The JWs say: ixnay on the birthday parties.
No, they do not celebrate birthdays. In my small office of 25 or so people, 5 of them are JWs, so I’ve become quite familiar with their ways. Four of them are the nicest, most polite people I know (the other one not so much), so I’m glad to work with them. I was discussing the birthday thing the other day with one of them, and she said they don’t celebrate birthdays because they think it’s what people do with their life that’s important, not just being born, which is no big deal. My discussions with her on the one day a week that I work directly with her all day can become very interesting, what with me being atheist and her a JW.
They don’t celebrate Christmas, as everyone knows, but some families have a tradition of having a “family gift day” once a year where they can celebrate being together and exchange presents. The one JW in my office that eats (A LOT) of what others bring yet will never bring anything herself picked December 25 as her “family gift day”. :dubious:
What the hell. We should just drop by to tear out his colon and nail it to a Jehovah’s Witness.
(Stolen from a Sampiro post and is now my favorite threat. Can’t find the post again but it’s well worth the read.)
Send me his email and/or phone number. As I know nothing about his alleged niceness I’d enjoy chewing him out for stealing from an admin assistant.
"Dear Sir,
You don’t know me, but it has come to my attention that you are an asshat…"
Hmm, maybe somebody should organize an SDMB Confrontation Exchange.
I used to keep a candy dish on my desk (several jobs ago). A lot of the candy would mysteriously disappear when I was at lunch. My coworkers got suspicious and kept tabs on the candy dish when I was gone–it turns out, it was the assistant director, who’s richer than God and didn’t even need to have a job anyway. He’d come in and take big handfuls of candy when I wasn’t there (he never did it when I was in the office). He did bring us candy one time. Half a bag. :mad: He could have easily bought all the candy in Costco and it would have just been pocket change for him. Bastard. Half a bag of Snickers–that’s worth about $1.50. Gee, thanks.
One of my coworkers was missing a soy yogurt one day. She snooped around in other people’s trash cans to find the culprit–it turned out to be the director. Another person who could well afford to buy their own damn food, but they had to steal food from people who could barely afford to buy lunch.
More candy jar stories…I had to quit bringing in lollipops because my boss was just too digusting. She’d park a lollipop in her mouth and start sucking and slurping and crunching with her mouth open, and talk and drool with her mouth full of lollipop, until it was all gone. Then she left the sticky lollipop stick in the copy room.
Then there was the Jelly Belly fiasco. I still to this day have no idea how she managed to do this, but she brought in a huge bag of Jelly Bellies that were so nasty, people wouldn’t even eat them. She only got three flavors. One was supposed to be berry flavored, but it tasted more like blue soap. The others weren’t quite so bad, but still not very tasty. The earwax flavor probably tastes better. Well, at least she tried.
As the fellow said: “To get rich, it helps to be smart and lucky. To stay rich, it helps to be stingy and selfish.”
Most candy hogs are shameless - you could tell them to their face that it’s rude to eat all of the good candy and they won’t believe you mean them. If you tell them you specifically mean them, they’ll figure you’re the only one who thinks it’s a problem. If everyone in the office signs a petition saying “Hey, asswipe, we all think you are eating too much candy” they’ll figure it’s just a joke. They’ll think anything as long as it doesn’t involve them having to stop eating candy.
I used to bring jelly bellies in to work and keep a jar on my desk. One guy would literally scoop them up by the handful and pour them into his mouth as fast as he could chew them down. I asked him what was the point of eating them when he couldn’t even taste what flavor they were. He said he liked them because they were sweet. I told them I’d bring him in bag of sugar and a spoon and he could stop eating five dollar a pound jelly bellies. He just chuckled and walked away. I stopped bringing in jelly bellies and only brought in hard candies in wrappers. I figured he’d either have to learn to slow down or he’d choke to death.
I used to work in an office that had one small fridge that we all shared. I would typically keep a couple cans of coke in it, up to a six pack, depending on its capacity. Only 3 of us girls used it and we went out for lunch so it pretty much was our drink holder.
Asswipe, who was the accountant, who was as nasty as the day is long, bitchy, bitchy guy, who you couldn’t ask anything of without him getting his panties in a wad, would, without fail, come in to our room, open our fridge and take one of my cokes. Even if it was the last one. He also helped himself to my CCJ, very frequently. It was such an affront to me because he never brought himself any drinks, knew they weren’t his, knew he wasn’t allocating funds for it and yet would help himself without asking.
So I bought one of those tiny little fridges, put it UNDER my desk and kept my drinks there. I also moved the CCJ to my desk drawer. Fucker never had the nerve to ask me for a drink, but did have to ask to open the drawer. It was funny to watch him right after I got the little fridge to go checking the main fridge for drinks and there not being any. It was also funny to watch him HAVE to be nice to me to get to the candy.
I’d suggest to your very benevolent co-worker that she place the candy jar just far enough out of the general publics reach that for those in the know, they could reach, but for asswipes, they would have to ask. Or her stash it in such a place that she could get to it to dole out the favorites as needed. (Oh, Susie has had a bad day, she needs TWO lollipops AND a tootsie roll to get through the day. Mean John was rude about getting his messages, he only gets one Now or Later)
Our asswipe never contributed shit, but was always first belly to the table if anyone ever brought anything in.
I’d like to report that after reading this thread I ran across the street to the 24-hour CVS and picked up A big bag of candy, and a ton of M&M’s to refill our community M&M dispenser. Am I a CCJ pig? No, not really. But I did a quick tally in my head of the times I’ve dabbled in the CCJ, and the amount I’ve donated in the past 2 years and I came back in the negative big time. I shall strive to make myself better.
