There’s a guy in the office. He’s manager level. He’s single. His hobby is baking. Once every couple of weeks or so, he spends a weekend baking cakes. But he doesn’t eat all that cake himself. He brings them into the office. So, one day, you might be wandering through the pantry, and there you see two beautiful cakes, neatly made, neatly boxed, with a stack of paper plates, forks, and napkins nearby. Now, maybe you shouldn’t eat the cake every time. But what a nice gesture.
Right now, in the pantry, there’s a greasy, rumpled zip-lock plastic bag, with the remains of four, partially flattened muffins stuffed in the very bottom. It looks like someone has broken off pieces of one, maybe two of them. There’s a napkin on which someone has scribbled “Have a muffin!” On top of that napkin, is a shapless lump of three tablespoons of butter nestled in the remains of a butter stick wrapper with a steak knife stuck in it. Okay, you know what? This is your leftovers. Please don’t clean out your refrigerator by leaving old food in the pantry.
Another “wrong way to offer food to your coworkers and colleagues”:
When one of your co-workers is watching what they eat (for whatever reason) and they say “no thank you,” and they leave the break room, do not bring a serving (even a small serving) of cake, brownies, cookies, or whatever to their cubicle and ask if they are sure they don’t want just a taste. This is cruel, unnecessary, and liable to make them annoyed (angry) with you no matter whether they have to refuse (again) or they impulsively say yes, eat it and then regret their weakness. Just, please for the love of whatever you esteem, do them the honor of accepting their first “no thank you” and let it go at that. Any other action falls under the heading “wrong ways to offer food.”
Once I bought a box of imported chocolate-covered cherries which were on sale. When I got them home, I discovered why they were on sale: they had been around awhile and the insides had sort of withered down to gummy residue entrapping a raisin-like cherry. I was unwilling to toss them and their beautiful box, so I put them in our lunch room.
Damned if they weren’t all devoured within the hour, though!
At least he didn’t bring in big birthday cake on April 20 and, after everyone had a piece, announce that it was in celebration of Hitler’s birthday; like a former boss of mine did.
Well, I might do that (I might even do that at my current job - I’m really not in love with it), but I would be joking. Everyone knows it’s Stalin’s birthday that’s the big holiday.
It isn’t just break-room fare; this applies to any free food in a white-collar office.
My story:
Many years ago, we were under the gun at work to meet schedule. Management was feeling kind to those of us who had to work long hours, so they hit up the company funds for pizza around dinnertime. Once I went to collect the pies (the delivery person wasn’t allowed past the front door). I brought them into the conference room, collected my slices, then went to my desk next to the conference room and sent out the usual email that the pizzas were here.
Five minutes later, dang if the pizzas aren’t all eaten down to the boxes, and the boxes were no longer intact either.
I’m pretty sure if I brought in a bucket of slop, put a ladle in it and stuck a “Free Food” sign on it that it would be gone by the end of the day and someone would have asked for a recipe.
