Hmmm. I use my lactose intolerance to convert “free pizza” into “free pizza for everyone except Jonathan, who is getting chicken wings”.
That’s an excellent guess but I fail to see the relevance. I’ve worked in other offices here (Boston) and people were nuts about Indian and Thai. Even at my current job, another department gets Indian as their de facto gratis lunch. And the restaurants here are widely varied, from (real) Italian to (real) Chinese, from Brazilian to Afghani (yum!), from Ethiopian to Korean. About the only nationalities that you can’t get here are French (very rare and expensive) and German (only one place, and it’s far from authentic).
Also, I understand dietary restrictions. We had one doctor who was on Atkins, and we have one nurse who will only eat gratis food if it’s not connected to any birthday or holiday (she’s JW). That’s not the issue. Most people will eat any combination of carbs, meat, and vegetation. As long as those combos are not “weird” or spicy.
It gets really interesting when we go out of the office to eat. Last Fall we went to a world-famous Yankee restaurant (Durgin Park, for you locals) which featured all sorts of interesting traditional New England offerings, such as the exotic clam chowder and the very alien Yankee pot roast. It was rather amusing how many people ordered cheeseburgers.
No. No, they couldn’t. Because I’d be the only person eating it.
I once had to invoke an act of Congress to get artichoke hearts on half a pizza. And then I was expected to eat every slice.
That’s another thing – the pizzas wouldn’t be so bad if we got some more interesting toppings, and if the pies were actually quality pies. For some reason, we’ve glommed on to some of the worst pizzerias in town.
(Apologies to those of you who think Bertucci’s can actually make a good pizza. Yuck.)
HAHAHAHAHAHA! snork!
No.
Do not labor under the pretense that the birthday boy/girl has fuck-all to do with the celebration, other than being an excuse to have a party. In fact last Friday the birthday boy was in surgery until there was but one cold slice of cheese pizza left. It was clearly not for his benefit.
At least he got to cut his own cake.
Pepperidge Farm makes some, in the frozen food section. I think I’ve usually seen it by desserts or maybe the frozen bagels. It comes in a rectangular box, and says “Puff Pastry” right on the front.
Heck, I’d love to opt out of food days at work. I just hate the arm twisting that goes on. Yeah, some people really think you’re die of starvation if you don’t eat what is ordered.
Don’t even get me started on pot lucks…No one wants to ride public transit while carrying garbage for a stupid pot luck.
In my office, they do. My boss’s wife orders and delivers the pizzas to the office. Since my office includes Hindus (my boss) and Muslims, this means no beef and no pork. She hasn’t seemed to catch on to the concept that 5 or 6 pizzas in separate boxes means 5 or 6 opportunities to provide different toppings in discrete different packages that would not touch or contaminate anyone else’s food or offend them. (My boss is not at all troubled by seeing others eat beef. I’ve frequently had business lunches with him in steak houses; he just doesn’t order beef. Similarly, our Muslim coworker is not at all troubled when salesmen bring by assorted sandwiches for the crew and his co-workers are sitting next to him eating ham. As long as he is not served pork, he doesn’t care what the rest of us eat.)
Boss’s wife always 4 to 6 of the same style pizza ---- **Veggie plus pineapple. Dominos. Every pizza, every time.**T They’re frequently cold, too, since she picks them up and delivers them at a time that’s convenient for her, like 11:00 AM. Or mayber 2:00 PM, by which time everyone is starving and in a really foul temper, but we’ve been told not to go out to eat because the boss is providing lunch.
Since I always bring my own lunch, I have to struggle whether I should eat fatty, crappy pizza that I don’t really like in order to be a “team player” and not look like I’m disdainful of the boss’s offering, or eat the much healthier and tastier fresh fruit /cottage cheese / whole grain cereal lunch that I bring every day.
Hey, tdn–I have the cure for the bland pizza blues.
Go to your local Indian import store and pick up a box of chaat masala. When you get your slices of pizza, open up the chaat masala box and sprinkle the stuff liberally on the pizza. Then enjoy all the spicy, sour, intensely yummy goodness that results.
If everyone else wants to eat bland pizza, let them go right ahead. With a little chaat masala, however, you don’t have to choose between either: a) suffering in silence, or b) complaining about the menu.