An office lunch debacle
Which employee are you?
Poof…the electrical circuit in the office kitchen blew. When it happened one employee was boiling water to cook pasta, one employee was microwaving leftovers his wife had made the night before, and another employee was toasting bread for a roast beef sandwich.
As soon as it happened the fingers started pointing. ”Did you really need to boil the water on high heat? Wouldn’t medium high have worked just fine!”…”Does it really take six minutes in the microwave to heat up refrigerated food?”…”Is that the magic bread where all kinds of wonderful flavors are released when the bread is toasted?”
The circuit box was located outside of the office, and only the maintenance crew had access to the locked box. The crew was staffed in a building several blocks away. Lunch was officially on hold.
I happened to walk into the kitchen a few minutes after the electrical circuit blew. I brought some leftover pasta to work to eat for lunch. It was penne pasta with a tomato sauce, a dish that needed to be heated.
I stood by for ten minutes in the kitchen waiting to see how things would unfold, and this is what happened.
Employee C (the bread toaster) left his bread in the toaster for several minutes after the electrical circuit had blown. It appeared as though he hoped there was enough residual heat in the toaster oven to finish the job. In reality, he had been consuming the same lunch everyday for so long that he didn’t know what to do. The thought of eating a sandwich without toasted bread did not appear to enter his mind. Instead he eventually took the bread out and placed it on a plate, and then left the kitchen frustrated.
Employee B (the microwaver) searched the office frantically for the circuit box. Unable to find it, he went to his supervisor’s office to present the problem and seek guidance. He was told to submit the problem by email. A response did not come quickly enough, and after a few minutes he reappeared in the kitchen, took his lunch out of the microwave and placed it back in the refrigerator.
Employee A (the water boiler) waited patiently in the kitchen for employee B to report the location of the circuit box. After hearing the report, he sat down at the kitchen table with a puzzled look on his face. Then came his aha moment and a clever smile on his face. He unplugged the hot plate, carried it into the adjacent hallway, and turned it on. He then went back for his pot of warm water. He ate the lunch he had set out to eat with a simple solution.
Which employee are you? In case you are wondering I ate my leftover pasta cold that day.
If you’re like me and you need closure to a story or at least a moral that the writer has decided upon (me in this case), then keep reading.
Never let routine or bureaucracy trap you; be adaptable and stay sharp.
