Office Eating Etiquette

We live in an age, a time, an era when we do not have the luxury of long coffee breaks at quirky and interesting coffee shops. We are unable to sit with beautifully polished china and cutlery and enjoy a lasting conversation over a finely prepared and delicate meal. No, we are on the move, everything is instant and we are not in a time when you can easily take the time to enjoy. Often, we will find ourselves eating at our desk--and here lies the problem. Your cubicle is your own personal space, your refuge for 8 hours a day, you make it your own to make it tolerable- there is no doubt about this. Telling the smell of your food to not leave your cubicle is like the days gone by of smoking and non smoking sections--the smoke goes where it pleases including the non smoking areas. When eating at your desk think of a scent that perhaps you hate tuna, onion, peppers, aubergine cooking, whatever it be and imagine that someone in your office is devouring right at that moment a dish that uses those ingredients, you wouldn't be ecstatic at that scent wafting through your office. invading your own private cubicle and space.

In addition to the scent there is the mess, if your office is strewn with empty cans, have eaten sandwiches, used napkins, and cutlery marred and grimed with meals gone by--it doesn't encourage those around you to come and visit your cubicle--and will even be a deterrent for some projects as executives will think (even if it be superficially) "if they can't keep their desk clean they can't manage a project". Throw away the remnants of your repas a la bureau in the appropriate trash receptacle (not one where the scent is going to remain for days on end, like an unwanted guest).

Lastly, when eating try to not slurp, crunch, much, grind, slosh, drool, scarf, scoff, inhale, dribble , and anything else while eating at your desk.

After all as William Henry Davies says in his poem "Leisure" :
"No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass."

We may not have all the leisure in the world, but we need not graze like sheep or cows at our desk to make up for our lack of time.

xoxo Miss Manners