June 29, 2007
It's one of the biggest workplace issues facing employees today.
What is etiquette surrounding office snacks?
Guru has ascertained that there are five distinct circumstances when it is de rigueur to provide food for your colleagues:
1) On your return from holiday - whether to the Seychelles or Skegness - you must bring back some locally produced sweets or biscuits. These are usually quite unpleasant and remain largely uneaten on top of the filing cabinet for several weeks until someone finally throws them in the bin.
2) On your birthday, against the general trend of receiving rather than giving, it is expected that you should provide your workmates with a cake. This can be homemade, but this very much depends upon your cookery skills. There will be sniping behind your back if this cake does not live up to expectations. Doughnuts are an acceptable substitute.
3) After a working-lunch meeting at which sandwiches have been provided it is common practice to supply any left-overs to your colleagues that weren't fortunate enough to have been invited. The bread may be starting to harden and curl up at the corners, but this platter of free-lunch remnants will be gratefully devoured nonetheless.
4) At the end of the Easter or Christmas holidays, (childless) employees often return to the office with the mounds of chocolate that they have become too nauseous to eat. Sadly, however, the donor has managed to consume all the Quality Street or Roses favourites, leaving only hard toffees and strawberry cremes for the rest of us to pick over.
5) When any supplier or customer sends a 'thankyou' box of chocolates, it would be unforgiveable for the recipient to smuggle it home. No, in keeping with these 'rules of snack engagement' the treats must be opened in full view of the office and shared among the staff.
Non-compliance with any of the above conventions will be treated with contempt and the transgressor may be excluded from future snack benefits.
This may not be a definitive list, and Guru would be grateful for any other hints and tips associated with food in the office.
It's a snack protocol minefield out there, folks. And don't even get Guru started on the tea/coffee rota procedures, where rank and gender seem to have a major bearing on the code of conduct.
