Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Death to Food Day

It’s rapidly becoming one of the most dreaded office events in America, right alongside school band candy sales and sexual harassment awareness training. It takes up our free time. It smells up the building and destroys diets. It aggravates a huge number of people, yet no one ever wants to be the one to stand up and put a stop to it.

Yes, it’s the Office Food Day. Now, I am not referring to the bagels brought in by a grateful client or the cake brought in for birthdays. Office Food Day is way more complicated than that. Near as I can tell, Office Food Day originated in the early 80’s, when potluck dinners were all the rage. More wives and mothers were transitioning to the workplace, and in order to ease that transition, brought the concept of bringing covered dishes and baked goods away from the block party and into the office. I mean, look at the days portrayed in the TV show “Mad Men.” Back in the 50’s and 60’s, you didn’t see men in suits and unmarried secretaries saying “Hey, it’s Barb’s last day. Let’s all bring in baked beans and taco dip to see her off.” That kind of thing was reserved strictly for family gatherings like birthday parties and graduations.

As time went on and more women went back to work in the 70’s and 80’s, the habit of potluck hit offices full steam. The smallest occasion was cause for one of these events, whether they were in back rooms of bank branches or the lunch rooms of corporate offices. And I get it, I really do. It was what women of this time knew, so it’s what they brought with them. I don’t blame them for hauling the crock pot into work in order to share their secret family recipe or taking up precious office fridge space for homemade pasta salad. What I don’t understand is how and why this tradition has been able to continue through the 90’s and the millennium. But in order to analyze this more closely, we need to take a closer look at the modern Office Food Day. There are several fundamentals that Office Food Days have in common.

1. The Organizer – This is almost always a woman in her mid to late 40’s or early 50’s. She is usually an administrative person (management having no time for this sort of thing) and is generally someone who stayed home with her kids until they went to school. Said kids are often out of the house and on their own, or at the very least coming to the end of their high school careers. This explains The Organizer’s conditioned need to plan some sort of event, and the free time to do so.

2. The Event – Pretty much anything will do if The Organizer sets her mind to it. Someone’s last day, a promotion, a merger, a Wednesday..Any event, or no event, can be turned into an Office Food Day.

3. The Contributors – These are the people who are drinking The Organizer’s Kool Aid. They will assemble a dish and be absolutely elated at trying everyone else’s recipes. Contributors are generally in the same age bracket and demographic as the Organizer, but lack the initiative to start a Food Day themselves. You have to keep an eye on Contributors as they have the potential to turn into Organizers.

4. The Followers – The 20 and 30 somethings who don’t get what all the fuss is about. Followers are thoroughly annoyed by the whole thing, but don’t let anyone except fellow Followers onto that fact. Followers will pick up a giant cookie from the grocery store or volunteer to bring in plates and disappear 20 minutes into the event, choosing instead to update their Facebook statuses or read People.com at their desks.

5. The Location – This depends on the type of office in question. Preferably, Office Food Day takes place in a lunchroom. This is a problem, because anyone choosing not to participate must then adjust their schedules so as not to need coffee or the microwave during the event. However, the alternative is to reserve a conference room for the event (if available). This is even worse, particularly for anyone who needs the conference room in the near future, as Food Day causes a range of aromas that circulate through the entire floor, yet are most concentrated at the point of origin. Also, someone must be in charge of cleaning up after Food Day, as office cleaning staff is generally incapable of doing anything more labor intensive than vacuuming the carpets and taking out the trash. And for some reason, The Organizer suddenly becomes swamped with work as soon as the event is over, rendering her incapable of handling cleanup.

6. The Sign Up Sheet - This begins circulating a week or so before the event. The point is to ensure that you do not have four taco dips and no chips. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. There are pros and cons to the sign up sheet. Pro, ideally it guarantees a variety of fascinating dishes for everyone to share. Con, you are committed to making/bringing whatever it is that you indicate on the sign up sheet. Heaven help you if you sign up to make brownies and end up bringing chip dip. There is no flexibility with the sign up sheet, so one must think hard and choose wisely when committing to a dish.

Once these components are present, you have the makings of your traditional Office Food Day. The day begins with the influx of crock pots, Pyrex dishes in insulated carrying cases, and Tupperware. Setup begins for The Organizer around 11, who has been excused for lunch an hour early. This is also when the complex intermingling smells start coming from The Location. Usually it’s a mix of Mexican from the always present taco dip and some type of salad dressing that was spilled during the preparation. The smell that permeates throughout the office will linger for the rest of the week.

