Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Ooooh, that smell

Okay, so I walk into the lunchroom at work, and something smells BAD. Like, you know when you throw away some old food and forget about it, and forget to take out the trash, and the trash can is sitting in the sun, and a few days later you lift the lid and WHOOOSH, and wave of disgustingness rises out and slaps you in the face? Okay, so maybe not that bad, but you get the idea: the distinct odor of rancid, spoiled food.
A bunch of my friends are sitting at one table, and a few other people I don’t know as well are sprinkled about the lunchroom. I sit down and say “Ugh, what’s that bad smell?” Everyone is oddly silent. I continue “Seriously, don’t you guys smell that?” No response. “Maybe it’s the trash.” I walk over and sniff the trash can. Nope. The refrigerator? Sniff that too, to no avail. A leftover fruit plate on the counter? Negative.
I give up and return to my seat. “What the heck is it?” Carolina finally answers “It doesn’t smell bad, it just smells, um…different.” I respond “No, it smells bad! Like, rotten!” Finally, I notice that my co-worker Andy is giving me the universal SHUT UP signal, you know, the one where you move your hand in slashing motion across your throat.
Then, and only then, I realize that the horrible smell is actually emanating from some girl's lunch, and everyone else had already figured it out before I walked in the room. I never would have made such a production about the whole thing if I had known the source. Now the poor girl will probably never eat in there again. In my defense, I hadn’t fathomed the possibility that someone would be deliberately eating something that smelled like rotting carrion. As soon as she left, my friends DIED laughing about the entire incident, especially the part where I went around sniffing everything in the lunchroom.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's fabulous! The worse part about lunchtime in an office is lunchtime. leave the smelly leftovers at home.

Frances said...

Hahahah! That is so funny!

Anonymous said...

Can I ask if this girl is Asian? I mean they always eat the smelliest foods. One of my favorite foods in the entire world, according to my non-Asian friends, smells like toe nail snots. But to me, it smells like yumminess.

eileen said...

Yes, she is Asian, so maybe she was eating your toe nail snots. Poor girl- she's really shy and quiet and probably traumatized by the incident.