Interesting Lunchtime At Work

Let me preface by saying that the same people eat at the same table during early lunch in my office.  The group includes me, my childhood friend SDF,  a young guy that works for me, a guy in Engineering who is just about six weeks away from retirement, and a guy that in charge of tooling and machining.  Sometimes a product line manager from the 2nd floor eats with us, but he wasn't a part of this group today.   SDF and I were just discussing how today's lunch was one of the most interesting lunches we've had in ages.  Here's a list of reasons why:

1.     Our continued fascination with our new vending machine system, aka Vending Canteen.   Everyone at my table has bought something at least once this week, whether we really wanted it or not, just to use the cool check-out system.

2.     The recent (yesterday) realization that in the lunchroom out in the factory, their ice maker gives out cool (no pun intended) nugget ice, just like you can get in your Polar Pop or at Thorntons. 

3.     The soon-to-be-retiree from Engineering wearing a UofL t-shirt today on Casual Friday. Note: the email from HR specifically says “no t-shirts allowed unless on special occasions”, like when they let us wear our favorite college team t-shirt during the NCAA tournament.  He said repeatedly that he got an email saying he could wear them. 

4.     The soon-to-be-retiree from Engineering also putting mayonnaise on everything he eats.  The food that gave us the most conversation was the fact that he puts mayo on pork and beans. 

5.     The place that we rented the ice cream freezer from came back today to pick up the unopened big five-gallon cardboard buckets of ice cream that we didn’t use.  At last count, there were 15 unopened cartons.  Many questions were raised.  First of all, the ice cream place only sent one person to pick up the freezer and all of the leftover ice cream.  Why would they send only one person for a big job like this?  So a lady in HR had to recruit a couple of guys to help the ice cream man.  The biggest question was is the ice cream company going to resell the ice cream that we bought?

6.     A guy from the office cleaning company was here today to clean and wax the floor in the Literature department.  He took a break during our lunchtime and came into the lunchroom and immediately asked where the Coke machine was.  We told him that we now use the Vending Canteen system.  He picked up a bottle of iced tea out of the refrigerator case, and tried (key word) to buy it.  We told him that he could use money and not get any change back or he could use his debit card.  He put it back in the refrigerator case, left and then came back and tried (key word) to buy it again.  He got frustrated and said “I’ll just drink water.”  I told him he was welcome to use our water, tea bags and sugar and make himself some tea, free of charge.  

7.     The soon-to-be-retiree told us that he got something in the mail yesterday saying that when he retires, he will be getting $290 a month from his pension plan at a former place of employment.  He said he didn’t know anything about it. That’s almost three hundred bucks.  I’d sure as hell know if I was going to be getting almost three hundred bucks a month besides my current employer’s retirement pension. 

8.     The soon-to-be-retiree assuming that I automatically knew about a “good car repair shop” out where he lives, about a thirty-minute drive from The Compound. 

I can't make this stuff up.