There's a desperate, wishful-thinking part of my brain that thinks, "Just 10 more minutes is all I need to eradicate this unpleasant sleep inertia!", and it overwhelms all reason.
Another problem with it is that food isn't as liquid as cash. I can't buy a car with their food. I can't buy a TV with their food. I can't even buy groceries with their food. Presumably, yes, I am going to have to buy some food anyway. However, perhaps I would prefer to buy something cheaper, and use the money for something else. Or, perhaps I would prefer to buy something more expensive, and not have to worry that I've already paid for Google's food on top of it. Or perhaps I just want something different. Saying, "We're going to convert $X of your salary to an equivalent value of our food" robs you of choice. I'd want a deep, deep discount in exchange. At least 50%. And no, I wouldn't accept an inflated number like $20k just so they could discount it to $10k. And yes, I'd get this perk in writing, including availability hours.
You're making it more complicated than it needs to be. When you're valuing a perk, the cost to the company should be ignored entirely. Any perk should be valued at what it's worth to you based on how often you'll use it, not what it costs the company.
You should definitely ask questions to see if there are reasons you wouldn't use it, but attempting to put that in the contract isn't going to work. There's no way a big company is going to complicate their facilities planning by making separate agreements with employees. Better to just assume it won't last forever.
Personally, not having to either cook or shop for dinner if I don't feel like it is worth quite a bit to me. To someone who goes home and eats with their family, it's not worth as much. I'm not going to put a dollar amount on it because I think that's just adding false precision to the calculation.
By the way, studies show that people often don't value the right things when they do a detailed calculation. For example, a short commute is more valuable (in terms of happiness) than an extra bedroom on the house, but many people will take the longer commute if they overthink it. [1]
I worked at a place like this. They served dinner at 7-8pm, and you only got it if you worked at least 10 hours that day. I remember one day, one of the managers suggested that we up it to 12. "We're spending $30,000 a year on food; it's ridiculous." Yeah, but considering all of the extra hours you're getting out of people, paying an extra portion of a salary per year doesn't seem like a bad deal.
Those aren't her initials, if that's what you mean. But this sounds exactly like what my relatives practice. Thanks for the information, I was not aware of a distinction between unschooling and radical unschooling.
It's quite possible that my relatives, even though they are zealous defenders of unschooling, have misunderstood this point somewhat, or have otherwise decided to revise Holt's original message for whatever reason. Unfortunately, a lot of ideas tend to take on a life of their own once they begin to spread, and the original inventor of the idea has little control over it; they may end up getting credit for ideas they never espoused, for better or for worse. I apologize if I've mischaracterized unschooling. Everything I know about it is based on what I've learned from my relatives.
To them, it's not quite about being inattentive to your children; quite the opposite. It's about giving them whatever they want. It would not be hyperbole to say that, in their view, a parent should serve the child much like a valet. So it's not that they ignore their children, it's just that they have infinite trust in their children to decide for themselves what is best. So, if they don't want to go to the doctor to get a shot, they don't have to. If they want to eat candy for supper instead of a nutritious meal, candy is what they'll eat. If they want to play instead of do chores, then they will play. They are never asked to do something that they don't want to do, because a parent is not allowed to impose their will upon the child. As such, the parents often run themselves ragged trying to keep up with their child's demands, and the children end up very spoiled and totally unprepared for adulthood.
From what you've described of John Holt's writings, it sounds like he and I would agree on a lot of things. I definitely believe in listening to your child's cues. I also believe in manipulating the situation so as to foster an interest. I'm not sure if he would agree with that or not. I call it a 'manipulation' because it's indirect: instead of directly insisting and pushing my child to read, I try to indirectly entice her into taking the initiative by showing that reading can be fun and rewarding.
In any case, I wouldn't put it past my relatives to misconstrue the true foundations of the unschooling movement, which is why I am always careful to add that I might not be understanding it correctly.