Office Food Day begins at noon. The crowds filter in and the spread is examined. Now comes the challenging task of making a meal out of salads, dips, and desserts. Nothing present is ever even remotely healthy. The closest that might pass as healthy food is a veggie tray, the freshness of which is questionable and is always accompanied by a ranch dip concoction. Chances are, the only edible food is the least healthy and will leave staff groggy and in a food coma for the rest of the day. The Organizer and Contributors will sit together and talk about their recipes and tell everyone how wonderful everyone’s food is, regardless of whether or not they actually like it. The Followers will mingle briefly before disappearing back to their offices or ditching Food Day for the Winking Lizard.

So why, you might ask, is Office Food Day so annoying? Well, I can only speak for myself. I probably fall into the Follower category. That being the case, you might wonder why. The first thing that bothers me about Food Day is that I don’t cook. I can, but I don’t like to. If it’s my night to make dinner, my family is getting Shake n Bake chicken and baked potatoes. So having to actually prepare something for Food Day is torture. Going along with this is the fact that it takes up time. When I get home from work at night, my time is mine and my family’s. I do not want to have to use precious quality time making food to be enjoyed by a lot of people I only halfway like. If I am going to spend a tremendous amount of time cooking, I want it to be for my closest friends and family. And my fellow Followers pretty much feel that same way. Food Day takes up time at work as well. I would much rather take a shorter lunch, or work through lunch altogether, and call it a day earlier. Food Day turns a standard lunch into an event lasting several hours, and that is aggravating as well.

Food Day is also a pain because of the food itself. Quite frankly, most of it is nasty. A good lunch for me is light and healthy and keeps me full until dinner. It is NOT empty calories, high carb and responsible for sending me into a food coma. You can call me a picky eater, but I would much rather have my standard turkey sandwich and pretzels over any of the standard Food Day dishes. For anyone who is watching their weight or just doesn’t care for junk food, Food Day is nothing less than sabotage.

Finally, Food Day disrupts a routine. I don’t like to be distracted at work. I like to get in, do my job, and leave. I don’t really consider myself to be antisocial, but I really believe that work is for work and that is all there is too it. My job does not define me, so I like to get through it as quickly and seamlessly as possibly every day. And as anyone who has ever attended Office Food Day will tell you, everyone is essentially useless afterwards.

So why not just not participate? If it bothers me so much, why do I still go? Well, it becomes a case of not wanting to be the only one against it. Also, being seen as being against Food Day can be seen as being against The Organizer and The Contributors. And you have to feel bad for them if they are so excited by something like this. It’s the high point of their day, of their week, of their month. Food Day Organizers and Contributors usually don’t feel needed outside of work, so allowing them to plan these types of events makes them feel a sense of purpose. Nobody really wants to feel responsible for taking this away from them.

The only answer then, it seems, is to just suck it up and deal with it. Eventually, the Food Day fans will retire. The newer generation of office employees is far more likely to be composed of Followers than Contributors and Organizers. It will only be a matter of time until Office Food Day is a thing of the past. No longer will we be subjected to Crock Pots and bad dip and crackers and cole slaw. At least we can hope……

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Youtube, Christmas, and Me

There are a lot of people that tell me that I am a nostalgic person. I don't necessarily see it. And I don't see myself as someone who necessarily wanted to hold on to her childhood. I was always eager to grow up. Its one of my fatal flaws actually. I tend to focus on the destination a lot more than the journey itself. I spent grade school planning for high school, high school planning for college, college planning for life... I sadly was never much of one for living in the moment and appreciating it.

I've slowed myself down some and I find, especially at certain times of the year, reflecting more and more on the past. I find myself thinking about grade school art projects and how completely inept I was at them. I can remember, on a cold evening like yesterday, the smell and feel of the cold coming through the window in my fifth grade classroom. Despite the fact that we have a tree filled with ornaments from my grown up travels and our grown up moments together, I refuse to let Bill throw away the box of old, falling apart Christmas tree ornaments that were on my childhood Christmas tree. I shy away from church at St. Hilary's, which prides itself on a vibrant, modern Catholic service, in favor of St. Sebastian's, an older church that still uses the hymns that I learned in the first grade.

But my most sentimental moments come from holiday specials. And thanks to Youtube, I get to relive some of the most simple yet most important memories of high school. There is not a single holiday special from the 70's and 80's that cannot be found on Youtube if you look hard enough. I know that by watching them I am probably contributing to delinquency in some way. I mean, you are not supposed to publish copyrighted material, and I am pretty sure that Frosty the Snowman and the Grinch fall into that category. I have gone so far as to make myself a holiday playlist of every special I can find, even the more hard to find shows, like Yogi's First Christmas and Twas the Night Before Christmas. (Remember the victorian mouse that destroyed the clock?) Everyone stop to watch Rudolph if they happen to catch it on TV. But I am positively obsessed with these. I actually listen to them during the day at work!

