Office Snacks
Balter’s Essays of Mostly Acerbic Witticisms
Recently we hired a new senior executive who exclaimed, "golly gee, oh my," when she saw the bins of snacks in our office; she then grabbed fistfuls of bagged Doritos, Oreo two-packs, 100-calorie almond pouches and even a few condiment packs of 400-day old spicy brown mustard, and hustled them into her purse 'to save for later'.
She didn't last more than two months with us - but it wasn't because of the snacks we swear.
The office provides lunch, for free every Wednesday, a routine that attracts coworkers like ants laying down a roadmap of pheromones. A little before noon, they're already hovering near the kitchen, eyeballing trays of doordash-delivered rice and plainly-dressed-with-too-many-black-olives salad - plus some oily beef ends.
Soon enough there's a conga line of engineers and product managers, of number crunchers and sales gumps; one coworker can barely contain his appetite, setting his cardboard plate down in front of the first aluminum pan, resting his chin on the counter, and shoveling food in so fast he's breathing through his fork.
I don't know if you know that I know where there's a hidden drawer full of loose candy. Yep, it's in one of dozens of below-desk filing cabinets that sit empty and unused like sad R2D2s; this because no one files anything in paper format anymore. Except lawyers. They probably do. And maybe tax accountants, who tell me I need to save my returns for five years, which seems both absurd and somehow bad for trees.
All the more reason to fill the top drawer with Runts in the shape of bananas and oranges and apples, blazing with Yellow #5 (Tarzatrine to you, Chemist), Orange B, Red Dye #5 and some Citrus Red #2 thrown in for good measure.
You're so slick, you aim to fill your Owala FreeSip by putting a little post-it note over the touchless water dispenser sensor. Then you casually hang out, pretending you're Fonzie or Timothée Chalamet, because you've somehow saved yourself fourteen seconds of hand waving, or reduced possible inflammation from crooking your elbow.
And do you really have to foam or steam the 2% milk in the Jura countertop coffee maker while we all wait impatiently to get six ounces of free medium roast blend?
It's 11:22 AM and you're itching and wondering if someone on the team is going to slack saying they're placing a lunch order. Clearly this is near week's end, because your Sunday Ozempic jab dulled all of your cravings on Monday and Tuesday and part of Wednesday and only gave you light nausea on Thursday. By 11:45 AM you've practically molted and manifested a rash; you're overproducing hunger hormones ghrelin and leptin at such a rate that you're leaving beads of dew on the arm handles of your chair.
It's an offsite-that's-really-an-onsite day, which means you're all crammed into the biggest conference room you have, and order food for people who aren't there but might arrive, like Elijah during a Passover Seder. A tray of cookies is left for grazing, and you're watching your figure so you eat just a quarter of each, but do this no less than fifteen times, disregarding the basic principles of addition.
And just who in holy hell and Moses's nostril hair ordered grapes?
Oh and you-who-brings-in-your-lunch. Yeah, we know you cook dinner with your spouse, like some scene out of Ghost, except there are no ceramics or clay - just you two lovingly holding tongs together while flipping tumeric-coated chicken. Thanks for stuffing the fridge with those Ultimate Silicone Storage Bags because, well, hmph, you may be saving the environment, but also these make your carrots look the dingiest of blue.
Anyway, it's late in the day and almost time to go home, so on the way out you rummage in the snack bin for some of those mini Stroopwafel cookies and Veggie Straws that taste like hay, and someone put some Twix in there so you eat the left one first because it tastes better than the right one, and you look at the fruit bowl full of yesterday's tangerines and offer,
'nah, I don't need to eat anything right now, I'll just leave some room for dinner.'