Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2004 - 4:41 P.M.

Halloween is coming up and it has me thinking about snacks and candy. My place of employ provides many snacks for its employees. All for free. Fritos, Doritos, Cheetos (or, as I like to call them, The Holy Snack Trinity), animal crackers, pretzels, popcorn, Little Debbies, miniature and full-sized candy bars, peanuts, a variety of hard candies, fruit, Nutri-Grain bars and more as well as a variety of soft drinks, juices, hot teas, coffees and cocoas. Every couple of months an employee goes to the bulk food warehouse and grocery store and fills carts with pretty much whatever they want. All paid for with a company check. It�s a beautiful thing.

Now, it wasn�t always this way. There was a time when an employee would be laughed out of the building were they to request a specific type soft drink or perhaps a bottle of juice. Request an actual food product and you were sure to not only incur the wrath of the office manager, you quite possibly might find yourself out of a job. I�m hazy on how it happened but in the little more than nine years I�ve been here, we�ve gone from a smattering of Coke products to full-blown, massive-salt-intake, sugar-coma-inducing snackdom. Of course, you could also read that as: it�s taken us nine years�. The fact is though, the owners? They love all the snacks. And, honestly, it�s not like they themselves aren�t the major Frito banditos, animal cracker snatchers or Little Debbie heavies.

It�s made me realize something though. People will eat anything if it�s free. No matter how old or stale it may be. We�re talking about a Little Debbie that is months old that somehow finds itself in the gullet of a desperate, hungry employee working late. Nutri-Grain bars that have been here for a year have suddenly disappeared. Cocoas that came in a Christmas basket 2 years ago are drunk. I myself have been guilty of snarfing down Hershey�s miniatures that are months old when the urge for a Special Dark hits me.

We�re not just talking about stale snacks either. Things that people bring from home that other people have no clue what they are or how they wound up in the office? If left in the kitchen these items will be devoured. It could really, really suck and still, it�d be gone. It could be a purplish item the consistency of boiled squash and it�d be gone. Seriously, I�m beginning to wonder if a big pile of dog doo were to be set out on our table, would it be eaten? I don�t believe I can say �no� with any confidence. So, apparently, our motto is: give us your stale, your over-cooked, your limply fried. We�ll eat it.

At the very least, we�ll hand it out as a Halloween treat.

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� Purplecigar

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