The Company Cafeteria

Mar 17, 2009

This small tale occurred about six years ago when I had more gainful employment. I went to the cafeteria to get a bagel and risk the coffee. Sometimes I could tolerate it when I added the right amount of milk and sugar. I usually drank black coffee in those days, but I would doctor inferior brews to make them palatable. By-itself-naked, the cafeteria coffee tasted like pond water that had been populated by a flock of ducks with dysentery.

I got a cinnamon swirl bagel, toasted it, grabbed a container of cream cheese and sidestepped to the coffee area. My stomach was growling a little bit due to hunger that decided to turn ravenous once it smelled the toasting bagel. There was someone in my way though. It was Fat Kid.

* * *

I know, I know, that's a harsh name. However, I am not being entirely un-empathetic here. I was a bit girthy in those days too. I blamed the holiday feeding frenzy for making me balloon up to my Winter weight of about two-twenty-five, and then I would look forward to my golf addicted Summers where I would walk the tension back out of my thirty six waist pants. It was a good cycle. I would be all porky and worked up by March, and straining toward the good weather and my healthy pursuits on the golf course, but Fat Kid had few, if any, healthy inclinations, and Fat Kid played his role, or should I say "roll," for every calorie it was worth.

He was a thirty-and-some bachelor who wore clothes that looked like his mom picked them out. He owned a lot of khaki pants and wore dress shirts that flirted with plaid-ness and reeked of nebbish. He had a part in his dishwater red hair, and gold rimmed glasses that were born out-of-date. If Sears ever needed a plus-sized male model for its Dreary Collection, this guy could have had a sweet career modeling tasteful, durable tarpaulins.

He had a plain, yet inoffensive, face that was ideal for placement in a game show audience. He was well mannered enough to clap at all the right spots for all the right reasons. He could be assertive though, even if it meant being a pain in the ass. He was the last person in the office to give up his Mac once we had converted to PCs. He was deathly afraid that he was going to lose some valuable data if he turned it over to us. The damn thing hadn't been turned on for a year and a half, but he clung to it like a security blanket. His cubicle generally looked like it was holding onto too much stuff that needed to be discarded, and "Oh look! There's a picture of you swimming with a dolphin set as your background!" Yeah, he had been to Florida and molested some poor Flipper, but I didn't seize on the obvious joke of a dolphin swimming with a whale. I let it pass in a moment of extreme generosity.

 And then there was the Weight Watchers incident. Despite the fact that we had already had our first major layoff which was boding ill for our collective non-futures, a couple of hens in HR hatched the idea that it would be "really neat" if we all got down to a healthy weight. Why? So we wouldn't take up so much space in the unemployment line? Sorry about that bitterness leak; I'm sure they had good intentions at heart. Fat Kid, though, was an associate of the HR department and fell in line with the program. He became obsessed with it and spoke of it ad nauseum to tired ears throughout the plant. He was given to obsession. One was a raccoon that had taken up residence in his attic. For a good long time he spoke of nothing else. We asked how the raccoon got access, and the explanation painted a none-too-flattering picture of his bachelor crib. It seems that it was a rundown little cracker box ranch that wasn't cleaned well or often. It appears that the only thing he did well was his laundry. So we developed a mental image of a guy sitting on a ratty sofa, in a ratty house, who would watch SportsCenter on ESPN, drink beer, and cry because he couldn't find an appropriate chubster to ease his loneliness and clean his house. Wait a minute! That's wrong! Fat Kid, for all his luster, did not cotton to chubby girls. For shame!

He had back problems. When he didn't have a flare up, he was still slow in the hallways. If I saw his shuffle-waddle up ahead, I would look for an alternate hallway to my destination, even if it meant that I would have to use my key card. When his back was acting up he would cause traffic jams. He would be slunched a bit toward one side and people would be dodging around him from both directions. You might hear him say something like, "I know, I've got a chiropractor's appointment tomorrow." He was a tractor pulling a hay wagon on a two-lane road. Well, Weight Watchers was going to take care of that! He embraced and promoted the program.

So I went to his cubicle to deal with one of his non-problem problems one day. I put on my best attitude because I wasn't in the mood to make any waves. Once I pointed out that his files had not mysteriously disappeared — he was searching for them in the wrong location — he made a pitch to me about signing up for Weight Watchers. He finished off with something like, "Don't you want to lose a few pounds?"

He made the pitch loud enough to be heard by adjoining cubicles. My ire came into play. Something like that should be whispered. I felt like I was expected to set the good example for any nearby potbellies. Suddenly, I did not feel like explaining my yearly weight reduction that was a byproduct of my maniacal golf addiction. In a nanosecond I leafed through my Ready Joke Rollodex and nearly shouted, "Fuck no! A man's gotta have a shed over his tool!"

Snickers and yowls broke out and I broke out for the safety and security of the IT office, which was behind the locked door of the Secret Server Enclave. That lock saved us from a lot of routine idiocy. Fat Kid lasted about three days on Weight Watchers. He said something about driving to Burger King at two in the morning to secure his leap from the weight reduction wagon. That first Whopper must have landed with an actual thud. Hell! The second and third one probably made noise too! Chomp. Chomp chomp. Grumph grumph grumph... gleek... shhhhhhue thump!

* * *

Fat Kid was blocking my access to the coffee urn. He was delicately stirring his mix and lifted it to his precious lips for a test. He smacked his lips — smack smack smack — three times. He got a sour look on his face. "That's not half and half." Then he thought he had better say it louder, "That's not half and half!"

The two Mexicans who worked at our cafeteria did not run to his elbow to see what was amiss. They were both named Eduardo. One spoke English: the other nodded and said, "Okay." Okay Eduardo was working on the line. The other was chopping something in the prep room. They both wore black hairnets, white chef's coats, and checkered chef's pants. We all felt a little spoiled and superior to have these admirable fellows to banter with, or not, while we were criticizing the plates full of warm fat we were about to consume for lunch. I still miss the Sweet and Sour Pork. That was my favorite.

Fat Kid had a mildly apoplectic look on his face. It seemed as though he was about to shudder. The perpetual upside-down smile crease that lies just below his barely discernible chin deepened in redness before the rest of his face followed suit. He picked up the half and half carafe and waddle-loped to the service line. He sat it on the raised counter and said, "That's not half and half! I know half and half, and that is not half and half!"

Okay Eduardo was overwhelmed by that much English. Hearing "half" over and over again probably made him think that Fat Kid was reciting an angry poem about war. The other Eduardo put down his knife and came to investigate. I prepared my uneven concoction against the background music of irate bitchiness and Spanglish punctuated with "leche" and "crema" and "no."

I don't know how it played out. I left the exact change on the register and made for the Secret Server Enclave. On the way I decided that Fat Kid would forever be "Fat Kid" in my brain for berating those poor bastards who fed us on a daily basis over a paltry milk-fat issue. He was laid off in the round before the one that set me free. The plant is now closed.