Employee number 53, Charlie Ayers was hired in 1999 to run the lunchroom at Google. Before that, he'd been catering for musicians (including the Grateful Dead) around San Francisco. By the time he left six years later, still a hippie at heart, he had a staff of 150 and was feeding 4,000 googlers a day at 10 locations. ("Well, wouldn't you know it, some people got fat.") more ›