What is it that makes these holiday classics so special to me? I can't really explain it. Maybe its how when we were growing up, and you didn't have a DVR to record Charlie Brown while you watched Family Ties. The evening stopped, and you dropped whatever you were doing to watch Charlie Brown direct the Christmas play. It was a really big deal! We made popcorn and a fire in the fireplace, and every year were sure never to miss a single special. Maybe it reminds me of a simpler time, when my biggest concern was one of those pop quizzes that we used to have in Reading or whether or not I was getting a grip on long division. Maybe it wasn't just that my life was simpler, but that the world was simpler as well. Not that I don't love the conveniences of today, but I never tore the house apart looking for our telephone (it was on the wall in the kitchen) or my iPod (the music player was the size of a mini fridge and you couldn't miss it.)

If my obsession with holiday tv makes me nostalgic, then I guess I am. I can't definitively explain why I watch these shows over and over again. I just know that they are still as much a part of holidays today as they were twenty years ago. And I think they still will be in twenty more years. Thanks to Youtube, I can listen to my holiday favorites any time I want, whether I am analyzing a portfolio (can't work without background noise you know!) , working on my book, or knitting in front of the Christmas tree. I can indulge my holiday craving for Muppets singing around the fireplace whenever I want. And I can remember the Christmases of days gone by, of the safety and security of childhood, and the carefree feeling of being a kid.

The Island in the Kitchen

It doesn’t look like much at first. In fact, when you walk through the door, it’s probably not the first thing you notice. You probably notice the red wall and the sweeping staircase. Maybe it’s the beautifully coordinated décor. Maybe it’s the smells. The faint scent of cigarette smoke sneaking in from the patio. Or the something delicious that is always cooking in the kitchen. Maybe you notice the sounds. The television in the living room, probably tuned in to whatever sport is in season. Maybe the sound of the oven timer or the microwave. Most likely, the sound that you notice is the chatter and laughter. It’s coming from the middle of the kitchen. It really doesn’t look like much. The island in the kitchen is rectangular and made of wood. Cabinets and drawers fill the side closest to the sink, creating storage space for Tupperware, pots, and serving utensils. A row of three bar stools made of brown wicker lines the other side. It’s a pretty decent size, maybe three feet by four feet. The Formica counter top is a grayish blue, and usually covered with serving dishes and fantastic food. There’s probably a bottle of wine, some vodka, or mixers of some sort. But other than the convenience of the island providing storage and counter space, the island serves a purpose. A very important purpose. The island is where we sit. Well, maybe we are leaning against it. Or standing next to it. But us ladies are always around it. We’re laughing and gossiping. We’re catching up and winding down. We’re drinking wine and nibbling on cheese and crackers. Sometimes we’re yelling and sometimes we’re crying. We’re looking at pictures and telling stories. I’m not sure how it started. Maybe it started one Sunday, when I walked into the kitchen carrying a bottle of wine. (Stupid Bitch? Skinny Bitch? Royal Bitch? It was something-Bitch…). I set it firmly down on the counter and announced, “Let’s drink.” It could have been one Easter, when a particular uncle decided that a particular 14-year old cousin needed to try Crown Royal. How it started, though, maybe isn’t really that important. What is important is what happened around that island. I’m not saying that we weren’t close. We had never really gotten the opportunity to be close. We were all family by blood or by marriage. But none of us really knew each other that well. And around the island in the kitchen, that all changed. We pulled together. We had to. Nobody was going to survive otherwise. That’s what’s so great about the island. It’s wonderful when we are sitting there laughing at ourselves. It’s fun to share our stories. But it’s necessary in order for us to survive our heartbreaks. You see, the island is where we miss those that we have lost. And those that have decided to lose us. Around the island in the kitchen, we started a new family where our old one left off. I’m not saying you can replace a son, a nephew, a brother. But you can’t ever underestimate the power of a group of women. Particularly after a few vodka gimlets. I’m not sure if we were trying to distract each other intentionally or if some type of natural instinct took over, but being together around that island helps us deal. Being together around the island in the kitchen, we are almost able to forgive. And for a few hours we forget. We change the subject and talk about which Clinic doctors are great and which ones are assholes. We can vent about the idiot neighbor and how men leave their socks everywhere. The medically inclined can share stories of the emergency room. The slightly older generation can share stories about when they were our age. It doesn’t look like much. It’s probably not the first thing you notice. But that island..the island in the kitchen, means a lot. It’s safe. It’s a sanctuary. The island in the kitchen sees laughter and it sees tears. It sees women having fun and women working through their heartbreaks. It really doesn’t look like much. Dedicated to the women in my family that make it so incredibly awesome!!!