{"id":1103,"date":"2011-08-24T17:54:53","date_gmt":"2011-08-24T17:54:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/diaryofawimpycatholic\/?p=1103"},"modified":"2015-03-13T15:04:06","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T21:04:06","slug":"messy-eaters-unite-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/diaryofawimpycatholic\/2011\/08\/messy-eaters-unite-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Messy Eaters, Unite!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Can you not stand the smell of lamb vindaloo coming from the next cubicle? Does the sight of a masticating neighbor chafe your eyes and ruin your mental feng shui? According to the Wall Street Journal,<\/i><\/strong><\/a> you\u2019re not alone. In fact, you and your more fastidious colleagues may even be able to form \u2014 and here, at last, the metaphor becomes appropriate \u2014 a tea party:<\/p>\n

Becki Holmes especially hates the fumes of artificial-butter flavoring in microwave popcorn that pollute the offices of a Seattle food and beverage retailer where she works. \u201cAnd you can never find the person who made the popcorn,\u201d she says.
\nshape.\u201d <\/p>\n

That smell, from shelf-stable additives that produce a buttery flavor, can be unpleasant and tends to linger, says Pamela Dalton, an olfactory researcher at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, a nonprofit that researches taste and smell. <\/p>\n

She ties bad smell to a much larger mood: Smelling others\u2019 lunches in the office can make people feel as if they have lost \u201ccontrol over their personal environment,\u201d Dr. Dalton says. A bad or unidentified smell can \u201cmake us go on alert, distract us from what we\u2019re doing and change our mood,\u201d usually for the worse, she says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Ten years ago, American white-collar workers were wondering who moved their cheese. Before long, they\u2019ll be wondering who cut it. <\/p>\n

Jesus wept. Must people be so precious? Reduced to its essentials, eating is the task of stuffing foreign objects \u2014 often dead animal flesh \u2014 into a body cavity where they\u2019ll be broken down by digestive enzymes. With or without trans fat, with or without complex carbohydrates, it is a nasty, primal business. Whatever anyone might wish, it cannot be reduced completely to the abstract. <\/p>\n

This impulse to do so helps explain that scene from Animal House<\/em> where the beatnik has attracted a harem of sorority houris by singing, \u201cI gave my love a cherry\/That had no stone;\/I gave my love a chicken\/That had no bone.\u201d Tunefully or not, he is offering these girls \u2014 who, this being 1962, will probably spend their lives toiling under someone like Lou Grant \u2014 a utopian vision of their future.<\/p>\n

Look, I\u2019ve shared office space with all sorts of people , from Dorito scarfers to kimchi gobblers. But I can say honestly that, by and large, they managed not to drive me to distraction. The most disconcerting office mate I ever had was a bodybuilder who lived on MyoPlex shakes, which he mixed in the blender he kept next to his monitor. What bothered me wasn\u2019t the sound of whirring blades, since that lasted for only thirty seconds, nor the smell, since there wasn\u2019t any. Instead, it was his habit of asking whether I knew any good veterinarians. When I\u2019d answer no and ask why, he\u2019d flex his biceps and shout, \u201cCAUSE THESE PYHTHONS\u2019RE SICK!\u201d, whereupon I\u2019d have to admit, enviously, that they were.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a question of assigning blame properly. A general decline of manners and morals is, as noted gastronomical pioneer Hannibal Lecter would say, incidental. The real culprit is the death of leisure. If people are eating cheek-by-jowl in cube farms, it\u2019s because lack the time to eat anywhere else. The mannerly, multicourse meal of old \u2014 where everyone juggled numerous pieces of silverware, chewed slowly, passed the claret in the correct direction and traded epigrams \u2014 was the creation of people who neither worked nor commuted. Conversely, the sandwich \u2014 pretty much synonymous with unseemly bolting, extravagant chin dribbling and obstructed speech \u2014 was the invention of one of history\u2019s first multitaskers. Granted, the innovator in question \u2014 John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich \u2014 was trying to combine the tasks of dining and high-stakes faro-playing. But among people of his time and class, that counted as a job. Certainly it was no less stressful, or risky, than trading bonds is today. <\/p>\n

Perhaps it\u2019s memories of my father that bias me in favor of the busy, messy eater. In matters of dress, the man was a perfect coxcomb, compared by everyone who knew him to one member of the Rat Pack or another. His conversation was varied and witty; he could navigate his way through art or philosophy without hitting too many walls, and had a genuine appreciation for jazz music. But he worked 13 hours a day, and for that reason, turned into a cafone <\/em>whenever food hove in view. <\/p>\n

On his lunch breaks, I\u2019d bring us both Italian sausage parmesan sandwiches from Vinnie\u2019s, on West 73rd Street. Those delicious things are stinking, sweating mess machines; not even Jane Austen could have addressed one daintily. My dad had the additional handicap of wanting \u2014 in fact, needing \u2014 to talk simultaneously, since these moments made up a good part of our quality time. Often, while telling me about his work or asking about my grades, he\u2019d have to pluck a dangling aiguillette<\/em> of melted mozzarella from his mouth, roll it discreetly into a small ball, and stick it back in. I did not wince, I did not sniff: this was the act of a hardworking man. <\/p>\n

Fortunately, some people get it. According to the WSJ article, \u201c\u2018Squeezing out every possible moment\u2019 in the day for work actually drains energy and reduces output, says Tony Schwartz, chief executive of the Energy Project, Riverdale, N.Y., an author and consultant on employee engagement.\u201d Thanks to a campaign launched last year, 109 \u201cTake Back Your Lunch\u201d groups have emerged on MeetUp.com. <\/p>\n

Yes indeed, citizens \u2014 to the barricades! Make a point of eating where nobody will have occasion to complain what or how. Otherwise, I can see HR masterminds imposing drastic measures. Imagine hearing Bill Lumbergh tell Milton, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you, ah, go ahead and disconnect that IV drip for a second. We need to talk.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Can you not stand the smell of lamb vindaloo coming from the next cubicle? Does the sight of a masticating neighbor chafe your eyes and ruin your mental feng shui? According to the Wall Street Journal, you\u2019re not alone. In fact, you and your more fastidious colleagues may even be able to form \u2014 and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":192,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[81,146,231],"class_list":["post-1103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-energy-projet","tag-manners","tag-tony-schwartz"],"yoast_head":"\nMessy Eaters, Unite!<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Can you not stand the smell of lamb vindaloo coming from the next cubicle? 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