Office jobs have a lot of benefits, notably air conditioning, regular hours, little to no homework, and a very low risk that it will be your problem when a six-year-old wets her pants. Probably the best part, though, is the regular recognition of birthdays with free cake.
This week we celebrated one such birthday with an almost obscene quantity of chocolate frosting. I had just acquired my hunk of sugar rush ammunition and returned to my desk to devour it with glee….
…when a customer came in the front door and began piling boxes on my desk.
I did my duty as receptionist by finding the right person to assist this man, but the large quantity of stuff necessary for his errand precluded moving to any other location. As such, the customer proceeded to hover at my desk to conduct a bit of business that:
- did not make him happy
- had nothing at all to do with me, and
- lasted half an hour.
During this time, in addition to some phone-answering, all I really wanted to do was eat my brick of chocolate-frosted, rose-topped, mousse-filled, diabetic-coma-inducing birthday cake before it finished the transition from recently refrigerated to wilty.
It turns out that even my elevated level of gusto for cake-eating can be dampened by an irritable, cakeless stranger standing eighteen inches away. Desserts are meant to be savored, not gobbled guiltily when the interloper turns to dig out his wallet.
I’m not sure what the moral of this story ought to be, so I’ve collected some contenders, and you can choose your favorite.
- You can’t have your cake and eat it.
- A cake in the kitchen is worth two in the lobby.
- MOVE AWAY! YOU ARE INTERFERING WITH MY GLUTTONY!
I come for the funny, but I stay for learnding.
ReplyDeleteI'm going with option 3.
ReplyDelete(Sorry; to whine, but this reminds me that I never get cake at my office on my bday because everybody is gone for Christmas).
GMB, if it makes you feel any better, my birthday is at the beginning of August, so I never got to bring cupcakes to school to celebrate. Eventually we started celebrating my "half-birthday" in February for school purposes, which was fine with the teachers because they wanted cake, too.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, that's my plan for the future. In grad school, I'm going to adopt my half-birthday (June) as my real-birthday (Dec.) so that more than just me and my 30 Rock DVDs will be in attendance.
ReplyDelete