The Water Cooler Club

Two posts ago, I made a reference to the "Water Cooler Club" that has raised some questions. Well, specifically one question: "What's the Water Cooler Club?"

If you work in the private sector, you probably take advantage of lots of "freebies" that us public sector employees don't get. Coffee and bagels at morning meetings... office sponsored dinners or happy hours... holiday parties... birthday cakes... farewell luncheons... and of course, the beloved water cooler.

Every office I've ever worked in has had a water cooler. But I never realized, until becoming a Fed, that those gigantic jugs of Deer Park and those useless cone-shaped paper cups (you can't put a cone-shaped cup of water down anywhere! why!?!) cost a pretty penny.

(Cone shaped cups - useless.)

The companies I've worked for, from gigantic multi-national retailers to small research organizations, always picked up the bill for water. Not so for the Federal Government! If we want to drink from the water cooler, we have to pay to join the "Water Cooler Club" ($10-15 a month).

It makes sense - why should your tax dollars cover my drinking water at work? Why should your tax dollars be used to pay for my breakfast meetings, birthday parties, or farewell luncheons? (If you are asking "Why should your tax dollars pay for me to sit around and write this blog?" then we are no longer friends.) Because we are such good stewards of the American public's money, we have to cough up some cash every time we have an event. Yesterday we had a farewell celebration for a coworker who moved on to another job. In order to pay for the party, my coworker Ismail devised the following contribution payment scheme:

GS 14-15: $5 or more.
GS 13: $4 or more
GS 12: $3 or more
GS 11: $2 or more
GS 9: $1 or more
GS 0-8: you are too poor to pay for anything.

With the out-of-pocket funds that everyone contributed, we gave her a send-off of cookies and juice in the conference room!

Maybe I'm just whining, but over time these small contributions add up. There's an average of 2 occasions where I am *asked* to contribute each month. They usually run about $3-5 each, sometimes up to $10-15 depending on the event. That's over $100 contributed every year to pay for events that would be free in the private sector. Think of all the beer that could get me! And it would be even more if I joined the "Water Cooler Club" - over $200 annually!

That’s why I have a Brita pitcher, and it suits me just fine.