Friday, February 12, 2010

Lunch, Interrupted

I work in your standard office environment. Which means I live in a fishbowl for 40+ hours of the week. Everytime you sneeze, every time you say "I love you" to someone on the phone, every time you try and eek out one of those silent-but-deadlies...everyone in the office is aware of it. You can't get away with anything in this place.

Especially if you are trying to eat.

Like a lot of people, though I hate despise loathe lose a little bit of my soul every time I clock in at my job, I for some reason am very dedicated to it. Which translates into a good 4 out of 5 lunches every week which are spent eating a microwaved meal at my desk, still hudled over my keyboard trying desperately to reduce my email inbox down to a double-digit number instead of doing the healthy thing and leaving the office behind for 30 minutes while I venture out into the real world.

So because you are sitting at your desk, even though you have food in front of you, people feel free to walk in and talk to you about their little ridiculous emergencies that could have been avoided with better planning and forethought work while you are eating. And more often than not, they feel the need to comment on your lunch selection.

Here are a few of my favorite things that have actually been said to me while eating lunch in my office:

"Oh, that looks good! What's that?"
Every time someone asks me "What's that?" while I'm eating, I really have to fight the urge to keep my smart-assery at bay. Here is why: never ONCE have I brought something so exotic and so unrecognizable for lunch that your average cubicle-monkey really and truly might not be able to identify it. If you walk into my office, and I am eating somethign that looks like wavy sheets of pasta layered with red tomato sauce sitting in a plastic microwaveable tray...chances are, it is lasagna. If you come in, and it looks like a bunch of lettuce, carrots, mushrooms, tomatoes, and cucumbers all decided to get in a bowl and have a big ole' party together, chances are I'm eating what we grown ups call a "salad". Seriously. If you can't identify a slice of leftover pizza by now, I'm worried for your skills of observation. You will probably be eaten by a bear at some point in your life because you were too stupid to realize the "lovely park" you just wandered in was the Grizzly Exhibit at your local zoo. Don't ask me "What's that" unless it looks like I'm eating Scorpion Shishkabobs with Bird Poo dipping sauce. (And even then...who wouldn't be able to identify a scorpion when they see one?!?!)


"Oh, you don't want that orange. Here, take this crate of tangerines my brother flew in for me."
Don't tell me what I DO and DO NOT want to eat, mmmkay? I brought this orange for lunch today because I in fact DO want to eat it. Please trust me when I say that I was not sitting at my desk, peeling my oh-so-sweet, juicy, and delicious orange but really thinking on the inside, "Gee, I wish some obnoxious Buttinski would waltz into my office, degrade my citrus selection for the day, and then drop 18 lbs. of unwanted produce in my lap." No one has ever formulated that thought. Ever. So keep your supposed-superior produce to yourself! And when you have to take a week off of work because you caught Salmonella poisoning from your Mexican fruit, I'll be laughing my butt off because the organic and locally grown orange I ate last week provided me with enough Vitamin C to Kung-Fu Chop your Salmonella butt right in your stupid looking face, okay?

"Oh wow, that cookie looks sooooooo good. I wish I didn't care about what I put in my body."
Hey you Skinny Freak who has had 6 children and still fits in a size 4 pair of jeans!!!!! I know I'm draggin' a big wagon, mkay? I don't need you passively-agressively pointing it out to me while I'm trying to take in one simple joy like a stinkin' cookie!!!! Back off, go pop out another kid, and mind your own business. Freak!

"Oh hey, do you mind if I have some of that? I haven't had anything to eat yet today because I was running late this morning and didn't have time to pack a lunch thanks to my husband who had lost my keys last night and my sick cat who needed an insulin shot this morning really tied me up time-wise and then I forgot we had that big meeting today so I had to go change out of my khakis and sweater and into a Power Suit but my pantyhose got a run in them so I had to drive to the local drugstore and see if they had any but they only had X-Small and X-Large sizes, and no medium, so I called my sister to see if she could loan me blah blah blah blah blah blah blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah."
By this point in the unwanted conversation, one of two things is about to take place...
1) I will have already shoveled ALL of the food that she was asking to share into my own mouth because I'm a chubby girl, and we don't take kindly to people asking us to share food. You have better odds of me giving you a kidney than you do of me giving you half of my sandwich.
OR
2) I will rip off my own arm and beat myself senseless with it until I pass out face down on my keyboard just so I don't have to listen to anymore of your stories about your husband, your cat, your sister, or your pantyhose.

Anyone else deal with these lunch intruders at work? Seriously, I enjoy my food in silence and shame, like the rest of Chubby America. No one here needs your running commentary about the history of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Cellulite and Tell You Right,
Andy

2 comments:

  1. Andy, do you watch Friends? "JOEY DOESN'T SHARE FOOD!!!"

    ReplyDelete
  2. LMAO that I am crying right now...yes crying!!

    ReplyDelete