How to Handle Office Lunch

[vc_row][vc_column][title type="subtitle-h6"]Jon Shapiro[/title][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width="11/12"][vc_column_text]Last summer, I worked at a tech-startup in the Midwest. They issued me a computer, a desk, a fedora, and a red Prius.The first day of the new job is brutal. New office, new rules, new people. By 8:45am, I’ve already met six different Laurens.“Hey, you’re the new guy! I’m Kevin, I just wanted to welcome you to th-”“Sounds good Jack, I’ll keep it in mind.”I’ll be halfway to my desk before he realizes I don’t care about anything he’s saying.First days, they’re all the same. The best advice I ever got was from my Uncle Eric before my first day of kindergarten:“Remember, Jon, either beat someone up the first day, or become someone’s bitch.”Lunchtime is when you learn a lot about the politics that rule the office. Who comes over to say “hi,” who leaves for lunch and who brown bags it, where the jocks, nerds, and cheerleaders sit. It’s the first real test of how the office functions on a social level. So you better not fuck it up.During the 30 minutes you’re allotted for lunch, you enter your temple of prepackaged food and enjoy your freedom. It’s like one of those Wendy’s commercials where the judgmental redhead is suddenly in a garden eating her shitty Wendy’s salad. Except instead of a garden, you’re still in the office reading blogs. Sweet freedom!There are no real rules to lunch in the office. More like subtle intricacies. But if you don’t pick up on the tricks of the trade quickly, you’ll get shanked in the conference room.Where you sit at lunch says a lot about you. Sitting in the break room on the first day is definitely a power play. If you do this, be ready to live up to the hype surrounding you. Bust through the double doors like you own the place and immediately start talking shit about another department.“HR, huh? May as well be, H-Are we for real, amirite?!”The other option is to eat at your desk like a hermit. A rumor mill involving trench coats and loose floorboards may start, but at least you’ll avoid being social.Lunch splits the day into two segments, so you should put off eating for as long as possible. Every minute you starve yourself during Workday Part I makes Workday Part II that much shorter. The farther into the afternoon you eat your lunch, the shorter the day feels. Ideally, you should be eating at 4:30 p.m, a half hour before the bell, and Workday Part II would be cake. But then it’s just a really early dinner and that’s ridiculous and you need food earlier in the day or you’ll break someone’s teeth with your keyboard.Realistically, you’ll whip out your lunch around 1 p.m. If you have brown paper bags, go with those. They leave people wondering what’s in your lunch, creating an air of mystery around you. If all you have is gallon plastic Ziploc bags, these will get the job done, but they’re not ideal. My roommate/father and I rarely make trips to the grocery store. Our bachelor pad is stocked with little more than expired ketchup and iced tea, excluding normal-for-lunch brown paper bags. So when I pack my lunch in see-through bags, everyone can see my food before I have a chance to eat it. It’s like they’re sucking out my lunch’s tasty soul. Quit eyeballin’ my Oreos, Payroll!Bring leftovers from the night before. One benefit of having my dad as a roommate is that we eat out a lot and often have leftovers in the fridge. Pizza for lunch? Half a crabcake? I want it all. As long as it doesn’t smell like Grandpa, you should strive to bring leftovers for lunch. Don’t bring a tuna sandwich on garlic bread with Kimchi and gym socks. If it smells alright, leftovers for lunch make you the coolest cat at the lunch table.“I’ll trade you my PB&J for your pepperoni pizza, Jon.” “Shove it, Timmy, I don’t want your mom’s reject sandwich.”On the days you don’t have leftovers to lazily tinfoil up and throw in your bag, you can always make a sandwich, but after you’re finished, you’ll always feel empty inside.Get creative after the entrée round. The chip course comes next, and the options are endless here, but try to stay away from the varieties that leave your hands looking like you’re finger painting. After a bag of Cheetoes, it usually looks like you just jerked off Chester Cheetah. Plus you don’t want powder cheese all over your computer. No, take tortilla chips. They make you feel ethnic.Granola bars always seem to find their way into lunches even though no one actually likes eating them. Despite what Big Granola may have you believe, they’re not candy bars. If they were candy, they’d be given out on Halloween, and I pray for the man who gives me granola on Halloween.Opening a Nature Valley bar is like getting hit by a fucking sand storm. I wiped the crumbs off my desk this afternoon, straight into Lauren K’s leather bag by accident. I looked her right in the eyes and said, “This is mine now.” Just kidding, I didn’t say that. It was more of a loud moan that said “Well, you caught me, but I’m not gonna do anything about it.”Granola bars are there as a utility, just another piece of food to munch on, so they’re easily replaceable. Bring cashews or dry Frosted Flakes instead. Avoid bringing granola bars at all costs, unless you like choking down sugared tree bark.Eat your fruit last. It’s the worst part. Anyone who says they love fruit can fuck off. I don’t care how fresh it is, fruit is still not BBQ chips. However, fruit does give you a sugar boost to power through the rest of the day. Apples are nice because there’s the off chance you’ll get a piece stuck in your teeth, giving you something to work at for the next few hours. But they leave your hands infuriatingly sticky, something bananas have the decency to avoid. In the end, take fruit snacks if you have them.Unless the office has a wall-mounted ranch dressing dispenser you can bathe in, never take vegetables.Well, your 30 minutes is up. Your belly’s full and you’re ready to return to whatever it is you were pretending to do before lunch. Back to work, scallywag![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]