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Comment by Jun8 | Hacker News Reader

Well, at our place can sodas cost 85c, so they're making a cool profit from us instead of it being a perk!

But, I was wondering, how much soda did these guys drink? He says the cost was about $10k. Correcting for inflation (http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/) that's $10,838. Assuming 11.45 for a 24-pack (http://www2.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?ec=BD_563-EC27726...), gives us 22,704 cans of coke. Assuming this was an annual expense and all 50 people in the company drank about the same, that's 37 cans of coke per person per month! That's a lot of coke.

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Eh, not really. Think about it, when the soda is free:

You drink a can in the morning, because if you're a soda drinker you're probably not a coffee drinker, so this is your morning caffeine hit. Then you'll have one at lunch, because you're eating. Sooner or later you'll get thirsty again, so you'll have one in the afternoon. Maybe two (since the afternoon is about twice as long as the morning). So, 3-4 cans of soda per day, multiplied by 20 working days in a month gives you 70 cans per month. Assume this is near the high end of a spectrum of soda-drinking behavior, and you'll get an average of around 37 per month.

That's also a dollar per day per employee, which is absolutely nothing. If the all-in cost of that employee is over $120,000/year, you are bickering over what you are paying them for 1 minute of their time per day. And I definitely known coders that put down a hell of a lot more than 2 cokes per day.

A lot of people thought that this wasn't really a large amount of soda, bit it's the average, many people in the 50-person company will not consume this amount, so there has to be people drinking 5-6 cans a day. I personally average about 1.5-2 cans a day and feel bad about (this, of course, is on top of the mugs of coffee and tea I drink).

According to this CDC study (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db71.htm) done in 2011, the group that drinks the most soda is males between 12-19, with 273kCal from soda a day. Assuming they don't consume diet products, that's almost 2 cans a day, but many other groups drink much less. If you drink 4 cans of non-diet stuff, you (will) have a serious problem.

I don't know. That's less than two per day per person, assuming ~20 work days per month. Sure, it's not healthy to drink two cans of coke per day, but I can easily see it happening. One when you get in, one after lunch...

It isn't healthy, but a free soda with lunch, maybe one during afternoon doldrums or early evening depending on how late you're working, multiply by roughly 20 work days / month, looks like ~40 to me.

Less than 2 a day, some people drink a lot of soda.

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