Imagine this. You’ve been smashing away at your keyboard for the better half of the day now, missing lunch, getting wired on coffee. You finally sight a window of reprieve from the whirlwind of emails that has buried you all day. You rise out of your seat to stretch and find that you’re feeling a bit peckish. Not enough to warrant leaving your building to grab a quick bite but certainly enough to stir your interest to give the work kitchenette a little raid for snacks. 

If you’re one of the lucky ones, you’ll be met with a smorgasbord of treats (we see you, tech firms). But if you’re not, we sincerely hope that you will at least be able to locate a packet of trusty (and post-COVID, individually-wrapped) Arnotts biccies. If you’re lucky, you might get a few choices between Anzacs, creams or scotch fingers. If you’re not so lucky, like the poor buggers at one stingy top-tier law firm, your selection might get whittled down to just the one choice. From what we have seen, this should be the absolute bare minimum (or Jatz, as some firms please) for any firm in AusCorp. 

Overall, it truly is a broad spectrum when it comes to workplace snacks, with tech firms unsurprisingly taking the crown. At Microsoft, we’ve heard that their employees get hourly refills of kombucha, juice, soft drinks, coffees, tim tams and a subsidised lunch to boot. SAP even have 4 types of craft beer on tap in their kitchen so if you ask us, every day can be Friday. 

Honourable mentions also go to a couple of firms outside tech – start-up-esque Jarden doesnt blink when it comes to gluttony. You’ve told us their kitchen is stocked with “popcorn, pretzels, red rock deli chips, dry seaweed, potato sticks, cheese and crackers and no-sugar drinks”. On the law firm side, Clifford Chance offers up tim tams, scotch fingers, Arnotts mini choc chip cookies, red rock deli chips, Quest bars, cheese and crackers, Reese’s peanut butter cups and other sweets, whilst Wotton + Kearney had the best snacks selection one of our fam has ever come across: “tim tams, popcorn, hummus, cruskits, cheds, avocado, tuna, Carmens museli bars, microwave rice, salami, sliced cheese, wagon wheels etc”.

Whilst most Big 4 offices, law firms and banks have a decent range on offer, there are some exceptions to this. We’ve heard that KPMG Canberra had exhausted all remaining Tim Tams in its biscuit jar but is now in a “sad state”. HWLE is very much the same with not much effort in replacing stock. Pathetically, Accenture got rid of its individually wrapped biscuits to “reduce waste” but failed to provide a substitute – a classic smoke and mirrors if we ever heard one. 

And here’s the mother of all sad realities, apparently a certain government department “no longer stocks fresh milk anymore to save costs”. The next time your public servant friend comes to dinner, maybe play nice with them, knowing that travesty.