Like I said, I don’t think I abuse the system, but thanks guys for giving me a little tug on the shoulder as a reminder.
There’s really no excuse for that kind of behaviour, especially when you know he can afford to contribute to the CCJ or at least put something in there himself. If he’s said before that he needs to go to Costco to buy stuff for it, maybe Ellen should let the jar get emptied and then stick a notice on it saying that she’s waiting for the promised bag of goodies from Steve?
We don’t have a CCJ in our office although I do have a semi-communal fruit bowl. I always have a lot of fruit around and I’m quite happy for other people to help me eat it!
I work in a small office, currently there are only eight of us here and not all are full-time. We bring in sweets and stuff when we’ve been on holiday, and sometimes we have cookies or cakes just because. I recently tried out a bunch of recipes from a new cookbook I’d got, but I don’t want that quantity of cake myself so the obvious thing is to bring it in for the rest of the office to share. I don’t think I’ve poisoned anyone yet though.
Things like that are usually locked away overnight though, otherwise they’d disappear with the cleaners in the morning.
I keep a CCJ on my desk filled with Jolly Ranchers and such. The guys raid it regularly and all offer solomn promises to fill later. One guy will occasionally bring in a small back of Jolly Ranchers. One guy keeps saying: I’m going to the store at lunch, I’ll pick some up. Then he doesn’t.
I don’t care too much. I don’t eat them, but if I was concerned I’d stop buying them.
The ones that piss me off (Bossman I’m looking at you!) are the ones that eat the food that I buy just for me. That stuff is in my desk drawers and you have to search it out. The low-carb snack bar to help me loose weight. Those aren’t cheap and if I wanted you to have them I would put them out for people.
Just tell him to stop it. Don’t let him have any of the candy. Yes, it’s harsh but so what? If he doesn’t get it now, he won’t get it after it’s explained. Instead of wringing your hands over this and punishing everyone in the office, just take care of the problem. Stand firm. You’ll be proud you did.
One small victory for the SDMB and it wasn’t even an attempt to fight ignorance, just a good bitch session. Hooray!
Jim
Years back, in a job overseas, I brought a Big Bowl of Candy for my birthday, as is customary in Spain. It was quite the social experiment.
Some people asked “what are we celebrating?”
Some said “may I?” and “thank you.”
Some just grabbed.
Some looked at the Skittles like they’d jump on them and start chewing their noses off; when I said “you can have some, it’s up there because it’s for everybody” (my desk was behind one of those low partitions with a shelf on top), some would light up and say “oh nice, thanks!” but others would sort of giggle nervously and claim they couldn’t (the one that really got to me definitely wasn’t on any sort of diet, every morning she came in munching one donut on each hand).
Some came back the next day and said “hey, where’s the candy?”
“The candy’s coming back next year or when YOU bring some for YOUR birthday!”
The primary CCJ pig in our office is a doctor. (The backup CCJ pig is also a doctor, but so nice no one minds if he eats a handful of candy). Anyway, the faculty secretary, who fears nothing, called him on it one day in front of everyone. She made it a point to mention how he made far more money than any of the contributors, and how he is always first in line for free eats but never brings anything in. He just giggled and shrugged…and hasn’t changed his ways a bit.
The lady in our office who maintains the CCJ usually brings in so much she has to put a bowl on my desk as well. That results in a lot of people thinking I’m nicer than I actually am, and for a while there, resulted in my becoming a CCJ pig as well. I did buy a few bags of candy, but being a cheapskate, waited till a few days after Valentine’s and bought it on sale. Anyway, I eventually decided that I really have no interest in spending any money on candy, so I have sworn off dipping in the CCJ whatsoever.
Why is it always the Managers and rich shits who do this? I reckon that’s how they become managers and rich shits, by being selfish, greedy bastards. It’s a vicious circle. The very worst people end up in management, simply because they are so overbearing and awful to others, it seems.
It isn’t always them, believe me. Where I worked, warehouse slobs were just as bad as anyone else. This all reminds me of the scene from The Office, when Angela took some Skittles, played with them while waiting for Dwight, and then put them back on the counter in front of Pam with, “Here. I don’t want these.”
I used to keep a CCJ until about 5 months ago, although there are still a few dregs in it. Around that time I was thoroughly fed up with the company and I noticed that the person who ate the most was also the one who was the most difficult to deal with – excuse me, bitchiest – when we couldn’t tackle her priority one job because we had others lined up. I still keep a stash in my desk drawer and our owner, a very nice gentleman, will occaisionally stop by and ask what I’ve got. During the two years I kept it full, no one contributed anything, although every so often someone would say they really should.
The worst incident inspired a Pit thread. Two years ago this weekend, I wrecked my knee rather badly and was on crutches for 7 weeks. During that time, I was supposed to stay off my feet as much as possible and friends insisted that they go with me to do my grocery shopping so I wouldn’t have to juggle grocery bags and crutches. Since I was trying to impose on them as little as possible, I didn’t stock the CCJ and it wound up completely empty. A coworker had the temerity to complain about this!
Not quite the same thing, but my mom works in a very large real estate office (not as an agent). For a few years when I was in high school, we were very broke. All of the money went to living expenses, with nothing left over for non-essentials. To make a little extra scratch, Mom and I would make big batches of cookies and she (with permission) would set them up in the office break room to sell. Basically, there’d be a big platter of cookies with a sign denoting the price and a jar to put the money in.
Mom is very well-liked in the office and most agents were honest in paying for the cookies. Naturally, it was the owners who would steal them. She busted one of them on two separate occasions and he’d always promise to pay later, but never did. Oh well. We made enough to make it worthwhile even if there were some assholes who’d take advantage.