Personal anecdote: Worked for a startup for 14 months a couple of years ago. The pay was on the low range with promises for the future. The perks: they offered

Personal anecdote: Worked for a startup for 14 months a couple of years ago. The pay was on the low range with promises for the future. The perks: they offered $10 for lunch on Seamless and one unlimited metro-card per month. And $20 for dinner if we stayed after 8:30pm IIRC. The implicit untold cost was that we were not supposed to leave the office during lunch since it would be delivered there. In order to get edible food I had to put 10 myself since it would not meet the minimum for delivery and the ones that did were trash. In no time did I realize that we were paying for the lunch ourselves by working the other half hour of the lunch break. The 8:30 dinner was obvious what it was:) Cart food was an option that I started taking after a while. Food was the same and I would de-tense during the break. GC sponsored employees did not dare do that. When new clients were visiting the office (once in a while) we were supposed to become animated and chatty, draw diagrams and seem deeply involved with some problem; in a few instances 3 remote contractors that were doing design work for us were asked to come to the office to make it look as if the company is larger than it seems. They were thinking of buying a Foosball table and play during those visits to impress potential customers. I left before they they got it.