A Food Memoir: The Final Draft
I work for an mid-sized engineering firm in Marion, Massachusetts. Just about every semester we will hire a civil engineering student to participate in our internship program. This particular semester we had a kid that was in his Sophomore year at UMASS Dartmouth, Andrew Cameron. He was a heavy-stock kid, with that stick up straight dirty blonde hair, freckles and glasses. He would come into work every day looking like all he did was wipe the crust out of his eyes, throw on the same pair of pants he had on yesterday and look through a pile of unfolded laundry to find a shirt, and the shirt never matched, he must have been searching in the dark. This kid was a mess, I mean a real mess. You would think wearing the same pants every day, “they must fit well, huh?” Not even! This kids ankle bones were always sticking out. He was always eating something. You guessed it, this is where it gets good, we had so many stories about this kid involving food.
Now, we eat lunch together every day at work, so its no secret that my boss Stefanie is just about the pickiest person on the planet when it comes to food, she could make a ham and cheese sandwich complicated, that says something. Stef is a skinny pickle with not only a small appetite, shes also got little to no room for trying new things. Shes a little stuck on boring, she comes to work every day with the same over-dressed flow-ey pants on and boring black high heels, with her never-in-her-life-dyed hair straightened pin straight and messy eyeliner. Shes the type that doesn’t like to eat anything beyond chicken fingers and a bland steak every once in a blue moon. Not only is she super picky, shes just got that personality that, if you like to eat something that she doesn’t like to eat, she will sit there and make comments and faces about what you are eating so that you feel like you are the only weirdo on the planet that can stomach the taste of a salad dressing other than plain old ranch.
So, one day we’re eating lunch and the phone rings, nothing unusual. But, this day the phone rang and it was something urgent, the big boss out in California was having an emergency. This guy can turn anything into an emergency, so of course, there have been a few of those calls over the last four years that I’ve worked for this company. I don’t remember what it was this day, but I do remember that Stefanie practically stopped mid-bite, packed up her cheese pizza (light on the cheese, and cooked well done, but not burnt) and apparently ran it into the kitchen to leave it on top of the toaster oven before running back down the hall to her office. She’s a bit of an enabler if you ask me, the guy probably needed a ride from whatever airport.
As if we don’t eat lunch late enough in the day already, I finally heard the screeching hinges of her office door opening almost forty-five minutes later. I looked at the clock and it was just passed two o’clock. I could practically hear the funky attitude she was about to be stuck in for the rest of the day when she walked down the hall towards my desk. “Oh great,” I thought, as the sound of her heels approached my desk, she always manages to put me in the center of her bad mood. But she kept walking, she turned into the kitchen and I thought I was safe. But, just as quickly as she walked into the kitchen she came back out, she walked over to my desk with her open box of pizza in hand and a look on her face that could kill. I wasn’t sure if I should be worried about what was about to come out of her mouth because I was sure I couldn’t think of anything wrong I had done all day long. She looked at me and said, “are you fucking kidding me, who has been in the kitchen since lunch?” I looked at her, confused. I said, “Um, I’m not sure, I’ve been in the other room for most of the time making plan copies. Why? Whats the matter?” She looked down at her pizza box, lid open, and sort of nudged it toward me as if I should be able to read her mind. Looked like a normal slice of pizza to me. Then, it dawned on me. “Didn’t she eat about one bite of a piece of pizza when Carey called?” I thought to myself. I was about as pissed as she was about this because I knew she was about to send me back across town to get her something new to eat. I said, “You have GOT to be kidding me. Why don’t you just walk around the office and see who is eating pizza? And if that doesn’t work, just ask everyone who ate the pizza that was on top of the toaster oven?”
She stormed off into the main area of the office and yelled “WHO ATE THIS PIZZA!?” as she held the practically empty box of pizza up over her head. I was worried for my co-workers, I was worried for whoever ate that damn pizza. Not a peep out of anyone for a minute, then, Andrew looked up and wiped his mouth, “Uh, the one that was on top of the toaster oven?” As if he didn’t know that was the only pizza she could possibly be talking about, as if pizzas just appear out of no where. She looked at him for a minute, waiting for something. Obviously, for him to at least come up with an excuse as to why he just ate someone else’s lunch, but nothing. He looked down, waiting for the repercussions of his actions, but when Stefanie didn’t say anything for a minute, he looked back up at her and muttered “Sorry, I didn’t know it was yours.” She stormed off back over to my desk, “Can you go get another pizza for me?” I wanted to roll my eyes right in her face but I somehow managed to refrain. She can be very entitled at times, but since we are a very close-knit work family I sucked it up that I had to get up and leave again after I just sat back down at my desk and did her the favor.
A lot of people have their closest relationships at their home, outside of work simply because that’s where your family is and that’s also where they spend most of their time. But, when you spend 45 hours a week cooped up in a small office setting with only about 10 – 15 other people at a time, you begin to have closer work relationships than family relationships. I myself have been on my own in my own house for about 7 years, so it has been a while since I have been able to see my parents on a daily basis. My Dad lives in Dartmouth so he is not too far from my apartment in New Bedford, while my Mom, on the other hand lives in San Mateo, California. Most people I know with family situations like mine will become closer with their siblings when they don’t have much family to have close relationships with, but since my only sister lives at UMASS Amherst and I work full time as well as go to school full time, I don’t get much time to visit her. I guess even though most of us would rather be doing anything besides being at work, that is where most of our time is spent, and relationships are established (maybe even involuntarily). Being with the same group of people over the last 4 years every day you start to become a family and although we are not exactly a real family, it’s kind of nice to be able to leave your “family problems” at work most of the time and go home to a happy house.