say.

The thing is, when you work for a big firm, you expect that, in exchange for your personal life and your eternal soul, you will receive tasty beverages free of charge. That's the deal, and everyone is on board with that. It's just not right to leave people with nothing but Coke or Sprite or warm tap water. I don't drink Coke and Sprite and thus am left with nothing but the tap water. Some have suggested that perhaps I should purchase my OWN water, but what part of "deal with the devil" don't you understand? GIVE ME MY FREE WATER, DAMMIT!