One day last summer I came into our office with my lunch and saw some of our team enjoying a pizza. They had ordered it together and were splitting it.
I liked the idea and told them I'd buy pizza for the staff every week, and the company would pay. Only one caveat: they had to do it, and they had to look out for everyone. No help from Ashley, Mallika, or the PoPs team, who usually does our staff incentives.
It was the perfect opportunity for a hands-on experiment of just how difficult it is to serve a team—a lesson I've learned by watching Ashley, our head of People Ops, masterfully accomplish for a decade now with incredible patience. One thing I've learned watching them: It's really really hard. People complain about everything—even when they're getting something for free that was never mentioned or negotiated.
So what happened?
Within seven weeks, they quit. They didn't want the pizza anymore. Why?
The first week they ordered way too little pizza. Half the team was left out, and we had to step in and order more.
The next week they tried to give everyone exactly what they wanted, which led to way too much pizza and cost. We had pizza combinations I'd never heard of (Bacon Cheddar Ranch?)
As they tried to figure out how to get the right amount of pizza, and what kinds, the staff began to argue about WHERE to get the pizza from. If, for whatever reason, their choice wasn't honored, they were being personally slighted. Feelings started to get hurt and the person in charge got more frazzled.
Twice I got to the office late and there was nothing left =(. That's just a personal complaint from me.
People started getting tired of pizza and complaining about it. Can’t we get something else? Maybe we only do pizza every other Friday? What is that something else? How do we vote for it? What if the team suspects favoritism. How much would different food cost? Remember, I offered to pay for pizza, which is cheap, not Chipotle Friday every week. We do have a budget here and already cater meals on Monday morning and Wednesday lunch
As it does so often, The Office perfectly summed up the experiment in the episode where Michael leaves and Jim tries to put all the birthdays together. Life imitated art at TicketManager. Jim Almost Ruins Creed's Birthday - The Office
We learned a lot from Pizza Friday. Here are five things we learned this time around:
It is impossible to make everyone 10/10 happy. If you try, you will leave people out and upset them… or spend way too much money.
Order four kinds of pizza: Cheese, Pepperoni, Everything, and Vegetarian. Wings with sauce, wings with no sauce. Garlic bites salad . That's it.
Nobody is 10/10 about most of those four kinds of pizza, but everyone will eat one of them and enjoy them without feeling left out. They are all standard and what most would expect at a pizza party.
This logic applies to everything—the food, drinks, parking, chairs, paint in the office, and perks offered. Think of it like planning a wedding meal: A steak, a chicken, a fish, a vegetarian. That's it—no matter how much you like sushi or whatever.
One of my favorite stories is when a friend of mine worked at the law firm Foley. They had free snacks in the break room. The lawyers complained so much about the snacks that the firm took all of the snacks away! A few months passed, and they brought back the snacks. There was no more complaining. So yes, even the highly educated behave like children from time to time.
Never take a vote in public. The extroverts will bully their way to what they want. Your job, if you're in charge of the ordering, is to be a voice for everyone. Some people are really uncomfortable voicing a dissenting opinion to the "popular" or "louder" office clique. They'd rather just not eat, and rifts begin to form, which impact your business. A positive, free pizza!, quickly becomes a negative. Be sure to offer an outlet where the introverts can be heard without fear of ridicule.
Don't take your event planners for granted—ever. It is such a hard job, and it is so very important. The “little things” are not little, and the good ones know it.
Most people won't voice their discontent because they're polite. It’s usually only those on the extremes who are loudest. For example, when we underorder, few will speak up, and they eat more food. They're polite and say they're fine when they would likely have two to three more pieces. Those pieces cost very little to us, and it means a lot to our team.
Once you introduce an incentive, it is taken as law. Even if it was meant for a short period. Know that if you introduce pizza Friday or work from home Friday, or give your staff tickets a few times or cover the tab at lunch - it will be appreciated for about a day. Then it will be expected. By everyone. In every office. For example, we have work-from-home Wednesdays for our more tenured staff. However, if they decide to come to work on Wednesdays at HQ, we cater lunch as an incentive. We’ve had no fewer than a dozen people demand, not ask, that we cover their lunch at home. It’s just how it is. No good deed goes unpunished.
It all seems so trite and trivial. Trust me, it matters. A lot.
And thank You to our POPS team, who is incredible at what they do.