For several months, there has been a package of saltine crackers sitting in the fridge at my place of work. Why anyone would put crackers in the fridge is beyond me. I mean, how could anyone leave a package of saltine crackers uneaten for so long that they would need to be refridgerated to keep them from going bad?
Generally, when there are strange things in the fridge, I assume that my boss put them there. For instance, there's a pre-packaged salad, still in its vacuum-sealed wrapping, slowly liquifying in the corner; there is one random beer that's been sitting in the back of the fridge for over a year now; and there's a thing that I can only assume is pea soup. I assume that all of these items are Rodney's, and he has decided to add it to his fun study in food decay, and that I should leave it there until it turns all sorts of fun colours. For some reason, though, this package of crackers struck me as an un-Rodneyish item to put in the fridge. He just doesn't seem like the saltine type of guy. I had also on several occasions seen my manager, Melissa, eating saltines, so I always assumed they were hers. And so these saltines stayed in the back of the fridge. And I lusted after them.
Then, the most magnificent thing happened. Melissa quit*. Melissa quit, and she left her crackers behind. This being the first day I worked at the store since Melissa quit, I was very excited to see those saltines were still sitting in the fridge. I managed to restrain myself for the first 9 hours of my shift. Eventually, the need to secretly consume my ex-manager's food overcame my desire to maintain my professional bearing in the workplace. I devoured half of the package, just like that.
As soon as I began eating the crackers, I was overcome with fear that these hadn't actually been Melissa's crackers. What if they had been Rodney's crackers? Would he ever actually notice they were missing? What if they were Sierra's? Or Alex's? I was stealing someone else's food. That is a major work-place sin! How would the owner of the saltines retalliate? Would this result in a workplace war? I was afraid. Would this war involve an all-out cupcake-flinging fight**? My fear was quickly replaced with excitement. How many of these crackers would I have to eat in order to provoke their owner into starting a bakery food fight with me? I finished the package. And then, just as I placed the last delicious saltine cracker in my mouth, I noticed some felt-pen writing on the bottom of the package. It said "Melissa". And just like that, my sudden intense dream of having a cupcake war had to be downsized to the original, smaller dream of eating all of Melissa's saltine crackers.
*Understand that Melissa was the glue that held this store together. One of her most impressive feats was the way she transformed the bakery office from something resembling the space beneath your average fratboy's couch cushions, to something actually resembling an office. There is only one reason why Melissa quitting would be exciting, and that is the reason outlined in this post.
**If I am allowed to go on a multi-topic monologue for long enough, I will always eventually end it with my dream of having a cupcake war. For some reason, I have never been able to articulate the idea of the cupcake war well enough to get my listeners anywhere near as interested in it as I am. It's like the time I was allowed to play with the 100-pound box of sparkles and could only talk about sparkles for days afterwards and no one cared. Who doesn't get excited about sparkles? Who doesn't get excited about having tiny balls of cake coated in colourful icings flung at them? Picture La Tomatina, except with cupcakes instead of tomatoes: a blur of beautiful, rainbow icings and chunks of chocolate cake. People coated head to foot in cocoa powder and sprinkles. People swimming in puddles of melting vanilla icing. Why are you not excited about this?
No comments:
Post a Comment