So I was sitting in the cafeteria in my place of business this afternoon eating lunch when one of my coworkers came in, heated up his lunch and began eating it. This is a common enough occurrence, but there was something different this day. Indeed, my coworker heated up the most delicious smelling confection that I have smelled in a long, long time. It turned out to be an apple kugel, and it smelled like a fresh baked cinnamon bun, only more delectable.
As I was eating my own lunch, I wondered if it would be appropriate to say something.
I don’t know about you, but it always annoys me slightly when someone takes a little too much interest in my lunch. “Hey, something smells good in here!” they say as they start sniffing around, eyeing my food. Next thing you know, it’s the lunch time third degree: “What’s that? Where’d you get it? Did you it make it yourself? Really? You cook?” So on and so forth. Perhaps it’s just my antisocial tendencies, but really, I want to eat my lunch, not talk about it for an hour.
When food smells good it’s one thing, but I really can’t stand it when someone feels the need to disparage someone else’s meal because it doesn’t smell very good. In fact, I find it downright rude. So what if someone heated fish up in the microwave. It’s their right, deal with it. Don’t be the jerk who goes around saying thing like: “Oh god, are you really going to eat that, it smells horrible?” There’s just no need for that.
Of course, there are extremes. I used to work with a fine gentleman who had an unnatural fondness for Kimchi. If you’re not familiar with the spicy, fermented cabbage dish native to Korea, then you aren’t aware of just how … pungent it is. Now, I never complained when he opened his huge jar of kimchi in the cafeteria, but I couldn’t really blame other people for yelling at him. There comes a point where the rudeness of food criticism is eclipsed by the rudeness of the food itself. To his credit, my former coworker usually kept the kimchi eating sequestered to his office.
So what do you think? What is the food aroma decorum for the office?
Clacked by Bob Degon
on Oct 15, 2009 @ 10:00 EST5EDT
The problem is that each “extreme” is different for different people. For me, fish IS my extreme. When someone at work nukes fish, I quite literally gag because I simply can’t tolerate it(thankfully, our kitchenette is far enough away that I can escape it by going back to my cube). Another woman I know can’t tolerate the smell of curry. So it’s pretty much impossible to have any sort of decorum because you just don’t know what will set someone else off.