What I Actually Do at Work

"Are you still contagious?"  This isn't a good phrase to overhear at the best of times.  It definitely isn't a good phrase to hear in your staff kitchen.  It's right up there with "Has anybody seen my pet rat?" and "Botulism isn't half as bad as people think."

Incidentally, when I say "staff kitchen" I mean a sort of hybrid café/meeting place place sprawling over a high rent chunk of the 60th floor of our building.  There are tables, there are chairs, there are large windows affording magnificent views over the harbour and Garden Island where naval personnel struggle to cram tanks onto the landing craft attached to our new LHDs.  Yes, we've fixed the engine problems but have now discovered that our tanks aren't a perfect fit for the landing craft designed to take them from the ship to the shore.  Apparently if there's so much as a mild swell our entire armoured regiment will drown during deployment.  This isn't too much of a problem since the only thing we've used our tanks for since the Vietnam War is to provide a home for mice.  In the unlikely event that we ever have to use the multibillion dollar eyesores currently hulking at Garden Island for their designed role we would be wiser just to surrender immediately.

But back to our staff café.  It truly is amazing, it provides a place where the firm's employees can come, hang out and relax as long as they don't mind the fact that their employers are witnesses to the fact they're goofing off.  One can read papers, have meetings, listen to the music played just loud enough to interfere with conversations while not actually being loud enough to enjoy and eat a veritable hipsters wet dream of foodstuffs.  We have avocados of both the smashed and unsmashed varieties.  There are large mushrooms garnished with an egg (the foetus and fungi special).  There's so much Turkish bread that the people of Istanbul are in imminent danger of starvation and gluten free stuff everywhere.  In fact if gluten dares show its face in our café the staff would beat it to death with an avocado smasher.

The deserved centre of attention is the toaster.  This toaster is a thing of beauty by which I mean it is rather ugly in a sort of retro, artisanish way.  I'm sure we're all familiar with what toasters are supposed to look like.  Small metal things with slits in the top for the bread.  One drops the bread in the slits, pushes down on the convenient handle and a short while later toast is catapulted across the room in a cloud of burnt crust particles.  That's what a toaster looks like.  Not ours.  Ours is a rough metal box made of six sheets of unpolished metal that have apparently been screwed together more or less at random, possibly by indigenous tribesmen near the Ganges (which let's face it is where most Bangladeshi factories are located).  The first time I saw it I had to be prevented from posting letters into it.

When you ask the cafe staff for toast they actually give you bread and point you in the direction of this arcane device.  The bread can be sourdough, wholemeal or seeded (as I like to call it; white, brown or gritty) but whatever version you acquire you take it along to the ancestor of toasters long past and drop it onto a wire tray angled so that the bread, eventually, slides slowly into the metal box.  Then its wise to catch up on the news or do a little work (you will be billing a client for this time anyway) chat with friends or develop a new religion.  A ridiculously long time later the bread you dropped into the metal box will find its way out of the bottom in a state best described as "somewhat warm".  You could toast bread equally effectively by holding it up to direct sunlight for five minutes.

Strangely everybody seems quite happy with this result.  Possibly by the time the "toast" actually makes its appearance the recipient is so crazed with hunger that they would actually eat unhusked wheat if that's what the toaster produced.  Somewhat warm bread procured you can then spread it with avocado or peanut butter and enjoy it with your decaf almond latte. Butter will be provided if you ask for it as long as you're prepared to spend the rest of your life as a social pariah.

With all of this out of the way there is nothing for it but to return to your desk and do some actual work all the while hoping that the person who assured you of their non contagious status was telling the truth.