4 ms·

At the most basic level "don't bite the hand that feeds you" seems like the main takeaway from this story. A long time ago I did an internship at a marketing f

At the most basic level "don't bite the hand that feeds you" seems like the main takeaway from this story. A long time ago I did an internship at a marketing firm that did work for Subway Sandwiches. As such, it was considered a fireable offence to bring any other branded "sub" into the office.

tyingq 9y ago
>As such, it was considered a fireable offence to bring any other branded "sub" into the office. Ugh. That's just so stupid. What if they do work for a bank, automobile manufacturer, clothing designer, etc? Are the employees obliged to then buy new clothes, cars, hide their branded debit cards in the cafeteria?
- jasonsync 9y ago
  Haha. In realistic terms they simply wanted to avoid that awkward moment. Although, if you work for GM, and exclusively drive a Toyota, would you feel pressured into switching at some point? Edit - to answer my own question I searched Google and found this: http://jalopnik.com/dear-car-companies-stop-punishing-employees-for-drivin-1746653093 http://jalopnik.com/dear-car-companies-stop-punishing-employ...
  - Jonnax 9y ago
    I think that totally depends how high you are in the company and whether you're client facing. I doubt that the majority of people that work for Mercedes drive their cars.
    - gbacon 9y ago
      You’d be surprised on both counts. Union factory workers face significant pressure — as in slashed tires — from their peers not to drive foreign vehicles. Auto makers give sizable discounts to their employees.
      - kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
        Funny how you put outright vandalism that would cause hundreds of dollars of loss in such an understated manner (face significant pressure).
    - hodgesrm 9y ago
      You should perhaps be more optimistic. ;) Mercedes has a program for "Jahreswagen" ("Year cars") where employees get cars at something like cost, drive them for a year, then can hand them back to be resold. There are a lot of these in Germany. It's popular way to get a nice car without paying the full cost of a brand new vehicle. [0] [0] http://www.expo.be/en/jahreswagen/index_nl.phtml http://www.expo.be/en/jahreswagen/index_nl.phtml, lots more info if you read German.
  - stevenwoo 9y ago
    I live near the Tesla office near Arastradero Road. The last time I rode my bike by and paid attention, there were very few Teslas visible in the parking lot ( though one cannot see very far in the lot from the street due to the terrain/landscaping).
- gnicholas 9y ago
  If memory serves, employees at PayPal are chastised if they don't use PayPal to buy their lunch in the cafeteria.
ropeladder 9y ago
That is certainly a possible takeaway. My takeaway is that we shouldn't have one man's hand feeding everyone who contributes to the political and intellectual life of the country.
HillRat 9y ago
Any society that can't draw a distinction between marketing and journalism probably doesn't have a long shelf life. In the past, news orgs could enforce a firewall between news and advertising, and advertisers generally respected it as a norm (to the point that allowing advertising to influence news/editorial would cause a scandal). For a variety of reasons -- declining profitability of journalism, the existence of powerful platform monopolies, and the nature of attentional economics on the web -- those norms have eroded, and society is the poorer for it. (Ironically, I think WaPo is actually more insulated from this kind of interference, just because any direct interference would land on Bezos' doorstep rather than Amazon as a corporate entity).

tyingq 9y ago

>As such, it was considered a fireable offence to bring any other branded "sub" into the office. Ugh. That's just so stupid. What if they do work for a bank, automobile manufacturer, clothing designer, etc? Are the employees obliged to then buy new clothes, cars, hide their branded debit cards in the cafeteria?

jasonsync 9y ago
Haha. In realistic terms they simply wanted to avoid that awkward moment. Although, if you work for GM, and exclusively drive a Toyota, would you feel pressured into switching at some point? Edit - to answer my own question I searched Google and found this: http://jalopnik.com/dear-car-companies-stop-punishing-employees-for-drivin-1746653093 http://jalopnik.com/dear-car-companies-stop-punishing-employ...
- Jonnax 9y ago
  I think that totally depends how high you are in the company and whether you're client facing. I doubt that the majority of people that work for Mercedes drive their cars.
  - gbacon 9y ago
    You’d be surprised on both counts. Union factory workers face significant pressure — as in slashed tires — from their peers not to drive foreign vehicles. Auto makers give sizable discounts to their employees.
    - kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
      Funny how you put outright vandalism that would cause hundreds of dollars of loss in such an understated manner (face significant pressure).
  - hodgesrm 9y ago
    You should perhaps be more optimistic. ;) Mercedes has a program for "Jahreswagen" ("Year cars") where employees get cars at something like cost, drive them for a year, then can hand them back to be resold. There are a lot of these in Germany. It's popular way to get a nice car without paying the full cost of a brand new vehicle. [0] [0] http://www.expo.be/en/jahreswagen/index_nl.phtml http://www.expo.be/en/jahreswagen/index_nl.phtml, lots more info if you read German.
- stevenwoo 9y ago
  I live near the Tesla office near Arastradero Road. The last time I rode my bike by and paid attention, there were very few Teslas visible in the parking lot ( though one cannot see very far in the lot from the street due to the terrain/landscaping).
gnicholas 9y ago
If memory serves, employees at PayPal are chastised if they don't use PayPal to buy their lunch in the cafeteria.

ropeladder 9y ago

That is certainly a possible takeaway. My takeaway is that we shouldn't have one man's hand feeding everyone who contributes to the political and intellectual life of the country.

HillRat 9y ago

Any society that can't draw a distinction between marketing and journalism probably doesn't have a long shelf life. In the past, news orgs could enforce a firewall between news and advertising, and advertisers generally respected it as a norm (to the point that allowing advertising to influence news/editorial would cause a scandal). For a variety of reasons -- declining profitability of journalism, the existence of powerful platform monopolies, and the nature of attentional economics on the web -- those norms have eroded, and society is the poorer for it. (Ironically, I think WaPo is actually more insulated from this kind of interference, just because any direct interference would land on Bezos' doorstep rather than Amazon as a corporate entity).