Sunday, February 15, 2009

Dozen donuts

Slacker Mom over at GrowinglikeaStanfield (see the link, click it. Over there, on the right) blogged two stories about maintaining the image of a busy parent.
As she details in her post, her Hubs is all help (not much) with the hard decisions.
Her funny story reminded me of a situation that happened at work about 5 years ago. And while I found it funny, there really was a co-worker who was VERY offended at this situation and held a grudge until he left the team.
Anyway...
There we are, 5 years ago and someone is having a 50th Birthday. The big deal was going to be a themed lunch. One guy, call him Yaj (name changed, cuz I don't know who knows who {6 degrees of separation}) volunteers that since he won't be around for said lunch party, he will bring breakfast treats for the team. At that time the team consisted of Manager, Admin, and 16 team members.
The next morning, I had a meeting that started early so I had already left the cube farm before Jay came in. Since he was bringing breakfast, I had skipped at home. When I got to cubeville, I didn't notice that anyone had left any treats for me. Oh, well.
After sitting down and opening my mail, I asked my fellow cube dweller What Yaj had brought, thinking that I was the butt of a joke, hiding the treats.
"All gone", She grunts. With quite a bit of acid in her voice.
Now I am puzzled. "Um, did they not taste good or turn out right?"
She looked at me, disgust clear in her eyes. "They were good, all right. He went to Crispy Creme and picked up a dozen fresh glazed donuts."
"Oh." (now I am really puzzled)
I turned back to my computer and started working. Suddenly it dawned on me. Food day for a 50th birthday for a team of 18 people. TWELVE DONUTS!
"Wow. Who decided who got donuts and who didn't?"
"Nobody. Yaj took his, left for a meeting and we looked around at each other. Jan took one, laughing and we put the rest out for the engineers and went and got bagels from the cafe"
I did, and still do, find this whole incident to be funny. And I had forgotten about it until I read her post.
And ever since then, if I am to bring treats for EVERYONE on the team, I make sure I bring enough for everyone so no one calls me a jackass the next day.

4 comments:

Jenny said...

Yaj, huh? I think you missed one in the middle of the document! =) The sensitivity (lack of - meaning, cheapness!) of some people never cease to amaze me!

Anonymous said...

People call me all kinds of names at work everyday. Do you think they would be nicer if I brought donuts to the bar fight?

Unknown said...

When I was working at Bank One a while back, we would have food days periodically. We had this one guy...We shall call him "TOM", TOM was never one to bring something but he sure as heck ate EVERYTHING that people brought. So...me being the biach that I am...started just bringing enough to cover those on the team I knew would be bringing food and not enough for him. When we all went to eat I made sure to help serve and when it got to him (who for the 40th time did not bring anything) I told him..OH that's too bad... and skipped him. He got the clue. next time he brought a two litre of generic soda..great job jackoff...

The Microblogologist said...

No food in the path lab, I'm off the hook ;)