Settling for plastic sporks over real silver

There is a funny phenomenon going on in my office around lunch time. Most everyone in the office brings lunch at least several days out of the week. But that isn’t the weird part. Most people don’t bring sandwiches, salads, or other standard lunch fare, but full on meals in tupperwares including rice portions, meat portions, and veggie portions all in separate containers. Some people even have special little naan carriers that are really quite cute inventions. Again, I don’t think this is the weird part. I often bring leftovers for lunch simply because if I have a sandwich and some chips at noon, I’m absolutely starving by 6pm. Whereas if I have say, a pork chop and some zucchini I’m full for much longer.

Here’s where it gets strange. Most people bring several containers. Each segment of the meal is in a separate container rather than all in one giant container, there’s a large one for rice, a smaller one for veggies, another smaller one for meat. This one guy even has a little tea pot made for the microwave that he uses to brew a pot of tea each lunch time. Then after the meal is finished, they all wash their dishes. I skip this part. You won’t catch me using the dirty office sponge. I used it once, and my hands smelled like musty sponge the entire day.

Even though most people bring several containers full of food, no one, I repeat NO ONE brings their own flatware. It’s not just like they forget it occasionally. I have witnessed the daily routine while waiting for the microwave over and over again. Pull out 4 tupperwares from office refrigerator, unwrap, open containers to vent, place in microwave, while food is heating, retrieve plastic fork and plastic knife from kitchen cupboard. I just don’t understand it. If you are going to the trouble to bring a cooler full of food to work, and doing your dishes afterward before you go home, why aren’t you bringing anything to eat the food with? It can’t be easy to cut all that meat with a plastic knife. And really, it’s horrible for the environment. I bring my own flatware when I bring meals that require a knife and fork. I consider the cabinet of plastic utensils as there for a last resort, if say, your delivery guy forgot to include utensils or you somehow forgot to put a fork in the bag in the morning, or if we are having catered food for a meeting.

I just can’t figure it out. It’s clearly not because they don’t want to have to carry anything home with them, they already have a separate little lunch bag for food. It’s clearly not because they’re worried a soiled fork will get the cooler messy. They are already washing all the tupperwares. It doesn’t make any sense. Maybe it’s the idea of getting one over on the company by using the only free things they provide (plastic cutlery being one) to the maximum. Maybe it just hasn’t occurred to anyone. I thought about asking, but I didn’t want to be that girl scrutinizing everyone’s eating habits in the office lunchroom.

What strange office lunch rituals have you witnessed?

Group Work

I had a realization last week while I was at work, about why all your K-12 teachers seemed to insist on making you do all those stupid group projects that everyone hated, and it suddenly became clear why teachers always insisted on giving a group grade and refused to break it down to the individual level. If you were an over achiever like me in high school, you will remember the frustration I’m talking about. It was always obvious in group work that some people were working harder, and doing more of the work than others, but regardless of the role you played in the group, you received the same total grade for your combined result. I’m sure you can remember how this scenario spun out.

You are assigned a group of people to work with. They may not be the best and brightest in the class, or they might be the all-stars. That was not for you to choose, it was simply the luck of the draw, or rather, whatever way of creating the groups that the teacher settled on. You all worked together to divvy up the responsibilities and create a group work plan to get the project done. Without fail, there was always at least one person in the group who did a fantastic job, and at least one person in the group who failed to pull their weight. They either simply did not do the work, or did a poor job of it. Depending on the size of the group, there were several people who did the job at an average level. They completed the assignment, but it didn’t really dazzle you in their efficiency or level of excellence. You were not graded on the effort you put in individually, but on what the group produced as a whole, which tended to be an average of the abilities in the group.

Typically the person who did a fantastic job would end up doing more of the work for the slackers to avoid the inherent sabotage to their own grade that this would entail. Their extra work would raise the total product and up the average to a higher grade level. OR, if the group in question could prove that one person was a total slacker, they would do nothing, then go whining to the teacher that it wasn’t their fault and get their grade raised.

Now, many teachers would raise said excellent pupils' grade, not wanting to penalize them for the poor work ethic of another. This is where my sudden realization came in to play. Group grades always used to get on my nerves in high school, and even in college when it became clear that they helped some people to coast by on the hard work of others.

