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We have a couple water coolers and a coffee pot with a few coffee / tea options.
Does your practice area / firm culture lend itself to staff pulling long hours or missing meals? If so, I think spending a couple hundred bucks on snacks is probably the least you can do to keep them happy and focused.
If everyone is consistently working 8 to 9 hour days and getting there lunch breaks, I'd pare down my offerings to bottled water and coffee. Unless you're in the middle of nowhere, you don't really need a commissary for client meetings.
Please don’t have your staff drink tap water (it just tastes gross)…at least get some sort of water cooler and a refill delivery service. My small firm has a super filtered water station and TBH this is the bare minimum.
The firm has the receptionist take a monthly trip to Costco and get bulk snacks for the office (chips, trail mix, protein/granola/cliff bars). They always have some basic soda cans on the list as well. Sometimes she even grabs instant oatmeal so if we need a quick breakfast there are packets there. We have a spice rack with the essentials.
She always grabs multiple types of creamer (dairy/soy/oatmilk) for the coffee. The firm has a keurig machine and some sort of monthly coffee refill service that brings a variety of blends to the office (including some random teas). We have a firm coffee break in the afternoon and some of the staff have started rotating turns on bringing different flavors & whipped cream.
In the summer, sometimes the firm gets bulk size frozen fruit and then we can use the blender to make smoothies and frappes.
Clients only get offered water, soda, tea, or coffee.
The thing is….if you are a law firm that is not permitting hybrid or remote work, your employees are being kept away from eating their own groceries, using their own kitchens and living in their own homes. They pay for all of those things and cannot use them while at work. While your staff is in the office, its an easy way to show respect and gratitude by making sure they have coffee, snacks, and filtered water.
TBH it just sounds like you don’t like working with this person and she really annoys you.
If she is making discriminatory remarks towards other staff, that’s an actual problem. If you want her gone, you could start documenting those incidents and taking disciplinary action.
If you’re mostly bothered about her being cold in the office, maybe read this article https://www.insider.com/tiktok-cold-office-summer-temperatures-women-winter-2023-6?amp.
As for the rest of the staff, shouldn’t your goal as an attorney to be encouraging them to make this role an actual career path? It’s your career and presumably you take it seriously. Why wouldn’t you also want your staff to view their position in the firm with the same professional respect? They should see themselves as Legal Professionals….not just as working at some random office job that would be totally fine without them if they left for something better.
Also, providing water in an office setting that is bottled and/or not from some communal Brita water pitcher is the bare minimum. Tap water is gross. Communal water pitchers left in the fridge are pretty gross. Why is this even a question for you after the pandemic?
My small firm had water cooler (individual water bottles are too expensive and also bad for environment) coffee/tea machine, sometimes sparkling water cans, and Costco snacks. This is far from “providing everything” that the staff needs. You come off as not a great person to work for.
I didn’t say that’s why my firm didn’t provide them — it was just my personal opinion as to why it seems unnecessary. But I can see how it read that way. That said, I don’t believe Brittas are very helpful if you have more than like 2 people using them, as they need constant refilling so the water is often not cold or the tank is empty. And they get those weird black floaters. I am not opposed to some more cost efficient option than water cooler. And I am not even specifically saying you MUST have a water option (I don’t know where you are or how bad the water is).
My point was more that your *attitude* seemed bad. You seem deeply resentful of your employees wanting this pretty minimal perk, in the grand scheme of things. You seem irritated that you’re having to pay them AND give them anything else. That kind of attitude, in my experience, often goes with shitty bonuses, under market salary, bare bones/inadequate insurance options, unpleasant physical office space (too hot/cold, 1-ply toilet paper, broken stuff takes forever to get fixed). You’re the boss, you hold so much power. They do crappier less prestigious work for less pay and no equity. You will have happier, more loyal, more efficient workers if you perhaps looked at it like “what can I do to offer my employees a better environment to earn for me” as opposed to “hey guys what’s the bare minimum I can get away with giving these freeloaders.”
We have a water dispenser, keurig, nespresso machine, cold brew in the fridge, soda, teas, and a variety of snacks that change often (granola bars, nuts, chips, protein bars, beef jerky, twinkies, chex mix etc). I assume this is not normal but is a great perk for sure. Would be disappointed to go somewhere and not find at least coffee and a few snacks.
This is what we do too.
