My workplace has a cafeteria where you can go in and get a pretty reasonable range of foodstuffs for not outrageous prices. I usually run in for a quick breakfast first thing when I get into work, because according to my mom and General Mills it’s the most important meal of the day. Lunch is usually done here too, because it’s quicker (and usually less expensive) to run in and get something than it is to drive into town for a burger.
The first decision that one always has to make when eating at the cafeteria is picking your tray. When I started working here back in the 20th century, there was only one kind of tray – a generic rectangular piece of hard plastic. It was a familiar shape that I was comfortable with, having used pretty much the same design all through college - rugged and durable to contain spills and also serve as an emergency sled when needed. As time has gone by however, diversity has come to the tray shelf. First we started seeing a new pseudo-pentagonal design (allegedly allowing more trays to fit on small round tables - see at right),
and then these flimsy plastic orange rectangles appeared a few months afterwards. And, horror of horrors, I started noticing that my “old school” trays were disappearing. Now, in college when this happened we usually blamed people borrowing them for use as sleds, but since the only hill we have on the company property runs directly into a retention pond I doubt anyone is using lunch breaks for impromptu “traying” expeditions. But month after month, more and more of my trays were gone, and more and more of the new trays were showing up.
This could only mean one thing – my trays were being systematically eliminated, in a Stalinesque pogrom intended to replace them with “new and improved” models. The fascist cafeteria manager obviously believed that the old trays had run out their usefulness and were innately inferior to his preferred brands of tray (rumors about tray-choice kickbacks filtered throughout the cafeteria community, but were mostly ignored since I started most of them and nobody else really seemed to care). Thus I’m now pondering ways to preserve my trays for future generations. I currently have one stashed away behind the drawers in my cubicle a la Anne Frank, and am considering smuggling small populations to other dining establishments in an effort to start captive breeding programs.
In the end, however, I may simply have to accept that society has decided that my trays have outlived their usefulness, and get used to the idea of using a floppy orange tray with half the carrying capacity. Planned obsolescence is a bitch.
The first decision that one always has to make when eating at the cafeteria is picking your tray. When I started working here back in the 20th century, there was only one kind of tray – a generic rectangular piece of hard plastic. It was a familiar shape that I was comfortable with, having used pretty much the same design all through college - rugged and durable to contain spills and also serve as an emergency sled when needed. As time has gone by however, diversity has come to the tray shelf. First we started seeing a new pseudo-pentagonal design (allegedly allowing more trays to fit on small round tables - see at right),
and then these flimsy plastic orange rectangles appeared a few months afterwards. And, horror of horrors, I started noticing that my “old school” trays were disappearing. Now, in college when this happened we usually blamed people borrowing them for use as sleds, but since the only hill we have on the company property runs directly into a retention pond I doubt anyone is using lunch breaks for impromptu “traying” expeditions. But month after month, more and more of my trays were gone, and more and more of the new trays were showing up.This could only mean one thing – my trays were being systematically eliminated, in a Stalinesque pogrom intended to replace them with “new and improved” models. The fascist cafeteria manager obviously believed that the old trays had run out their usefulness and were innately inferior to his preferred brands of tray (rumors about tray-choice kickbacks filtered throughout the cafeteria community, but were mostly ignored since I started most of them and nobody else really seemed to care). Thus I’m now pondering ways to preserve my trays for future generations. I currently have one stashed away behind the drawers in my cubicle a la Anne Frank, and am considering smuggling small populations to other dining establishments in an effort to start captive breeding programs.
In the end, however, I may simply have to accept that society has decided that my trays have outlived their usefulness, and get used to the idea of using a floppy orange tray with half the carrying capacity. Planned obsolescence is a bitch.
Comments
OK, I made that all up.
In that case breeding is easy - just smash them into little pieces.