Nobody wants the blue cookie

I talk about my office in general terms. When I think of my place of work I realize it's rather large from the outside, and "office" is misleading. I work in a large building consisting of two almost wings sitting askew slightly pointing to the East and West. Looking at it from that perspective I work in the West wing, but I haven't run into any decision makers working and walking at the same time with a pack of sweating decision executers in tow huffing and puffing to catch every command. I can't imagine a lot of work gets accomplished that way. To make sure we're all on the same page I'm alluding to Aaron Sorkin's West Wing and, well, really anything Aaron Sorkin ever put on the air involved people working while walking quickly. I don't believe many places get things done in that fashion especially not the White House. I'll bet no one does anything without an e-mail trail, and those who do work that specifically preclude the use of e-mail as a transmission medium most certainly don't follow someone around in a pack while he or she is barking orders. Can you imagine Cheney barking at his staff while tearing through his offices on the way to some important meeting? Can he even do that without risking "national security" or whatever it is that covers his movements? But I digress.

This all started when I was referring to my place of work, a large building consisting of roughly three floors broken into five segments per floor creating 15 "pods". When I think of my office I think of my pod which contains something in the ball park of 100 cubicles. So when I say something like we had an office pitch-in I'm referring to a segment of my building which the Mars company would refer to as "Fun Size".

My office is constantly alerting us to the starting and stopping of a never ending stream of activities. Something is *always* happening that is not work related. I could devote a blog site entirely to these goings on, and with Christmas in full swing it's reaching a fever pitch. I received an e-mail the other day informing me that the Twelve days of Christmas would be starting inexplicably on the 6th, and people are invited to bring in food. And what is the number one choice of food among my geeky brothers and sisters? Cookies. I'm OK with cookies being around, especially if I'm hungry on that particular day, but we're stacked to the drop ceiling in cookies. People are running out of places to stow them. There are cookies in break room, near the supply cabinet, on top of various metal cabinet outposts near the copy machines, piled next to the battery recycling jar...

I ate some lovely cookies today, a bunch of chocolate chip cookies baked into what had to originally be snickerdoodles - they might actually have been better than you are currently imagining them to be at this moment - and some oatmeal golden raisin and craisin cookies. Fancy pants! Very tasty. Somebody brought in store bought peanut butter cookies with chocolate chips. Impossible to resist.

But this is too much of a good thing. I'm already trying to work off my I-quit-a-bunch-of-habits weight that I put on when I - well - quit a bunch of bad habits. I work out, but I don't really eat well. Now I'm surrounded by sugary, buttery, chocolaty goodness. This morning I was welcoming the cookies with open arms. By 1pm I was beginning to think twice. By 2pm I was crashing from the sugar when I noticed that a vendor had left an enormous 15 layer tin of cookies in the network team's area. Aargh! I started toying with the idea of covering all the cookies I encountered with dish soap. It's not just for me, you understand. I work in a rather sedentary industry, and Indiana is a fatty fat state. I'd be carrying out some sort of good deed. I'd practically be a vigilante super hero. I could run around in a cape quickly turning corners surprising purveyors of pastries, and soap up their baked goods only to vanish as quickly as I'd appeared. Naturally, I'd report back to my boss and mentor Richard Simmons. We'd reconnoiter with Susan Powter, have a good cry about all the hefty people who were saved by our heroic destruction of snack food, and then reward ourselves with double chocolate ice cream.


And that's how it could go down. But I think I have the antidote that could stop the insanity: The Colts Cookie. Lordy, I'm glad we have such a successful sports team wearing a color that no one would eat, and yet people try to bake the Colts into Christmas. Witness exhibit a to the right here. Now who is going to eat that cookie? Clearly no one I work with. Even the Post-It note asking all of us to "Help yourself" could not entice a taker. That tupperware dish was full of cookies, including the chocolate chip snickerdoodles, but all
that remained today was this sad little dye job. Believe me cookies is cookies is cookies where I work, and still no takers for this one. I mean, if I was really hungry I would eat a blue cookie, and then I bet it wouldn't taste any different. So really the blue cookie is just a hunger litmus test. "Are you sure you want that snack? Well alright then." So in the future I'm going to ask that all office bakers try a little tenderness and a whole lotta food coloring.