Milk Wars 2004

I was reading about the horrors of corporate life the other day. Some poor person spent their entire day pasting receipts to pieces of paper for their boss.

I began thinking.

Our debacle of the week centralised on our sister site and its mob of about 70 people. The building management had decided to change from milk cartons to those little individually wrapped milk things (the basis of a poor man cappuccino) in order to save money. People were apparently using milk in an “inappropriate fashion”.

I dread to think what can be done with milk in an inappropriate fashion, but it was a big mistake. Wow – my inbox filled up faster than a Slimfast conventions buffet line that offered free food. It was an ugly day for packaged milk.

The crux of the backlash centralised on the morning cereal brigade. They clearly didn’t want to open 200 packets for one bowl of cereal, and they didn’t want to buy milk themselves either. This in itself might sound like whining, until you hear where they got their cereal from; yup, that’s right, the building managements own cereal vending machine.

Oh boy, big mistake, buying cows, devising milk machines, all sorts of madness ensued. A time and motion assessment was even done to consider how much lost time was spent opening milk packets compared to using a milk carton. In a corporate world, we can all be very sorry individuals.

Five days of bickering later the management backed down. Well, maybe it was a temporary reprieve, but I hear the traditional cereal ticker-tape parade is scheduled for next week.