I wouldn't drink tap water too. So I usually bring a liter of water and bring it to the office. We are provided with coffee, water and biscuits but they don't allow us to drink tap water too.
How much are you paying your paralegals? If these supplies ease their financial stress, I would leave them as is.
I don’t think the one who wants the water in bottles is financially stressed. She makes good money and because she lives at home, her only expenses are related to her car. If anything, having her around is a financial stress for the firm but because my partner is friends with her parents, he won’t cut her loose. Payroll doubled when we hired a bilingual paralegal and the unilingual paralegal cranks the heat in our not well insulated office, and when we imposed a don’t touch the thermostat (she was setting it to 74), she had mom and dad buy her an electric space heater. So gas went down and electric went up.
All kinds of sodas and sparkling waters, crackers and nuts, we bake cookies every day. 7 lawyers and about 7 staff mostly working in the office.
Please hire me at this cookie firm
One paralegal grew up very sheltered. In fact, still lives at home. Refuses to drink tap water filtered through a Brita. Has to have bottled water.
Maybe she just thought that the firm was supposed to supply it because it was always available. Just playing devil's advocate
I would understand that if we didn’t flat out tell everyone: cans of soda, that’s fine. But water bottles are for clients. Let’s reduce waste and use water from the Brita.
Then she took it upon herself to continue to drink the water in the bottles, and now wants them replaced?
I’d sooner even pour clients a glass and just produce more dishes. We have a dishwasher.
Its really just a lack of rules and expectations for this. Its always been that way, so ofcourse they would expect to have it. Say its no longer an expectation due to meeting clients virtually and boom, no longer on the list
Yeah. We definitely have a Cuisinart single serve coffee thing. But the paralegal’s aversion to filtered water is such that she never uses it cause we put in filtered water from the pitcher. Unless it’s empty and she can fill it with 4-5 bottles and she knows that where the water came from, she won’t make drinks in office.
I’ve also veered from our normal cola and diet cola to get sprite for her at her request. So I don’t think I’m horrible to her. I’m just trying to figure out how best to say: you get a salary. Anything above X, Y, and Z you have to provide cause we won’t.
Our other paralegal is diabetic, so naturally I’m like: if we provide French vanilla coffeemate for one, do we need to provide the sugar free option for the other. At which point I’m like: filtered water from the pitcher, coffee pods (which we supply the machine and pods, but the one who uses it brings in her own brand of pod that she likes.)
I’m just trying to find a balance and be fair. Our bilingual paralegal is my friend/we worked together awhile back and when we needed a bilingual paralegal, my partner resisted hiring her (1) he thought we were having an affair. We aren’t and weren’t. But (2) he thought because of that, I’d show her favoritism. I had to have a “pot, meet not even kettle” conversation with him about that.
Investing in a water cooler with a refilling service would be a quick solution. It seems like this particular paralegal’s issue is that she needs access to water that is sealed or non-communal. A lot of people are like this…it’s not weird. I have one of these at home that was $100 on eBay and the 5-gallon jugs cost like $5 to refill at Home Depot. I’m sure there’s probably some sort of office water cooler service you can easily subscribe to. Then you don’t have to keep buying Brita filters (which are not reusable) or filling the fridge with water bottles.
For the variety of restocking issue, a simple solution would be just doing an office vote on what is stocked (soda vs. water bottles vs. energy drinks vs. snacks). It would give your staff an overall sense of agency in the workplace. Getting their input on the work perk and giving them a voice would help you determine what is most fair. If the majority wants Pepsi and granola bars and only one person wants Sprite and gummy bears, it’s not fair that the majority would have to drink Sprite and eat gummy bears.
For anyone with dietary restrictions, it would be considerate of you to have an option reflecting those restrictions if you are already providing regular options to your staff that do not have dietary restrictions. If the diabetic paralegal drinks coffee, I’m sure an gesture like offering sugar-free creamer would show you acknowledge and respect her dietary needs. If you have a vegan paralegal, offering non-dairy creamer would have the same impact.
What is fair is not always equal. What is considerate is not always fair. The balance is somewhere in the middle.
Having a diverse team of support staff that feel respected and valued can only set you up for success.
Water, coffee and coke . Oddly no diet
My firm has a water dispenser that is hooked up to the water line. It filters, chills, and heats. It was a few hundred bucks and works great. Everyone fills their water bottles, and there is limited overhead for the filtration parts.