Sandwich This, Weasels

You are about to hear a sad and sorry tale. A tale of tragic proportions.

It's the tale of what it's like to want food and yet work for TheCompanyIWorkFor.

I work for a company where occasionally I have to go to meetings. You get up early, you hit the road, you travel a couple of hours, you listen to a day's worth of absolute crap, and you use your own car and gasoline to get there. And for your trouble you get lunch, courtesy of the TheCompanyIWorkFor weasels.

Now, I must make this clear, this isn't bread buttered and handed down by Junior himself (Jr being the company's chief chief weasel indeed). This would be bread bought with money Junior handed some people who filtered it down through some more people, then it went through appropriations and was divvied up between some more people and they took it and put it into five or six piles and every district weasel got a pile, looked at it, bought the bread, left the butter on the shelves, and pocketed the difference. (Mind you this is only a theory.)

And so, we get a free lunch, but it's only really lunch if you can eat it, right?

In my years - and as we all know, folks, there have been a lot of them - of eating lunches on TheCompanyIWorkFor's dime, I've been subjected to enough pizzas to shingle a good-sized roof (and that would have been optimum usage for some of them), runny quiches, a slice of tomato as a main course, molded rolls, and a main course soup whose maker must have thought "¼ t. salt" meant "¼ tureen salt." I've had meals made by culinary students at the local college - students who apparently had not taken the "how to make chicken so that the outside isn't charred and the inside isn't raw" class. I've had catered box lunches whose box was much better than the lunch.

But there's one thing I've had more than any other. It's the stalwart staple of TheCompanyIWorkFor foodstuffs, of their meetings, of their existences. And that would be the ever-popular, the never-ending, the awe-inspiring Make Your Own Sandwiches.

It's actually become quite the joke amongst TheCompanyIWorkFor employees. No matter what the occasion, what bigwig has come in to conduct a meeting, no matter how hard we've worked or how long we've driven to get there, when lunchtime comes they proudly announce, "For lunch, we'll be doing Make Your Own Sandwiches." And the assembled throng look at each other with that knowing glance, and we all go over to the table where there's pressed ham, thin turkey, chewy roast beef, a yellow cheese, an orange cheese, and some mustard and mayonnaise that have been in a bowl waiting for us all morning. White bread, wheat bread, and some lettuce. Have at it, you TheCompanyIWorkFor peons!

And we choke down our I-Made-It-Myself sandwich.

I've actually seen someone make rude remarks about Make Your Own Sandwiches. We were once at a meeting headed by an Agency Director (big cheese at TCIWF), and when it was announced that we'd be hoofing it over to the cold meat and cheese table, someone stood up and said to him, "Don't you guys ever get sandwiches at home?" I laughed and laughed, then fixed my sandwich as I have done since many many times, because TheCompanyIWorkFor weasels are humor-impaired. It's part of the job description.

Next weasel-fest, aka TheCompanyIWorkFor staff meeting, is July 13. I just got the memo announcing it. It will start at 9:30, end at 4:00, and include lunch. A... Deli Buffet!

Holy shit! Make Your Own Sandwiches has become a Deli Buffet! I'm sure it came down from corporate in an inter-office e-mail. "Heretofore, all Make Your Own Sandwiches tables shall be known as Deli Buffets for agents and staff. Deli Buffet will now consist of pressed ham, thin turkey, chewy roast beef, a yellow cheese, an orange cheese, and, in an upgrade for employees, mustard and mayonnaise will not be sat out four hours before the buffet begins. This will cut down on ptomaine and make for a more productive meeting."

You know, it would just be so much easier, and everyone would be so much happier, if they'd just give us $5 and let us go get lunch on our own. Or not! I'd buy my own lunch to get something hot and enjoyable.

But you see, the weasels won't do this. Because they know. They know that if they let us out of the room at lunchtime, there's the distinct possibility we won't be back. And that's probably my fault. For at the Christmas meeting two years ago I was the one who went to the bathroom and never returned.

But at least I got a hot lunch.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* Acrowinners! We have acrowinners! "Oy! My fuckin' head!"
Honorable Mention goes to Flipsycab with "Not enough liquids today." (She knows me!)
Runner-up goes to DeepFatFriar with "New electroencephalogram looks tragic." (The brain tumor must have been acting up again.)
And the winner, because she described how I felt perfectly, Kellie with "Not even lucid. Terrible." (I really wasn't lucid, for several hours.)
Thanks to all who played! You're clever and you rock - come back next week.