It’s tough sledding working in an office. The commute is terrible, the hours are fiendishly boring, and the coffee, if you’re lucky enough to have any provided, is generally terrible. It’s enough to make a worker want to revolt, or at least bee line it for the nearest wooded area to go completely feral and never be seen again.
And at a Tesla factory, the workers are taking back the power. Or at least the coffee mugs. So many coffee mugs. 65,000 coffee mugs have apparently gone missing from a single Tesla plant.
As reported by Car Scoops, Tesla’s Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg in Grünheide hasn’t had an easy go of things since their 2022 opening. Locals have expressed concern over the site due to its potential for environmental damage to the area. In March, a suspected arson attack left the plant without power for a day, costing the company an estimated $1 billion. Internally, things aren’t going much better. Tesla recently let go over roughly 2% of the plant’s staff of 12,000, and the union representing the factory’s workers state they are “facing extreme pressure and growing frustrated at safety issues” and have not ruled out striking. Car Scoops states that the factory has reported three times as many emergencies as Audi’s Ingolstadt plant.
Now the mugs. Plant manager Andrew Thierig states that in the two years of the gigafactory’s existence, they have purchased 65,000 coffee mugs. And every last one of them is gone. “I’m just going to give you a figure,” Thierig said in a staff meeting. “We’ve bought 65,000 coffee mugs since we started production here. 65,000! Statistically speaking, each of you already has five Ikea coffee cups at home. I’m really tired of approving orders to buy more coffee cups.”
Five mugs an employee. That’s one per finger for the ole five-finger discount. Which is a lot of mugs. In dollars, it’s maybe less astounding. You can get a coffee mug for $.99 on Ikea (and that’s not buying in bulk). Spending $65,000 over two years on 12,000 employees shakes out to an extra $2.50 per employee per year. And given that the plant accounts for $1 billion a day, maybe the extra $2.50 annually to keep your employees happy and caffeinated is but a drop in the bucket.
And honestly, we don’t know the workers are the ones lifting the mugs. I mean, Tesla’s CEO has a propensity for pawning off coffee equipment, so maybe we should start by looking at that guy?
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
