I thought this article on the sandwich lunch, in the Economist magazine, was fun, true, and light-hearted enough to bring a smile to most faces – a direly-needed sentiment in today’s chaotic world.
The article was entitled “The hell of the sandwich lunch – working and eating do not go together”. It starts by comparing the worst combination of any two words in the English language; it cites “surprise party”, “cruise holiday”, “keen golfer”, among others, but states that although, separately, the words “sandwich” and “lunch” contain lots of promise, together they spell unmitigated disaster.
Most obviously, it says, those two words signal that your lunch is ruined. You might have been planning to stroll through a park, eat with a friend, or chew your way through some YouTube videos. Now you will be spending your break, trapped in a meeting room with several of your colleagues. Even more galling, your manager has announced that sandwiches will be provided, as though you should be vaguely grateful for such an offer. “It’s more fun because food is being laid on,” doesn’t ring true in prison, and it doesn’t in offices either.
The actual food choices are not yours. Instead, they appear to have been made by a six-year-old. The centerpiece is a platter of sandwiches cut into triangles. There are paper plates. You are tempted to look around for party hats and clowns – some of your colleagues, and maybe your manager, may qualify for this description, but without the hats. The sandwich fillings are unidentifiable, and you know that consuming them won’t clarify that question.
Not that you actually eat much. The etiquette of the sandwich lunch requires everyone to take less than they want, in order to signal to the wider group that they are team players who know how to share, and not gluttons bingeing on free food. Your own plate is fairly typical: two triangles of bread, four salt-and-vinegar crisps (potato chips), a limp salad leaf and one plum tomato. It’s about as appetizing as a cup of sand, and much less filling.
Crisps (potato chips) are never noisier than when eaten at a sandwich lunch. Every bite thunders through the room; eyes flick your way with each crunch, and then back to the speaker. You wonder how long it takes for a crisp (potato chip) to dissolve with just your saliva alone, and conclude its just better to get the whole thing over quickly. You try a desperate staccato burst of chomping. All eyes are on you now. The boss has stopped talking. One final crunch, and a swallow. The crisp is dead. So are your promotion prospects.
Your colleagues have now absorbed the risks of eating crisps, but danger lurks everywhere. Someone attempts to spear a tomato with a plastic fork, and it zooms across the table like a guided missile, seeking out the lap of the manager.
The chairperson of the meeting appears to be operating on a simple principle: ask for someone’s opinion only if they have just taken a bite of something.
And so it goes on, until everyone, except the manager who organized this fiasco, realizes that the very worst thing you can do at a “sandwich lunch” is serve sandwiches.
From here on in, nothing more will be eaten. Work will take over as the triangular pieces of bread slowly turn yellow and curl. Even the chocolate brownies in the center of the table, the only really-edible part of the presentation, are left alone because everyone has stopped eating, and no-one wants to be the “Glutton” who starts again.
When the meeting wraps up, someone will take the remnants to the staff kitchen, where the real beneficiaries of the sandwich lunch will tuck in.
In total relief, you can now head out of the office, for the ten minutes you have left of your break, looking desperately for some real food.
I hope you are smiling by now in morbid recognition of an event that is all too familiar!
