cate rocks.: cutting-edge coffee technology. with stars!

while i don’t care to trash-talk prior employers, at least, not in writing, i do want to say that the Robots is much more awesomer than my last job. not only do they pay a reasonable salary with excellent benefits (for reals, i have great inexpensive insurance and 401k matching with none of that ‘vested %’ crap, along with a gym membership), they know how to have a pretty decent workplace.

see, back at the JWeek, we had marginal offices, with the kind of furniture that you get for free off Craig’s List. Not that it was terribly crappy... just kinda ghetto a little. we had free all-staff lunches every quarter, with mediocre food, which i suspect was mediocre because we got Kosher foods. the mediocrity stems not from the Kosher aspects but probably because the place we got it from wasn’t that great, but it was a) nearby and b) Kosher.

anyway, the point is, it was OK, but that’s about it.

but here at the Robots, i have my own cubby with nose-high walls (privacy!), a wii (for team-building!), a graphics tablet (Intuos3 6x8) that i didn’t have to buy myself, Adobe CS3 (and Quark 7 if i cared to use it), lots of restaurants and a grocery store within walking distance, and company-paid lunches whenever an excuse can be found.

on tuesday we had a delish lunch with pita sammitches and sammitches on rolls and spicy pepper hummous, two types of chips, veggies, salsa and dips, soda (including Coke Zero!), two types of cookies, and special foods for folks who may have had other dietary needs... there might have been more but i just can’t remember. we had this spread in the conference room because the new administrative assistant started. when i first started, we all went to lunch across the street at a restaurant. before i started they asked me to come for lunch on a friday.... just to hang with the peeps.

and just this week the coffee maker came. it seems they used to have a regular coffee maker, like one might have at home, but during the expansion the carafe was broken. so we now have this spacey single unit coffee maker, in the open sunny lunch room that affords a view of Shirlington rooftops and access to a deck. the coffee maker is reasonably cool — you put a little cup of what i assume is concentrated drink in the top, press a button, and sphfffissssshhhhsssfffffssshhhh yer coffee or tea or hot lemon drink is dispensed. but my favorite part is the drain plate...