Humor: Clocking Tuna in a Cubicle Maze

Many years ago I landed a position with a large company and worked hard to prove myself.

My year-end evaluation score was disappointingly low. Crestfallen, I probed my uncommunicative manager as to what I was doing wrong. He kept returning to the fact I took lunch breaks at my desk, where I read the daily newspaper.

"Is there a policy that says I can't eat at my desk?" I asked.

"No, you can eat at your desk. It just doesn't look good to read the newspaper at your desk," he replied.

This being my first run-in with a cubicle culture, I had more questions.

"Don't I get 45 minutes for lunch?"

"Yes, you do."

"Is that my time or your time?"

"It's your time, but you shouldn't be reading the paper at your desk during that time," he said.

"Then it's not really my time, is it?"

"Look," he said, "You can do whatever you want during lunch. I'm just saying you don't want to read your paper at lunch."

"But that's the problem," I replied, "I DO want to read the paper at lunch. Why isn't that covered under the 'whatever I want to do with my own time' clause?"

"Because it looks bad," he answered.

"Looks bad to whom?" I asked. "My coworkers go out for lunch. This is a secure area. People from other divisions can't wander through our department even if they want to. What does it matter if I read on my own time?"

"I don't want you reading the paper at lunch," he insisted. "If you do, I will continue to take off points on your review."

I thought about our little conversation until lunch-time that day.

When the office emptied, I got out my tuna fish sandwich and wandered into my manager's empty office, took a bite and looked around. My eyes fell on his wall clock. I took it down and examined the back. Bingo! Except for the mechanism and the batteries, there was an empty area crying out for fish.

Taking another bite for sizing purposes, I stuffed the bulk of my tuna sandwich into the cavity of the clock.

Re-hanging the clock, I left the office, walking into a bright sunny day. I sat in the park for the next hour reading my newspaper. Everybody else in the office took hour plus lunch breaks, so I determined to take an hour and fifteen minutes from then on, using my time to read the paper in a restaurant instead of answering phone calls at my desk during "my time."

A few days later the odor in his office reached a peak, but he was a manager, and could not find the source till months later when Daylight Savings Time rolled around.

Carrying the desiccated sandwich to my desk, he asked if I knew anything about it.

I remarked only that it had been a very long time indeed since I had brought my lunch from home to eat at my desk while reading the newspaper.

My next "performance" review indicated surprising improvement.

If you need to punch up an evaluation, fish sandwiches work.

Mike Ogden asks sometimes humorous, always thought provoking questions and tells stories with a twist and a point at the Ifs Of OG.