Yet I say that the teacher who raises the grade, while rewarding the individual for her own merit, does nothing to prepare kids for the real world. All those teachers who stuck to their guns and said the group grade is everyone’s grade (no matter how annoying it was at the time) were really just doing us a favor and giving us a preview of how annoying it is to deal with people in "real life" after college.

The realization I came to was this. I had always thought group work was intended to teach you how to play well with others, how to foster cooperation between people, a ploy to encourage bonding between strangers in a classroom, and an exercise in harnessing the strong points of every one's abilities to create a better product than one person can do alone. This would be the ideal group. However, in life there aren't many ideal groups (as in high school and college) in which everyone wants to work hard, and produce the most that they can. Be the best that they can be, so to speak. Most groups will have the standard division I recognized, where most are average, some slack off, and some work harder.

Does group work teach cooperation? No. Does group work teach you how to exploit the efforts of others to your advantage? Yes.


In real life (read: your job), you can’t pick your group. This is how jobs work: Do the job asked of you in the allotted amount of them, get paid. Do not fulfill your job responsibilities, get fired (especially in today's economic climate). You are subject to whoever is working on the same project as you at the same time, regardless of what you think of their professional abilities and capabilities. I can guarantee you that your boss will not be sympathetic if you go complaining that Suzy isn’t a go-getter, so you won’t be caught working with her. AND it would be extremely unprofessional behavior at best.

No, instead you must struggle along with whatever team of people you happen to fall into, and make the best of their performance because the bottom line is that if the job does not get done to your boss's satisfaction, then you will be in as much trouble as everyone else in the group regardless of who did what. Your boss wants her deadlines met, and a finished product-that is that. Your grade will not get raised. You will not be promoted, because you did not do what it took to make success happen. You just have to work hard or harder than everyone else, and hope that someone is noticing how everything is panning out. Hope that it is those who deserve it getting that promotion, not those who just twiddle their thumbs and wait for someone else to finish the project.

Yes it sucks. Yes it's still annoying that the superstars have to pull the weight of all those losers out their sitting around watching youtube at work. But now at least I know where my professors were coming from.

To tell or not to tell

Here's a dilemma. You spot a co-worker, even your boss with an outfit faux pas that has definitely been going on all day. Their shirt is on inside out. Their back slit is still stitched up. They have a mysterious stain in a spot that would not be apparent in a mirror once over. Do you tell them? Or do you just chalk it up to an off day and smile and let it slide?

I am typically one to let people know when something funky is going on. If you mascara is smudging down your cheeks, I'll point it out (nicely of course!). If you have some food caught in your teeth I'll point it out as soon as I notice. If your skirt is tucked into your pantyhose, I'll run over and let you know immediately. I respond this way because if I am running around with some embarassing catastrophe all over my face, I would hope that someone would let me know, whether it is a friend, co-worker, or stranger on the street. Anything to avoid continuing humilation throughout the day, or whenever you stop and take notice that something is wrong.

Then there's the cases where someone is dragging toilet paper on the back of their stiletto, and clearly in view of their date at the bar. It's best not to cause a scene by going over or yelling to the lady that hey, you stepped in tissue and had no idea, now the hottie you are trying to impress will witness it. In that case, I would try to stick out a leg and snag the paper off with neither party any the wiser. Sometimes it's better not to call attention to the awkward situation.

That brings me to the case of the co-worker who you run in to in the bathroom at the end of the day. And, unless they've been doing a quick change in the stall before you bumped in to them, chances are they have been dressed in that very outfit all day long. You pointing out their mishap will embarass them (for sure), and not only that, call attention to the vast oversight it must have taken not to notice this all day. Her mind will start to race...How many people saw me like this? Did they notice and not say anything? How could I have let this happen?

Depending on your rank and relationship to said co-worker, and her mood at the time, her reaction could have a serious impact on your work relationship. She could laugh and remark about how crazy her schedule has been that she can't even dress herself any more. She could be mad, and take your helpful suggestion as an affront to her outfit. OR she could be so embarassed that she forever remembers you as the one who made her feel stupid just before leaving for the day.

Is it worth the risk? Or is it better to just leave well enough alone and claim obliviousness?