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KEVIN CULLEN

A bad taste in leaving for the Globe’s caf workers

Tony Marcus, left, joined Globe cafeteria workers cheering on Kim Robey as she danced with Globe technology columnist Hiawatha Bray at a farewell celebration. Michelle Jay/Globe Staff

We are packing up here in Dorchester, about to move downtown, and, to be honest, the thing I’ll miss most about this old, wheezing hulk on Morrissey Boulevard is Kim Robey’s delicious chicken salad wraps in the Globe cafeteria.

If you work at a place where there’s a cafeteria, you know how attached people become to those who serve them food. It’s more than sustenance, more than a business transaction. As the years pass, the ritual forms a bond. It’s almost familial, except cafeteria workers tend to be much nicer to you than your family is.

So many Boston Globe employees have been concerned about what would happen to the workers when the cafeteria closes soon.

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We took great comfort reading the website of FLIK, part of the Compass Group, the independent company that employs the cafeteria workers.

“What makes FLIK click? Our people. We know how to pick them and know how to grow them,” the FLIK website says. “Once we find the right talent, we encourage, value, and recognize their contributions.”

The company says its corporate ethos is L.O.V.E, or Live Our Values Extraordinarily, saying that “keeps us focused on what matters most. It all adds up to more than a meal, but rather a communal dining experience orchestrated by a talented, invested group of FLIK associates who bring genuine caring and extraordinary food to the table every day.”

This is all swell and marvelous and obviously means the Globe cafeteria workers will be taken care of, right?

Um, wrong.

People who have prepared and served food at the Globe for anywhere from 20 to 30 years are being shown the door and told not to let it hit them in the rear end as they leave. As they look for jobs in other parts of their company, their loyalty and seniority counts for nothing.

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Boston Globe employees said an early goodbye to the building’s cafeteria workers. Michelle Jay/Globe Staff

Mike Kramer, director of the food service division for UNITE HERE! Local 26, the union that represents the workers, said they asked FLIK to give the Globe workers preference for union jobs at Harvard and MIT. They also asked that medical benefits continue for six months after the cafeteria closes, and for a severance package for those who leave the company, amounting to one week’s pay for each year of service.

Ostensibly, the company said they’d give their final response next week, but Kramer said the initial response was negative and “pretty impersonal.”

FLIK’s district manager referred me to their labor relations manager, who didn’t get back to me.

By the way, the number of people asking to be accommodated is a whopping eight.

Boston Globe cafeteria workers were honored by journalists earlier this month.Michelle Jay/Globe Staff

For Tony Marcus, who has worked at the cafeteria for 20 years, and at the company that became FLIK for 43, the response has been more than impersonal.

“It’s insulting,” said Marcus. “All those years of service mean nothing.”

Marcus, as much cheerful ambassador as chef, is 69 and thinks he’ll retire.

“It’s the people behind me, too young to retire, that I worry about,” he said.

Marcus understands that businesses are in business to make money. But years of loyal service should count for something.

“And if it doesn’t,” he said, “they should take down those words.”

Those words, on the company’s website, include these: “Our old-fashioned commitment to creating and contributing to our community reaps spiritual and financial rewards for everyone.

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In a world where the pace is fast, interactions are often anonymous, and people are starved for a sense of community, more than ever we feel a responsibility to create opportunities for people to come together.”

The people who work in the Globe cafeteria fed us and our sense of community. They shouldn’t be starved going out the door.

If the big shots at FLIK read their own website, and believe only a fraction of it, there’s still time to do the right thing.

Otherwise, please lose the New Age corporate compassion-speak, because, as Tony Marcus put it, it’s insulting.

Boston Globe cafeteria workers .Michelle Jay/Globe Staff/Michelle Jay

Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at cullen@globe.com