What’s So Lucky About A Potluck?

 

As the holiday season is upon us, many companies are starting to have their annual holiday parties. I miss the good old days when I attended parties thrown by huge corporations in NYC, like the Viacom & Time Warner annual parties. Since I’ve been here in Maryland, the parties are a little less of the pomp & circumstance. I do have a few parties that I’ll be attending with friends with their companies but today my office is having our department Potluck luncheon.

As irony would have it potluck rhymes with yuck.

Personally, the thought of eating food that came from certain individual’s houses that I work with seriously sickens me. I see how their etiquette is here in the office and I can only imagine what could go on in their kitchens.

Take for example my IT administrator, Doug. Doug is the embodiment of Santa Claus. Physically, he looks JUST like Old Saint Nick, down to the beard & pasty skin. He’s quite an interesting character to say the least. Doug LOVES to bring his homemade goodies into the office. On my first day at work, I was clearly warned NOT to eat Doug’s food and this was without having seen him. One day I happened to run into Doug and I clearly understood why. I didn’t understand why an adult had so many dirty stains and spots on his clothes. His nails were dirty and he smelled like spam. Needless to say, I never and will never eat anything Doug brings to the office.

Then there’s Vera. Vera loves to bake as well. But the difference between Doug and Vera, is that people actually like to eat her food. A few months back, Vera brought in some cupcakes she baked, which are pretty popular in the office. Everyone told me I should try one, so I went ahead and grabbed one and took it back to my office. As I’m eating the cupcake, I noticed a sliver glimmer inside of the chocolate cupcake. I almost puked when I realized it was a piece of dog hair!! See, Vera has a dog, and now from eating a cupcake with yorkie hair in it, I can only assume, he’s allowed to roam the kitchen freely!

When we started planning the potluck, I took the initiative to try to persuade people to take the easy way out and just buy something from the deli or a fast food place and bring it in. After I said that, I felt like a leper. Everyone looked at me as if I were crazy. At that point I knew I had to come up with a diversion plan. I basically appealed to the fact that it is the holiday season and no one should have to do anything unnecessary and time consuming and in the long run they’d benefit from not having the extra hassle.

This years potluck will include foot long subs from Subway, catered meals from Carolina Kitchen, and KFC! As long the food is not coming from Doug’s or Vera’s kitchen, I’m cool!