...Or Hardly Working Rewind: Who ate my lunch?

Just the other day was proof to me that karma does exist. Wow, well it was my lunch time and I was as hungry as a North Korean detainee. I was thinking about my frozen dinner something serious. The noodles, the juicy white chicken, the cheese sauce, mmmmm that Stouffers. I walked into the lounge with a huge smile on my face that was interrupted by a familiar smell in the air. It was a fresh smell from the microwave. My first thought was that someone bought the same frozen meal from home that I did. Well until I looked in the freezer and saw that my box, that had my name in permanent black marker, was gone from the place I left it. I moved everything around in the freezer and still didn't see it. Wow, I couldn't believe that I was possibly smelling my own meal in the air.

I looked in the garbage and saw a paper towel on top. I moved the paper towel and there it was... an empty box with my name on it. I'm not the type to become angry so quickly, but I was irate. How could someone steal my meal? It was a day before payday, so I didn't have the extra funds to replace it (well I did, but it was the principle). I walked back to my office area dejected, disappointed and distraught. I was waiting for someone to ask what was wrong with me. And once my supervisor asked, I went ballistic.

"How the **** could someone eat a lunch with my name on it," I screamed. "Who would do some **** like that? I smelled my lunch lingering in the air!"

I was on fire. I sent out an email to everybody on the floor. I wanted the world to know that someone stole my lunch. I just didn't think that I'd get 20 replies full of stories about other people having their items stolen. One person found their carton of milk full of water by the time they got to it. People were stopping by my office, telling me more stories, and vowing that they'd find the serial lunch snatcher.

About an hour later, I was standing in the lounge with a colleague when she saw a woman walk in and throw away a black microwavable bowl. She asked the woman what it was and the look on her face became suspicious. So I walked over to the trash can and saw the bowl with minor evidence of my meal in it.

"It was YOU," I said. "You ate my lunch didn't you?"

"No, I didn't eat your lunch," she said. "I found this bowl on the floor in the hallway so I picked it up and brought it in here."

"Really, on the floor," I asked. "Where on the floor was it? People were looking everywhere. You ate my lunch. And wait, is that alcohol I smell on your breath? Don't tell me you ate my lunch so you could buy a few drinks at the bar."

"I didn't eat your lunch," she said with a cracked voice. She walked away while I stood there shaking my head. Damn, my colleagues won't believe this when I tell them, I thought. Do you?

OHW Rewind: Has your lunch ever embarrassed you?

Have you ever brought food to work or school that you could not bring yourself to eat in front of your co-workers or classmates? Maybe it was tuna and you didn't want to hear complaints about the smell. Or even peanut butter and jelly?
Today I brought Chicken in a Biskit crackers and chicken Vienna Sausages. I was only working half a day, and didn't need anything too heavy. So, when I saw the crackers and sausages in the pantry this morning, while deciding what to take to munch on, I snatched them up!
However, once I got to work, I realized what a horrible mistake I had made. Here I am making a very good salary, trying not to stand out as the only "colored" person in the office (that's another story!) and I find myself about to chow down on potted meat (in phallic form) and crackers! What does that say about me? Does it reveal my impoverished upbringing? I mean, what will people say? And the smell? well, you know what vienna sausages smell like, don't you? (They kind of smell like spam flavored hot dog water.)
Anyway, I blatantly placed the box of crackers on my desk. The sausages... Well, they're in my purse. I have them securely wedged between my wallet, and a bottle of water. I use a fork to dip down into my purse when nobody's looking, and quickly snatch up a yummy piece of pressed meat .

I bet my co-worker is wondering why I keep dipping down under my desk. And he's probably wondering about the smell...

OHW Rewind -- Break Hustlers: Smokers

photo via Anti-pimp

Look, I understand that you have an addiction. Me, I’m addicted to push-pins. Right now, I have a push-pin of Africa, including Madagascar on my cubicle wall. So yes, I understand addiction. However, my addiction doesn’t allow me anywhere between 2 – 4 extra breaks at my job.

I thought that I was hardly working until I peeped what our office smokers were getting away with. “I have to go smoke a bud,” they’d say. “I’m stressed out, I’ll be right back,” they’d say. No matter the excuse, they are briskly headed for the exits and no one could be the wiser.

Except for me, the non-smoker. It’s not like they Febreeze themselves before coming back. You can smell the nicotine from 10 cubicle aisles away, not to mention the hot breath they acquired while eating an onion bagel just 20 minutes before. I just don’t understand how these people can get away with extra breaks, yet would monitor me if I so happen to come back 10 minutes late from lunch.

I don’t have any tips to stop the ‘Break Hustlers’ from doing their business. I’ll just be damned if every day their smoke breaks equal up to an extra hour of free time and I am not getting mine. When I walk back into the office with lunch from Popeye’s and you know that it takes 20 minutes each way to get there, not including the time it takes to get my car out of the lot, you’ll then realize who the true guru of hardly working is… smoke that!