Gluttony

I am joyous to be tasked with providing food, space and meeting coordination for a bunch of animals who have taken over our office for two days. I am tremendously excited to have a different batch of babies to whine at me, and complain about nonsensical things. I wonder what they do when they work out of their home offices and have no one to complain to? I can’t imagine their wives put up with this level of bullshit?

It began on Monday afternoon when one dipshit called from Baltimore, demanding that I find him a flight. From what he could gather in the airport, flights were being canceled due to weather delays. Because I am She Goddess Who Can Do Everything, he decided it was a good idea to call me. Despite his insistence that there were other flights to be found, I was unable to help him (not that helping him is in my job description anyway). I giggled like mad when I arrived in the office Tuesday and heard that he never got to leave Baltimore the night before. I still feel giddy every time I look at him.

Yesterday they descended on our office and proceeded to take things over. In the past we have had these meetings in various hotels down the Eastern Seaboard. It is with great sadness that we don’t get to travel anyplace fun and must have the meeting in the conference room with food catered in. When we were at hotels, I could escape to my room. Here, they all found my office first thing so they knew where to go for help. 

As the meeting is made up of mostly men, the high points of the day occur any time they get fed. You know those Discovery Channel movies where they show people dumping raw meat in for lions? It’s kind of like that.

They are accustomed to having hot breakfast. When I set up my first meeting, I followed the guidelines set forth by the boss and served a continental breakfast. The VP walked in and asked where the hot food was and said, “Something needs to be killed for this to be considered breakfast.” Since then, I always order meat and eggs. For this meeting they were warned in advance that we would only have bagels, pastries, fruit salad, coffee and orange juice. This kept their food complaints down to a dull roar. They did find many other things to complain about: the temperature of the room, the size of the room, their connections (or lack thereof) to the Internet. They were happy with lunch too. However, those scurvy bastards broke into the cookies before snack time so I had to take them back and hide them, because the sandwiches, salads, chips, pickles and French bread weren’t enough.

Even dinner last night went uneventfully. We went to a really nice restaurant and had a private room so we didn’t need to worry about disturbing anyone. The food choices were good and the desserts were to die for!

Today everyone should have been tired and less hungry. Let’s face it they were putting back prime rib at 9:00 pm last night. I could barely force myself to have coffee and a chunk of watermelon for breakfast. However, by 11 am, not a croissant crumb was to be found. The juice from the fruit salad even disappeared.

The drama started when they broke for lunch ten minutes early. Add that to the delivery guy getting lost and arriving right at noon-when lunch was scheduled to be served-and I had a near riot on my hands. I scrambled around, trying to set up three hot entrees, salad, rolls, garlic bread while they salivated just outside the room. Once everything was set up, I ran to the kitchen for serving spoons. I returned to the conference room less than two minutes later to find them circling the food like their last meal was a decade ago. They were drooling, stabbing at lasagna and eggplant parmesan with plastic forks-nothing had even been cut yet.

I walked in with a huge knife and serving spoons. The wild wildebeests went still.  I said, “What are you doing?” and they stood, staring at me clutching the knife. I said, “That stuff isn’t even cut up yet.” Mr. Texas pipes up, “Well, it was all set up and smelled so darn good.” I looked at them all and growled, “STEP OFF.” They all jumped back from the food and I was able to cut things into beast-sized pieces. They dove back in as soon as I stepped away from the table. Again, I tried to hide the dessert but someone discovered it and dug in before I could put it out for everyone.

I ran into the guy that seemed to be the culprit, digging in too early and he apologized. I just looked at him and said, “You almost got stabbed today.”

I just don’t understand this behavior. Each one of the people attending the meeting earns in excess of six figures a year. Certainly they can afford their own food. There’s a cafeteria and vending machines on the first floor of our building if they really need something to tide them over. But truth be told, they are unwilling to spend their own damn money when there might be free food available. That behavior disgusts me. 

I was glad to see them all leave this afternoon.

xoxo

Ice Princess