When someone drops a plate of roasted pomodori pepper soup on the Zuidas in Amsterdam, the entire canteen is in shock. Clang, clap, silence. The broken deep plate lies in a red puddle of chunks on the terrazzo floor. “OMG, I’m totally getting secondhand embarrassment,” one young consultant whispers to another. Managing partner Tessa van Swieten (37) briskly folds her still empty tray under her arm and asks someone from the kitchen staff to mop up the gooey soup. The employees of the Boston Consulting Group are not used to these types of disruptive interludes.
The lunch is extensive and different every day. Today pappardelle with leek and an option on stew, a blini with avocado cream and shrimp, a salad of wild spinach with feta and edamame beans. There is no need to pay, it is done through your salary. Breakfast is also arranged in the Pinterest-like dream office and there is a ‘specialty coffee bar’. The canteen fills up at 12 o’clock sharp. Everyone is young. Every Zara variation of the blue corporate shirt can be seen on the sixth floor of the consultancy office.
Maarten de Nooijer (26) is sitting at the table with three Belgian colleagues who are here for a “case”. Maxim, Sebastiaan and Jean, like Maarten, are in their mid-twenties and, like Maarten, wear a light blue shirt. All four of them took the pappardelle with stew and fresh Parmesan cheese. The office in Brussels has no lunch, the men are happy when they can work and have lunch in Amsterdam.
They are “consultants in the due diligence and private equity.” According to Maxim, it’s all about the big money in the entire Zuidas, not just with them. Apart from the better organized lunch, the Dutch have a better “work-life balance“, thinks Maxim. Monday to Wednesday the young consultants work from nine in the morning to ten at night. On Thursday and Friday they stop around six o’clock.
A canteen worker mops up the roasted pomodori pepper soup from the floor.
Photo Simon Lenskens
Do they ever do something fun after work? “To the gym,” says Jean. Maxim says the word “work-life balance” three more times. According to Sebastiaan, it is “really great work.” Every two to four months the men receive a new “case” and therefore a completely new topic. “You should be an expert in that field within a few weeks,” says Sebastiaan. Is that possible? “Yes, you just call someone with years of experience and then you put it in a PowerPoint slide.”
A table further away sits Kaj, Isabelle, Clemente and Soufyan. Kaj wears his blue shirt loosely, with a white T-shirt and an earring. Clemente, a dark blue variant made of sturdy cotton. Isabelle a deep blue shirt with three-quarter sleeves and matching pants. Soufyan a standard light blue office shirt. All four are in their mid-twenties. They work as “associates on cases”. “We were really hired as generalists,” says Clemente. The associates can “really make slides for anything.” Isabelle wanted to become a consultant since the fifth grade.
Photos Simon Lenskens
Lunch is an important moment in the long working day. “I am taken better care of at work than I can take care of myself,” says Kaj. The associates also sometimes have lunch with customers, such as the Dutch government or energy companies. There are “considerably more chip shops”. Then Kaj always takes a croquette. The canteen of the Boston Consultancy Group never actually has a chip shop. According to Isabelle, the blini with avocado cream and shrimp was “super delicious”.
Today Kaj “only” works until eight, because he has to go to tennis. For the evenings at the office, employees receive money to order food. Soufyan always orders sushi. “They call me Soufshi here, I really eat it a lot.” The associates don’t mind that they have to work late every week. “Companies often have that capabilities not in-house“, says Clemente. “I think we have really made a good contribution to the cases I have worked on so far,” says Kaj. He is proud of that. He also understands that his girlfriend is sometimes less happy about this.