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Thursday, June 20, 2019

Who Do You Gotta Know to Get a Snack Around Here?


There are lemon bars in the work lunchroom, leftovers from yesterday’s Birthday Celebration and Monthly Placation.

We’re a cared-for little group, those of us at Acme Grommets, Gravel and Industry (a world-wide Octopi).  In the fall, there are apples every Wednesday.  Once a month there are “treats”.  And almost quarterly someone from the mailroom runs up and down the halls shouting “There are leftovers in the breakroom!  Leftovers in the breakroom!” whereupon we lurch from our desks and stampede toward free food. 

You have to be fast.  Some of the departments here are frighteningly young but many are on the plump side.  Disturbed middle-aged desk monkeys such as myself use guile and experience to edge them out.  I find that cutting through the bathroom and throwing elbows when necessary to be a winning strategy.

Get away from that stale donut, you pup!

I’ve been working for an uncomfortably long time.  I’ve gone from electric typewriters and, so help me, carbon paper, to a docked laptop that I can take home with me, should the urge to work come over me whilst cooking dinner.  I’ve seen dress codes move from panty hose and enclosed-toed shoes to bare legs and flip flops.  I’ve seen numerous people changing their pants in the obliviousness of their open-doored offices. 

I once knew a woman who kept a tiny TV hidden at her desk and watched her “shows” during her lunch break in the bathroom. 

The bathroom.

I said all that to say this:  There are lemon bars in the lunchroom.  To my similarly experienced, randomly hungry coworkers, we will meet in the bathroom immediately. 

As in all things, get it while you can.

11 comments:

joeh said...

I'd throw an elbow or two for a lemon bar.

Sioux Roslawski said...

Pearl--When my fellow teachers and I get a whiff there is single, stale half-doughnut in the teachers' lounge, we all run.

Yep, sharp elbows (and feet that can trip others--don't forget that technique) are good things. If you trip some of the older, out-of-shape ones, they might be out for a couple of weeks, which lessens the competition a longer time frame...

jenny_o said...

Hypothetically, you could also slink past the break room on your way to the bathroom (that's technically a break, too), palm a treat, and eat it in the privacy of a stall. Desperate times call for desperate measures and all that :D

Can you believe I have the opposite problem at work? There are always treats, and I either can't or shouldn't eat 99% of them (can't, because food sensitivities, and shouldn't, because "plump" as you so generously put it). People keep telling me to help myself and I keep smiling through gritted teeth.

Pearl said...

joeh, even the boxed lemon bars. Seriously, you can't tell the difference.

Sioux - Teachers! They're the ones you have to watch for. ;-)

jenny_o, I loled, because I've been known to palm a treat! The bathroom, though... I tell ya, I'll write of it when I can think of a dignified way to do it. ha ha. There's this one stall, every single time...

Elephant's Child said...

Like jenny_o, the place where I 'work' is oversupplied with treats. Apples would be good though - until I got the first floury one.

Gigi said...

I remember the horror of carbon paper...which probably explains why the majority of my current co-workers look like teenagers...

Joanne Noragon said...

I see you're too young to recall those freaking stencils we typed for mimeograph machines, for the missives that required multiple copies. You know, back before copy machines. And then we had copy machines, and one well meaning engineer snatched me away, shouting Don't you know they use that light to sterilize chickens!
Oh, we were talking lemon bars!

Jono said...

Our bathrooms are right next to the lunch room. You all give me ideas for getting "my fair share" as there are four of the seven of us who are much to enormously bigger than me. I'm old and need to keep my strength up.

Jeff (Sage) said...

Things change... what to do with all those ties I used to wear? But I never had an office that featured lemon bars, so much I’ve missed out on.

Diane Tolley said...

Sadly I work at home so . . . No . . . Wait . . . ALL the treats are mine! All of them!!! Bwahahahaha!

Linda O'Connell said...

My boss used to do a pizza day for senior high school helpers who earned their service hours at our preK center. We teachers made a beeline to the kitchen and thoughtfully left a few pieces for the kids.