Monday, August 30, 2010

10 types of lunch-eaters at your office canteen

Whenever you walk into your office canteen, you are faced with hundreds of people eating away to glory. If you notice carefully, these people usually fall into 10 different buckets that are described as follows -
  1. The solitary man: He has a very serious expression on his face. Or is mostly expression-less. The food is either very little - so he can finish fast and get the hell out of the lonely place. Or is a lot, and that is precisely the reason why he is sitting alone, so others don't make fun of him.
  2. The 'different' folks: They are the ones who do two or three rounds of the regular canteen. And then go order a sandwich in the side shop since they don't seem to like any food. It is usually the necessity to be high on the 'being different' coefficient that makes them pay half their salary on outside-canteen food.
  3. The giggly girls: You feel that this gang is laughing about anyone and everyone that goes past them. In reality, they just have a disease. To keep giggling at everything. And make loud noises to announce their presence to the entire canteen.
  4. The bosses: Bosses are of two types, ones that sit far away from anyone except their peers and discuss global company strategy or the state of the Indian economy. The other type is of course the ones who utilize lunch as an opportunity to socialize with their next rung, only the next rung utilize it as a chance to put in class-participation and pain the hell out of everyone else in the table.
  5. The dabba-walas: These are the home-food specialists for whom canteen food spells doom, or they have a spouse who forces them to take the home food. The dabba-wala folks follow a pre-defined process which consists of 4 steps -(i) Heat up the food in the micro-wave (ii) Utilize the plate from the office canteen (iii) Pick out the choice delicacies from the canteen food to go with their own house food (iv) Sit down like true kings who have the best of both worlds and hog away.
  6. The dieters: These are the people where the empty area on the plate shines from afar. The quantity of food taken puts baby food to shame. Reasons include hidden lumps of junk food in their cupboards, failure to understand a concept called 'exercise' or the long length of the weight-reduction prescriptions prescribed by the doctor.
  7. The treat-givers: This is the noisy gang that has ordered pizzas from Dominos as a treat for someone leaving the company! (enjoyment for the person surely) The ratio of veg to non-veg is always a point debated for close to an hour. Finally when the pizza lands, everyone wants to dig their hands into as many different boxes as possible. They never realize that the pizza folks have fooled them into believing they are different pizzas by altering the amount of the same toppings.
  8. The silent couple: This can be a newly formed romantic pair or a husband-wife combo that has been working in the company for dogs' years. 'Silence is golden' is a rule that is tried and tested. Since they have too much to talk back home or over the phone, they hardly make anything other than gestures during lunch time.
  9. The intellectual marathon: Heated conversations happen in a few tables. This heated conversation can be about a game of sport or about who will be the new boss. Opinions and counter-opinions are exchanged in the middle of gulping down parathas or curd rice. The ones that are most vocal are usually the least knowledgeable (applies in generic circumstances too)
  10. The big gang: This gang roams around the entire office, always sticking it up for one another. The 'gang' laughs together, cries together, takes food together, washes together (their hands) and makes a hell lot of noise together. The gang usually has more girls than guys. The gang's loud-mouths sit at the extremes of the table so that everyone else can hear them talk. The gang is usually made up of a mix of all of the above types of people...
Any other types you have encountered, please add them to the comments section...

3 comments:

Ezbzbee said...

I think the only type I can fit in is no. 10

satnam said...

# Extra Marital affair couple

I can totally recall the giggly girls group in the UB City office :-)

Unknown said...

@ezbzbee - it includes all the earlier types :) @satnam - :)

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