The Free Lunch

In the advertising business (or any business, I would imagine), you can get an unbelievable amount of free food. Before we get into today’s lesson in common sense, I must clarify this is the in-agency strategy of getting free lunches. You can also get free lunches while dining out with co-workers or clients, but if you do that often enough, you’ll become known as a cheap scumbag and your free lunches (as well as your fake friendships) will come to an abrupt end.

Depending on the size of your agency, there could be a meeting with lunch included once a week, twice a week, maybe even every day of the week. Sometimes, there will be multiple lunch meetings at the same time, allowing you a choice, like some kind of food court of meetings.

And yes, you do get a choice, even though it’s likely you’re not involved in all (or any) of these meetings. Just because you’re not in the meeting doesn’t mean you can’t eat the food.

For illustration purposes, let’s say there’s a meeting at noon in your agency, lunch included, and you’re not part of the meeting.

If you’ll eat anything, you don’t need to worry about what type of food is on its way. If you’ll only eat certain things, though, you obviously want to know what’s coming before planning your day around it. This is as simple as hanging around the reception area about an hour before the meeting. Or, even simpler: ask the receptionist.

One important thing to note before you attempt to get free food: don’t enter the room if the client is already there, unless you personally have a good relationship with the client. And, since you’re not in the meeting, it’s likely you don’t have any relationship with the client, so stay out of there. For our example, though, the client has yet to arrive. So barge on in.

If the food is buffet-style, or some type of food that’s hard to quantify (giant tray of sandwiches, vegetable and fruit platters, assorted tubs of goo, etc.), you can easily get into the room before the meeting and get yourself a full meal. Even if someone from your agency is in there setting up, he or she won’t throw any resistance at you. In fact, he or she will probably encourage you to take some food. You might even get to hear, “There’s no way we’ll eat all this.”

If the food is specifically ordered or divided into individual portions, like any sandwich place with catering services, you obviously won’t have a box of food set aside for you. If this is the case, you shouldn’t get your food before the meeting. Stealing from an innocent meeter/eater is not nice.

In that case, it’s merely a matter of patience. Not everyone will eat the entire lunch. There will be half a sandwich, or two halves, or any number of halves left over. There will be a plethora of chips and cookies. You don’t have first pick, so you can’t be discriminating (you may have to risk getting ham), but there will be food left at the end. Simply walk into the room as people are cleaning up and leaving, and you’ll probably be asked if you want some food. If not, just take some.

As an added bonus, after you’ve done this a few times, people around the agency will think of you as someone who loves food, and they’ll start taking leftovers to you. Essentially, you’ve turned your co-workers into waiters. This is called a reputation.

Once you have your food-loving reputation (it also helps if you keep a constant snack supply in your desk, leading people to believe you’re someone who just can’t get enough food rather than the mooching goon they know and loathe), you can pay less attention to the specifics of the meetings and just let the food come to you. You will receive light-hearted jabs from this, but you’ll also receive food. You decide if it’s worth it. I’ll tell you it is.

Two More Tips

1.You may want to decline food every now and then just to throw people off, leave a doubt in their minds as to just how much of a mooch you really are or to eat something healthy for a change. That’s something every person has to decide for him or herself, though. I can’t help you there.

2. When you enjoy a particular meal (at least compared to the other junk they bring in for these meetings), make it well known around the agency. People will pick up on the positive feedback and increase the frequency of ordering from the place in question. Plus, when the accolades are attributed to you, people might even save you a particular sandwich or other foodstuff.

Now go forth and eat. Enjoy.