Things Left Unsaid

The employer got us coffee and donuts for showing up on Canada Day. I do like unexpected free snacks at work. There is something nice about it that isn't like just bringing a coffee and donut for yourself. I suppose it is similar to how having a meal prepared for you tends to seem a little better than cooking for yourself.

After having my free donut at break, and then going back to work, I found myself thinking about some experiences I've had with food and past workplaces.

Some years ago I used to work overtime at my current place of employment. One Saturday shift the boss had brought us donuts. At break time I saw the box sitting on a table near the punch clock. There were three left in the box. I thought, I will punch for break, and then get one. In the time it took me to turn around and punch my card, a coworker had showed up, and he had the last three donuts stacked up on a napkin in his hand.

I briefly gave him the benefit of the doubt, and wondered if maybe he was bringing a donut for other people he was sitting with or something. But no, I watched him sit down at a table by himself, and eat all three of them. I didn't say anything even though I really should have. Whenever I saw him after that I would think about those damn donuts. Sometimes he would need my assistance on the job, and would ask for my help. I would help him, but I certainly didn't put in my best effort. Forever destined to be the guy who stole my donut. So inconsiderate.

Another place I worked, suddenly news would start circulating. Samosa party at lunch time! The first time I heard it after starting my employment there, I was like, wtf is a samosa? I quickly learned. Those tasty little triangles of amazingness. I really like them. I would also get excited about the samosa parties when they happened.

After working there for awhile though I started to see a darker side of the samosa parties. Bringing them was a weird unspoken requirement, like some kind of social status symbol. A way to fit in. If you want to have some, then expect at some point to be the provider of them. And, oh man, the gossip and fighting about the leftovers. The whole thing just became tainted and weird to me. I eventually ended up avoiding them altogether. I would focus on reading a book while eating my own lunch. Let them have their weird fights about samosas. Not having any? No, thank you.

Funny now when I think about that place. The crew there was like that with pretty much everything. They would turn the simplest of things into a stressful ordeal. It was the most toxic workplace I ever worked in. I believe there is a line between authority and just simply being a power tripping asshole. The bosses there were the latter more often than not. The workers were divided into gangs constantly using psychological conflict and gossip as weapons against the others. I was never accepted into any of the gangs. And it wasn’t for their lack of trying to recruit me. I lasted there for two years. I had a mental breakdown and quit. I looked the place up a few years after I quit, and it was gone. Good riddance, I thought. And THAT is a very brief summary of an awful time in my life.

I had another job right before that awful one, as a temp. It was a pretty small place. The agency didn't tell me very much about it before I went there. I went in on my first day thinking that it was a factory, but it turned out to be a very small distribution warehouse. I remember the silence there. How strange it was after working only in factories before that. The crew there was five guys, and then me, plus bosses and owners. I thought, this is so weird, and also, there shouldn't be too much conflict here with such a small crew. I wasn't even through day one before I realized how wrong I was about there being no conflict. Before the end of the day all of them had taken their turn talking shit about the rest of the crew to me.

There came a day when one of them asked me if I would like a coffee and donut. One of the guys was going out in the company van to get Timmies. Right away I was like, no thank you. I made up the excuse that I had coffee before work. That was actually true, but it was not the reason I turned down the offer. Honestly I wouldn't have minded another coffee and a donut. In hindsight I realized that my no thank you, and the excuse I generated, were really more knee jerk reaction than conscious decision.

At that point in my life I had already been working for over twenty years. I instantly and instinctively knew that the coffee outings would inevitably turn into a thing. And I was right. Within a few weeks they started taking turns going out. Then there was the day when it was someone's turn and they didn't want to go. Then another day someone went with someone else's money, and bought extra food for themselves with it instead of bringing back the right amount of change. It became another thing for them to gossip and fight about. I was quite glad to not be part of it other than hearing the different versions of the outrage.