Weighing scale in IT canteen!

HYDERABAD: Employees of an Indian IT major in the city are a flummoxed lot these days. The new weighing scale in the canteen has left them confused and hungry. According to sources, the caterers to whom the canteen services are outsourced have started weighing food before it’s served.

“Earlier they never used to weigh the food and we got much more than what we are getting now,” says an employee under the condition of anonymity.

Disgusted

The practice which started recently has left the employees surprised and some disgusted.

“It’s so humiliating to stand there and watch as the food is weighed before it is served to us,” says another employee.

The company removed the scale on Friday after receiving complaints from its employees. “They don’t need the scale any more because they know how much to serve now,” alleges the employee. However the company officials maintain that this was done to ensure that the employee got his/her money’s worth and not to ‘ration’ food.

“We eat how much we are served, we can’t ask for second helping. For Rs.30 earlier we got three ‘parathas’ but now we are getting just two. The cost of ‘biryani’ has gone up by Rs.10, but the quantity hasn’t,” says another employee.

While employees allege that there was no second helping, officials at the company said that this wasn’t the case and that they can’t really control the amount of food being served as it’s completely in the hands of the vendors.

Others allege that the food committee which is supposed to supervise the quality and pricing has turned blind to their complaints. “The ‘chicken biryani’ doesn’t have any chicken in it,” complains M. Abhishek (name changed).

Owing to the fuel hike and inflation, other companies too have been forced to hike the cost of food.

The cost of meals has gone up by an average of Rs.5-Rs. 10. Many complain that the quality of food too has come down. “For a month or so, we have noticed a drop in the quality of food being served to us. Also the number of items being served too has come down,” says a software engineer working for Oracle.

“They are resorting to cost cutting measures at various ends, but the least they could have done was to spare the canteen,” laments M. Sreeja (name changed), working with Satyam. Though beverages and biscuits still remain free of cost in most of the IT companies, employees say that this too might not last too long.