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Here’s how most offices work in the Teague building where I work. You enter a door from the hallway and then you’re in a room from which there are more doors, each of which leads to an office. I guess they did this for space reasons. Anywho, the next door down to the left from me is a room like this that leads to offices. In addition, it leads to another room which in turn leads to an office. In that room there’s a printer. Being the kind of workplace we are there are printers everywhere. However, in the room leading to this room with the printer there’s a small bookshelf that has on it a glass bowl. Sporadically the glass bowl is filled with candy, presumably from some of the people who work in those offices. Consequently, despite having to go further down the hall and walk through two different rooms to get to it, this printer is probably the most popular on the floor.

What’s funny is that there’s a guy whose office is right in front of the bowl, and he’s turned to where he can see the bowl. This is mainly because he didn’t want his back to the door but it means he’s like the watchdog of the bowl. I always feel kinda bad when I take something from the bowl since I don’t work in the offices there and I’m always nervous he’s going to say something. This is of course silly – if it were a problem they’d take the bowl away – down in the Pavilion they had to start locking the fridge because the janitors kept stealing Cokes. Still, I usually don’t bother to take candy from the bowl if he’s in his office with the door open. With my luck there’s some sort of webcam experiment going on (it would be a good one).

Usually there’s a good assortment in there – someone goes to Albertson’s and buys a bag of “fun size” candy. Sometimes it’s like Halloween – there’s the good shit which goes away quickly and then there’s the crap candy (like the ones in the Valentine’s Sampler filled with snot) but eventually the bowl is usually emptied – someone decides to suck it up and eat the Hershey’s Special Dark bars.

The bowl I believe is never refilled until its empty – even if there’s just one piece left in it. It’s kinda like when I was a kid and my sister would take all the ice cubes except one from the tray – that way it wasn’t empty and she didn’t have to refill it. Apparently some people never grow out of this habit. I don’t drink coffee but in the break room there’s a coffee pot with the proviso “he who drinks the last cup must refill the pot”. People apparently regularly walk in with empty mug, see that there’s only one cup left in the pot and then walk away. Some people here are adamant about how shitty that is – I say that perhaps the person with the empty mug was just too busy to take that much time.

But a funny thing happened week before last. Someone decided to restock the bowl with little green and yellow hard candies in wrappers. Pretty much every time its been restocked it’s been with some sort of chocolate variant – which is a good thing in this somewhat manic environment. But these little candies have been staying there – hardly anyone has touched them. I took one of each one day – they’re still sitting here on my desk. One of them is green in a clear wrapper with “Venadito Cardamomo” written on it in white – the other is in a yellow wrapper with a bee, a honeycomb and “Venadito Miel” on it. Obviously these ain’t from around here. I think the writing is Italian. I don’t know what these things are and they sound harmless enough as I write this but something about these guys is completely unappealing.

Part of me is tempted to go guy a bag of better stuff, chuck the stuff that’s in there, and move on – part of me is wondering how long before someone else does it, since it’s obvious no one’s eating these things.

Oh well, at least the printer in 325 is getting a break.