Continental, Chinese or Italian?

ok. this is not my food post. that is yet to come.
this is a post related to my profession. HR, that is. now as far as i remember, retention of employees is also a responsibilty of the HR. even though the employees, once they join, they just forget that there is a department called HR unless they want to crib about their salary.

From ESOP's (i know, i know they are out of fashion..) sponsoring higher education, what not the companies do to retain the employees. two of my friends got placed in a very good company.

i dont know if i can name the companies, so i am not taking any names... now this company pays for everything... from accomodation to food to travel.. but the best part is it also pays for their laundry.. heheheh. and that is mentioned in the offer letter booklet. i find it to be sooo funny.

according to any company's belief, the company cannot actually repay the employee for their contribution towards the growth of the organization. so all these i.e., salary, perks, bonus, etc, etc are just a way of repaying (though not completely) the employees.

one "one among the top ten IT companies in India" had come to our MBA school for campus placements. The HR was giving the Pre Placement Talk as usual. now he was showing us all the facilities which the company had. One of them was the Hitech-with-highly-trained-trainer-GYM. the HR guy said" like every other company, we have a gym. not that people really workout there.. when all the companies offer similar kind of perks,salaries, etc such unnecessary things would be the only distinguishing factors" is it really true??? have we got sooo much choice that we just fall for such things??

i know.. i know.... some people really make use of the gym. many in my company also do. but i have also observed that they go to the gym as long as their work schedule is relatively ok.. as in not at all hectic. when people are between projects.. how many people are really serious about working out?

have we observed our eating habits??? now basically most of the employees are not localites. most of them eat at the office cafeteria. the menu is always some Paneer-Non Veg stuff... daily. every day.

and the stupidity quotient of the companies keep increasing. One example i can think of is a very famous company - one of the dream company of many aspiring IT people. Guess what?? they occupy one floor in the building. and apart from the usual Barista, etc, they have their own kitchen. Apart from the usual lunch ( they have a chef who cooks continental, chinese, etc, etc daily) the following is a small list of the other items available
1. Kaju, and all the exotic Dry fruits...
2. sweets, sweets and more sweets.. full of ghee, and whatever
3. chocolates.. rich.. full of fat
4. badam milk
i dont know if SALAD is present...

is this is one way of retention? offering sooooo much of food to stuff yourself ? if yes, is it really healthy? are these companies setting good examples??

isnt it a paradox of sorts? we have a hitech-gym on one hand and such delicious fattening food (daily) on the other. the food is just arm's length away... where as we have to walk in order to go to the gym..

are all these facilities really important? how many people really choose a company because of such facilities?

what do you think?