Dear Wally
109
Chips and
Drips.
Salsa eater,
let’s talk. You and I have again found ourselves on opposite sides of the
holiday party bowl in what should be a festive occasion. So why am I uneasy, my next door/cubicle
neighbor?
It’s only
right that we honor the good times (and ignore the bad) by going to these (obligatory) office parties,
feigning corporate camaraderie and
treating our work-ravaged, intellectually emaciated bodies to some delicious, jarred salsa and restaurant-style
chips. Like the boss who pays us less
per hour than 100 underage Vietnamese factory workers combined says, it’s the least he can do. And he’s right, a $3 bowl of salsa IS pretty
much the least he can do.
Anyway, like everything in societies more than 1
person big, there are rules, many of which are pinned to the framework of
common sense and basic hygiene and I think my sense of uneasiness stems from
those unspoken, uncodified laws over which you are about to trample.
I see you
licking your chops like some Pavlovian dog that hasn’t seen food in a
week. It also appears your pulse is
quickening and your pupils are constricting.
Is there a problem?
Sometimes I
wonder if you are an ongoing science experiment no one has told me about--some
6’2, hairy, super secret, sasquatch re-integration project? How come you are perpetually starved? How come I fear leaving my half eaten sandwich
unattended at my cubicle for the 10 short seconds it takes to make the round
trip journey to the fax machine? And
while we’re at it, how come you belch
and fart all day long? (too much salsa,
perhaps?) Finally, what exactly do you
do at this company besides scratch your hinterlands at the water cooler?
I’m getting
off topic.
Salsa and
how not to eat it…
A rivulet of drool is starting to form at the
corner of your mouth and it is heading south.
You are rolling up your sleeves as you widen your stance on either side
of the salsa bowl. This concerns me. So does cracking your knuckles. You look like you are bracing to help a
pregnant women give birth. Your
enthusiasm for the pristine chips and salsa is so poignant that superficial pleasantries and chit chat are
completely dispensed with. No, “thanks for
unsticking the copier today, Nichols.”
Or “Did you finish up the sales figures for Moronowitz, Wally?” None of that.
I don’t care for this level of subconscious alpha maleness, nor do I
care to have even 1 single chip if it has your salivatic genetic code on
it.
Before you
lunge at this hors d’ouevre (your
restraint thus far is curious), let’s go
over some basic decorum and some basic hygiene, the awareness of which should really predate
knowing me by a few decades. It is a
commonly accepted practice to use the chips girding the salsa bowl as mini, one
time scoops. Let me re-emphasize
that. One Time Use. As in:
no double dipping.
The idea is
for a chip to be used as a sterile (ish) scoop for the good of the group. This goes back to the days when the Bubonic
Plague was spread by communal salsa and chip parties. The results, as you know, were not good.
One chip, one dip. That’s the rule of thumb. We don’t use the ladies’ room, we don’t trip
nuns and we don’t dip twice. BECAUSE
NOBODY WANTS YOUR SCHIZZLE IN THEIR DIP.
I guess you
didn’t get that memo.
Without
intervention, this is how the script will play out: You scoop onto an undersized chip a heaping
Kilimanjaro of salsa that even a
Silverback Gorilla would have trouble getting down. The chip simply isn’t engineered to handle
that much weight. So, seeing it reach
its point of critical, structural failure, you decide that to avoid losing even a little
of the overburden, you will move your head over the dead center of the bowl,
which is precisely what people who have had far too much to drink do with a
toilet bowl just seconds before they spew.
This is
where it all falls apart, and when good people start wincing and moving
away. You can’t hear them mutter in
disgust over the sound of your grunting.
You can’t see them because your head is tilted so far back all we see is
the whites of your eyes. The poor salsa
that is unable to make it into your gaping maw freefalls back into the now fully
contaminated dish. Add to that whatever else leaks from your facial
orifices.
The salsa
now has your germs all over it now and is effectively ruined. I’d sooner swim in a public pool you have
urinated in than eat salsa that has spilled from the corners of your mouth and
back into the dish. I doubt I’m alone.
But you are
having a great time and that’s all that seems to matter. You nudge me with your elbow and tell me
about your great idea- at next year’s holiday party the company should hire midgets to wear
enormous sombreros filled with chips in
the brim and salsa in the center, and have them roam around the party so the
rest of us can snack without having to move or even bend over. This kind of thinking will get you a one way
ticket to Human Resources while security loads your belongings into a cardboard
box.
I’m hesitant to verbally parry with you
because I fear that if you smile, even more salsa will come tumbling out of
your mouth, not that that would make it
any grosser, but it would mean more for the late night cleaning crew to deal
with.
If I were the boss , I’d make you wear one of
those no-scratch, conical dog collar/ satellite dish things around your neck to
catch the falling debris.
So happy new
year, I guess. I won’t be starting this
one out with a belly full of salsa, that’s for sure.
This year
can we work on our manners and can we leave my unattended lunch alone? That’d be awesome.
-Wally (one cubicle over)
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