An extremely mild Pitting of my unimaginative cow-orkers

The BBQ Pit
1

My cow-orkers are generally good people, but I’m getting sick of their culinary choices. If there is ever a birthday, graduation, arrival or departure, we throw a lunch party. Sometimes we pay for this ourselves, sometimes the department picks it up. But in all cases, we eat one food. We order from one restaurant, and what we get is what you eat.

In other words, I hope you like pizza. Because that’s all we ever order. Ever. And usually with the most boring toppings imaginable.

It’s the same story every fucking time. An e-mail goes out that says “We are having Lunch, Cake and Ice cream today for Suzie’s birthday that was on Monday (5/2/05). We will probably eat around 1. Please let me know what you guys want for lunch…pizza, Chinese, etc.???(we are paying for our own lunch)” (This was an actual e-mail, I just changed the name.) Ya know, don’t even bother fucking asking. You know we’re getting pizza. 2 cheese, 1 sausage, 1 chicken. We might as well have our order on speed dial.

Every time this comes up, I suggest Indian. Or Thai. Or even some other flavor of Italian. But do we ever get it? Fuck no! “I’ve never had it, but it sounds gross!” OK, maybe once per year we’ll take a walk on the wild side and get Chinese. Around here that’s known as “living dangerously.” Ooh, weird exotic food! What’s that? A boneless spare rib, you say? Gee, I feel so international! I might just join the UN! Or take a trip to, say, Newark! Naw, why press my luck? Better just get pizza next time. It’s a “safe” food.

I think these people would probably die of over excitement if they encountered an honest to goodness korma.

On retrospect, this Pitting is not only mild, but quite lame. Bland food will do that to a person.

2

Quit complaining, foodie!

Just kidding. I feel your pain. Any chance you can stop pitching in for these meals? Eating lame food on the company’s dime is one thing, being forced to repeatedly eat it on your own dime due to social pressures is another.

3

Sure, no one is forcing me to chip in. (I think this officially make a me a whiner.) In fact, I often don’t, because a man can only eat so much pizza before yelling “Give me a samosa or give me death!”, which is not considered appropriate office behavior. I just wish my cow-orkers would once in a while venture outside the bounds of the Very Familiar.

4

If one of my coworkers shouted this, I’d be thrilled. Just sayin’.
Daniel

5

I simultaneously feel your pain, and wish it were mine. You see, at the restaurant where I used to work, we’d order takeout for lunch every so often. And, much like your coworkers, mine were decidedly other than creative. So, every single time, we’d get one of two things: Chinese, which I hate, or Mexican, which I like when it is not made by the extra-shitty-crapalicious restaurant across the street, which of course it would be.

During these times, I would gladly give my kingdom for pizza, 2 cheese, 1 sausage, 1 chicken (all my favorites, too!). Better to be stuck with one boring food you’ll eat than two more interesting foods you won’t. But alack!, 'tis no longer my problem.

Best of luck, and a few words of advice: Personal Pan (with anchovies and black olives). :smiley:

6

after googling ‘samosa’
I did not know this food existed, but now I want it!

7

Perhaps you could organize the next one of these events yourself, thus taking the burden of finding a cuisine and an order that everyone but you can agree on away from the person who is obviously doing a woefully inadequate job. They’ve tried to do a lot of different things at the lunches here, but they always end up with a million people bitching. ‘Is their shrimp in that? I can’t eat shrimp!’ ‘Does this Chinese food have MSG?’ etc, etc. Personally, I don’t eat pizza as the calorie content on it is way higher than my enjoyment of it, so I’m the annoying hold out when they do order pizza, but it is the only thing they can order and get better than 75% agreement that it’s okay.

8

Cheaty samosa recipe:
-Fry up onions with lots of cayenne, ginger, cumin, garlic, and mustard seeds, and a hint of cinnamon.
-Peel and boil some potatoes.
-Mash the potatoes with the onions. Carefully mix in some frozen peas.
-Roll out squares of frozen thawed puff pastry and make turnovers.
-Bake at 400 F for 20 minutes.
-Num! (You can serve them with a sauce made from cider vinegar, brown sugar, and garlic for extra num points)

Daniel

9

Hmmm…in Minnesota, birthday celebrations, etc. are often potluck, so you can bring whatever the heck you want. Doesn’t mean that most of it won’t be as bland as heck (more bland than pizza, usually–this is the Midwest), but you are free to bring your favorite thing, and maybe someone else would try it. If not, well, more for you, right? If you have immigrant workers in your office, you can get some quite interesting foods.

10

I bitch, I moan, I complain, but now I’m dying for that pizza. “It’ll be here any minute” my ass. I’m starvin’, here!

What’s funny is that the person whose birthday it is is Indian.

Funny(?) story: At my last job, our office was in a swanky waterfront hotel. We were often called upon to work late hours and weekends. As small compensation, the company would provide gratis lunch or dinner. Indian, Thai, and Italian were common choices by the food organizer. Then one day a different organizer was chozen. He decided to something a little different. He got hotel staff to cater brunch for us. Man, it was swank! White tablecloths, real silverware, fancy preserves in tiny jars, fancy silver heat trays. It was sweet until management found out that he’d spent $600 to feed scrambled eggs and toast to 20 people.

11

Chozen? I must be hungry.

12

I feel your pain, really I do. Our team does something different - if it’s your birthday YOU bring treats or lunch for everyone else. Doesn’t make sense, but it is government and that’s the way it goes.

Most people bring doughnuts or bagels. Last year I brought Bailey’s poundcake and a caramel pecan cheesecake that had a bit of Jack Daniels in it. It technically wasn’t drinking on the job.

13

Funny, no one complains about pizza here. That’s because we have “Moose’s Tooth” pizza. A company started by two stoners who created gourmet pizzas due to the munchies. (well that’s the rumor anyway).

So, you’ve got spicy thai chicken pizza with bean sprouts. Sun dried tomato and wild mushroom with gouda and pesto…garlic treats, garlic sauce and mozzarella wrapped around jalapenos with some sort of yummy breadish wrap, even their plain old pepperoni pizza is amazing.

I think they have 40 different types of beer too. (Not that they drink that during the day at work or anything, well only on fridays :D).

14

I’m sorry to hear that, tdn. On the other hand, can somebody using that tired “cow-orker” joke call anybody else unimaginative? :smiley:

15

Black olives are dingleberries picked from Satan’s asshole. Three guesses as to where anchovies come from.

16

Disparage not thy bacon o’ the sea.

17

That sounds similar to Funky Pickle Pizza. Good stuff.

If I worked with you tdn I’d be asking for samosa’s too! Ugh, I can only eat so much pizza.

18

:smack:

Let’s make that clearer, shall we?

:smack: :smack: :smack:

I’m Indian. I use those stupid puff pastries to make pigs-in-blankets already. And yet it never never *never * occured to me to do this.

I owe you big, Daniel. BIG.

19

What makes me lose my appetite is the part about having to work with boring, unimaginative, risk-avoiding people such as those.

Gah! Office work sux!

20

I must say I can’t get behind your complaint here…

I work for the US branch of a Japanese company, so a whole bunch of my coworkers are Japanese, and another large segment are Indian. But just yesterday, we all had pizza.

Why? Because almost no one hates pizza. And most people kinda like it. I think the danger of boring a few people is a lot easier to live with than the risk of buying something that 2 or 3 people will actively dislike.
Pizza is also very easy to order for large numbers of people, whereas buying (say) chinese food for 25 people would probably involve picking 15 or 20 individual entrees, etc.