Sorry friends if I am writing a bit too much about office these days. But it looks like ‘tis the season to be annoying' for some people. My team in office is pretty close and we sit together for lunch and go for coffee breaks together. We even go for movies together during weekends! Lunch at office is a simple affair; everyone tastes a little bit from everyone’s tiffin and then gets back to demolishing their own tiffins.
We are also a friendly and jovial lot and so we have a lot of people from other teams befriending us. Sometimes these people come and sit with us for lunch, for the sheer joy of sitting with a bubbly group of people. Over a period of time we noticed that there is a particular guy and girl who are almost always sitting with us for lunch.
Yesterday someone remarked that he was hungry. I joined in saying that I was too. So did the others. It was 4 p.m. and we went to this Sagar to grab some bites. That is when we realized that we were pretty hungry these days. One guy remarked absentmindedly that we would not be so hungry if we got to eat our tiffins. Suddenly it dawned on all of us that we were indeed getting very little to eat at lunch. The reason was embarrassingly obvious. The new joinees at our table were helping themselves to our food even after the sampling session was over. And we, i.e. the tiffin people were left with not much to eat.
Now how do we tackle this delicate problem? It is not nice to not share food. But they had their tiffins too. Besides we felt that they were not realizing what they were doing. We tried everything to tackle our hunger problem. I bought extra food, but it was to no avail. One guy got up and went and sat at another table, but the guy and gal merely wandered to his table and helped themselves to the food. We went for lunch early, late, very late, but the duo was always onto us. It was an embarrassing situation and none of us knew what to do.
Finally, we decided to stop bringing lunch and eat at this Sagar. That helped but when we started brining our tiffin, the duo was back. Finally a senior colleague saw us playing musical chairs with the various cafeterias and put a stop to the game. He came and sat down with us for lunch and told the offending duo politely but firmly that sampling meant sampling and not gorging. They got the hint, but their crestfallen faces made us feel so bad for days. We felt like really horrible people who cannot even share a “little” food with their colleagues.
The senior colleague, who told them off, is amazed that we are so pathetic and that we cannot stand of ourselves when bullied and feel bad for the bully when they are told off. He feels that he hasn’t seen such a bunch of losers in his life.
Now we are all suffering from dual personalities. One that feels bad for what we did to the duo and another weaker personality that feels that what we did was right. :p
This has to be my most embarrassing post here.
11 comments:
Ooo tiffin carrier..
I can almost imagine you , carrying that big old style multi-decked tiffin carrier, one deck rice.. one deck dish, one deck.. sorry to deviate off topic :P
smtimes you have to be firm.. u guys r not loosers.. just softy kinds
Hahahahahaha. You sound as if you've been recruited by your employer straight out of kindergarten! Hahahahahaha!!! Miss he is eating my tiffin miss.. Miss he took my lunch box miss. Hahahaha.
Wait, poor you... hahaha... since hahaha it is considered impolite to laugh at people on their faces, let me cover my mouth and suppress a few giggles...
*Giggle* *Giggle* *Tee hee*
OK I am fine now. Tiffin sharing trouble eh? Oh dear! I empathize with you. But you and your office team could have nipped this problem in the bud by following the classic, fool-proof technique from kindergarten which has always kept tiffin invaders at bay. What techique? Spit in your lunch box. Always works! You want to have my biryani you bum huh? Here. *Thoo* *thoo* *thoo thoo* (spit inside the lunch box) Here, have it.
Errr... you are welcome.
I can fully empathise with you..the guilty feeling when you really dont have to..isnt!!;-)
Well...i think sometimes its better to be straighforward like your senior colleague coz not everyone gets subtle hints..and i guess those two colleagues might appreciate the fact that someone told them directly instead of any in the gang grudgingly offering them food...
But i understand your predicament too.
Not to worry - this is common in all offices!! And God help you, if you bring the tastiest lunch!
Maybe you could've partaken of their lunch...or was that not offered?!
Often happens!
Happens all the time, people join in and then pounce on all the food and then leave nicely to attack some other table :).
We had one such person who was a senior at office and he used to sniff around all our tiffins and have what he liked and went around like that. No one dared to speak anything against him :)
The intelligent thing would have been to take two kinds of food. The upper deck cooked by you and the lower deck by your mother.
Let them taste the upper deck and they won't dare to touch the lower one which you could have enjoyed all for yourself.
This will keep both the tasters and the gorgers at bay I guess :-)
I was thinking of possible solutions to the problem. I list them in descending order of brusqueness(For the purpose of convenience lets call you guys goodies and the two unwelcome partakers baddies):
1) Fling a couple of rotis on the floor and say to the baddies "There's your share!" a la bollywood.
2) The goodies say 'nice try' to the baddies in unison.
3) The goodies get a third party to say 'nice try' to the baddies, as you guys did.
4) One fine day, all the goodies get an extra lunch each and give it to the baddies to get the message across.
5) All the goodies come to an agreement that the problem lies in the sampling system. So in order to deter the baddies, the goodies unanimously decide that in stead of allowing each other (goodies inclusive) to tear/cut/bite/ off a sample, leaving each owner of the food at the sampler's mercy, the owner apportions the samples according to his/her decision on the optimal sample size. This way, the goodies are content, and the baddies might feel deterred and move to another table.
lol-- i hate sharing food ...
y the trick how joey says -JOY DOESNT SHARE FOOD - nd hw u agree with him
Jessem: :) Guess we will toughen up in time, or it is khallas of us.
Parikshith: hehe you remind me so much of Kindergarten. :p And spit in the tiffin ewwwwwww
mathew: Thanks buddy! Feels good to know there are others. This duo are simple people I guess and perhaps do not know what discretion is! :)
flowergirl: They do offer, but I rather have my lunch! :(
Pratim: Glad to hear I am not alone! There are other sufferers too. Yay! :p
Abhi: Poor you. Guess we should count out luck that we do not have such a person! :)
Praveen: LOL!!
How mean!!! >:P I am a good cook! hmmpph
Karthk: ROFL!! This can be made into a culinary thriller by Hollywood. You can be the scriptwriter! :))
Photogenic devil: *repeating to myself, anju doesn't share food* Hope that works! :p
First time here. True, there are so many like that duo in everyday life. And I am like you folks - I would feel I cannot tick them off and if I ever do, would feel like a worm for the rest of my life. But they deserved it and you did right.
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