Tuesday, 16 May 2006
Is this a cheese shop?
I have come by some lovely cheese. Long story short, I scratched someone's back a while ago, and they've given me some cheese as a bit of an extra thank-you scratch on mine. So when I arrived at my desk this morning, there were two quarter wheels of cheese; one parmesan, one pecorino.
But I had a physio appointment at 9am, meaning this cheese was on display, and mine being one of the more, shall we say, exposed desks in the office, just about everyone here saw these two great hunks of cheese on my desk and though to themselves, "My, but Drew has an awful lot of cheese on his desk; I wonder if he'll give me some."
There was even an email waiting for me regarding said cheese, along the lines of 'where did you get such a lot of cheese, how can I get some too?' to which I replied, I knew a purveyor of cheesy comestibles (had to squeeze in a reference somewhere and, as there is no bazouki player in this anecdote, that seemed the obvious place to do it) who had supplied it to me.
Two minutes later, before I even had a chance to warm my seat, she was around at my desk "asking" could she have some cheese, as if the gift given to me, on account of it being present in the office, was now somehow to be shared between everyone in the office. It reminded me of a guy I used to share a house with in Bendigo, who seemed to believe that any foodstuff purchased and brought into the house was thereby the property of the house and able to be consumed by anyone who lived therein, i.e. him. There was one particularly nasty discussion about a box of Nutri-grain I was keeping in my room. He used to eat my food, so I used to steal his condoms. It was only fair.
So I was really put on the spot; one of those very awkward situations where it seems impolite to say no, even though it was extremely impolite to ask in the first place. It was like some kind of standover tactic, where she said 'hand over the cheese or I'll make you look selfish and greedy'.
So, at the time, I said I'd give her some, though I have since found out that person who supplied the cheese actually brought in more to share between her workmates and this person had already ingratiated herself and scored a portion of pecorino. Then upon finding out that I had more, came over to ask for some parmesan from me. Who's being greedy here? Her or me?
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