Tech Workers Strike Over Free Food Shortage

Thousands of technology workers walked out of their jobs all across Silicon Valley today, joining ongoing protests over widespread shortages of free snacks and drinks at their workplaces. Prominent tech companies — including Google, Facebook, Linkedin, and Yahoo, among others — saw hordes of employees crowding manicured lawns to demand more free pretzels, chips, and hint-water.

Crowds of T-shirt-and-hoodie-clad protestors brandished protest signs and chanted slogans such as “Free food for paid work!” and “Feed us or fire us!”

Staff software engineer Miles Johnson was one of many angry protestors filling Facebook’s Hacker Square. “Put things back in the microkitchens again!” he shouted. “All there’s left is bananas. How am I supposed to work without my dark chocolate espresso beans, goddamnit?”

Free food is a sacred benefit at most modern technology companies. Company executives consider free food at work as a way to keep employees at work longer. Employees report choosing what company to work at based on the quality of the free snacks available.

Despite the widespread outrage over the shortage, free food experts are unsure of its causes. Prominent machine learning professor and chocolate-pretzel aficionado Andrew Ng has published a paper blaming a recent influx of interns. According to the predictions of the complex neural networks described in the paper, interns have an unusually keen sixth sense for detecting free food, evolved through years of scavenging leftover pizza from research conferences and tech talks.

In the meantime, the protests are entering into their 6th hour with no signs of stopping. Miles Johnson is optimistic about the movement achieving its goals. “We’re not like those fat cats on Wall Street. We just want the same benefits as waitresses, management consultants, and unemployed people on food stamps. Free food is a basic right, and it’s unthinkable to expect anyone to work without it.”