There’s never a dull day in my workplace. Perhaps, this is true of any workplace. However, sometimes, I think that working in a small company means you get to see a lot more of your colleagues’ quirks and personality traits than you would in a big corporate environment. I could be wrong, but that’s my theory.

At my office, there’s an eclectic mix of people who do some rather unusual things at times. Honestly, I find it all rather amusing – if not a little odd, but that’s what makes life interesting.

For instance, my one co-worker, Clarissa, is often on a mission to monitor the food supplies in the kitchen. However, this tends to go beyond pure stock control. In fact, she’s been known to take the ‘luxury’ food items out of the kitchen and stash them in a cupboard in her office, so she can ensure that they do not get consumed too quickly.

I must say, this is a very effective method, because no one wants to go and get yet another cookie out of her cupboard under her watchful eye. If you’re going to stuff your face full of cookies to get a sugar high when you’re slumping in the middle of the day, you’d rather not have your super disciplined, health-conscious, sugar-free colleague bearing witness to your indiscretions.

Now, on one particular day when Clarissa was not at work, Sally kept telling me that she was smelling banana bread in the office. This may seem strange, but it’s not uncommon for Sally to ‘smell’ things. You see, Sally is quite a food enthusiast (much like I am). So, she often conjures up images of delectable morsels that tickle her taste buds – and then, naturally, we end up talking about food and, before I know it, Sally can smell chocolate cake, sausages or something else in the air.

Yet, on this day, there was something different in the air. Sally’s insistence that she was smelling banana bread was more than imagination or a yearning desire for melted butter on a thick slice of warm, sweet bread.

I began to consider the possibility that, perhaps, there was a reason why Sally was suddenly smelling banana bread. And, it was then that I remembered…

Earlier in the week, Clarissa had mentioned that she was going to put the excess fruit in her cupboard. I hadn’t thought twice about it, because once an item goes into Clarissa’s cupboard, I consider it defunct. Her cupboard is the black hole of our kitchen supplies. Once food goes in there, it never comes out – well, not by anyone’s hands but Clarissa’s.

So, you can imagine my surprise when I ventured into Clarissa’s office, opened the food treasury and found a plastic packet full of oranges and very overripe bananas. I couldn’t help chuckling to myself.

“I’ve figured out why you are smelling banana bread,” I later told Sally with amusement. “Clarissa’s got a packet of overripe bananas in her cupboard!”

How ludicrous!

Nevertheless, I learnt two important things that day. Firstly, I should never discredit Sally’s sense of smell, because it is clearly very good after all. And, secondly, it doesn’t help to stash food in the hope of reducing consumption if it leads to no consumption at all.

Very overripe, blackened bananas are good for nothing. You can’t eat them or even turn them into delicious banana bread. All you can do is hide them in a cupboard and hope they give someone a rather nasty, yet sweet-smelling surprise!

© 2017 Audrey Whyte   All Rights Reserved