Company policy

I returned from vacation to find a four-page memo from the publisher instructing all employees that they are not to eat at their desks, smoke in front of the building, pile notebooks or newspapers under their desks, leave food in the company refrigerator for longer than a day, or drink anything at their desks that has not been poured into the company-issued spill-proof container.

Oh, shit. Here we go again, I thought, and began tidying up my work space.

I was in the middle of cleaning my desk when Brian walked in with a can of diet Pepsi he almost immediately spilled all over his shirt front and carpet.

After he finished cleaning up I showed him the memo. "Did you see this?"

He started laughing.

Apparantly, the publisher had issued the memo on the 6th, before I'd even gone on vacation. He had sealed it in a manila envelope and left it on Brian's desk. But somehow it ended up on the floor where Brian didn't discover it until he and the designers were chowing down on Costco Pizza.

The publisher happened to walk by as they were stuffing their faces and Brian, gregracious as ever exclaimed, "Hey man! Come have a slice!"

It wasn't until the publisher left that Brian opened the envelope and read the memo.

Oh shit.

But the moment passed and Brian continues to eat at his desk. Just the other day I saw him munching on a muffin.

"It's not a meal," he said. "It's a snack. That memo didn't say anything about snacks."