Best Served Cold

My first submission on here. A short story about an office theif. Any comments welcome. The emoticons don’t work on here, here so I’ve done them old school. 

 

Best Served Cold

Alice’s phone buzzed.

My yoghurt’s been violated! :-( Mt 4 lunch?

She replied instantly.

…er… WTF? Yep. Usual place?

They met in the University botanical gardens, as they did at least once a week if the weather was good.

 ‘Licked clean. Look.’ Pip delved in her lunch bag and showed Alice the evidence. ‘The chocolate covered cornflakes from the corner bit. Not a single crumb left.’

 ‘Ugh!’

‘I know. They left the yoghurt, but I’m not sure I want to touch it now’.

 ‘Same as the others then,’ said Alice, ‘little bits of something sweet but not all of it?’

Pip nodded, mouth bonded shut with cheese and pickle sandwich.

‘Remind me what the others were’.

A couple of months ago Jeanette from Finance had complained that most of the chocolate covered raisins in her lunch box had disappeared. Then lovely Rob from PR, her own team, lost one finger of a Kit-Kat. Val, PA to the Deputy VC; half of a box of mini chocolate brownies. She heard of these offences independently - meetings, lift chit-chat, or in the case of Rob, during the PR teams turn for kitchen cleaning, (they were the only two who bothered to turn up).

After the brownies Pip suspected a thief. Each item was chocolaty, unopened, and taken from the communal fridge. Only a portion was consumed, the remainder left for the owner to find, which Pip thought quite cynical. Petty food thefts were part and parcel of her student experience but it was happening again in the supposedly grown-up, executive world of Senate House. It was barely believable.

A mixture of departments, executives like the VC and other Directors with corner offices, assistants, officers, and lowly PAs and interns worked on the fifth floor; nearly seventy people. Was the perpetrator hoping the victims wouldn’t learn of each other? Forget about the missing food by the next incident?

 ‘The Kit-Kat finger is hilarious’, said Alice.

‘It’s not funny’ said Pip. ‘It’s alright for you on fourth, doesn’t affect you.’

‘What are you going to do?’

 ‘Personalised note on the fridge’. Generic notices about respecting others’ food had been callously ignored.

‘Wow,’ Alice grinned, ‘brutal’.

‘Haha. Everyone will be aware, hopefully it’ll shame them’.

‘You told Rachel?’

Pip had mentioned it to her manager, a PR assistant, who’d promised to talk to her boss. She knew she was being fobbed off.

‘No-one will care unless it happens to them. We never all get together – it’s all small team meetings. This sort of thing never comes up. On the last few PR meetings the kitchen-cleaning rota has been on the agenda as AOB. But we never get to AOB.’

‘Any suspects Constable?’

As the food disappeared in working hours, Pip had discounted cleaners, or other ancillary staff that worked the dawn or twilight shifts, deciding it had to be a colleague. Entering the kitchen alone they must eat the item immediately or secrete it and hurry back to their desk. Diabetics seemed unlikely.

‘I’ve decided it’s a normal person, or maybe a bulimic’.

‘Excellent deductions Miss Marple. You’re looking for a normal person, or someone who vomits the evidence down the toilet straightaway. You’ll have this case sorted in no time!’ Alice was beside herself with glee.

Pip pretend-punched her. ‘I’m not altogether happy with how amusing you’re finding this. Remember somebody licked out my yoghurt corner’.

Alice almost choked on her banana, ‘Ooh, you make it sound so intimate! If they’re really hot you might not mind them licking out your chocolate compartment.’

‘Disgusting! Who says they’re male anyway?’

Alice smiled sardonically, ‘I didn’t specify a gender’.

‘Well aren’t you a bundle of mischief today?’ said Pip. ‘For some reason I just think the culprit is female. Its clever, calculating, discrete’.

‘Speaking of intimate,’ Alice raised an eyebrow suggestively, ‘has Rob done anything even vaguely inappropriate towards you yet?’

‘No. I think you’re right about him.’

                                                                         ***

To the person who has been stealing chocolate items:

(raisins, brownie, kit-kat finger, and cornflakes from a corner yoghurt).

If it’s not yours don’t eat it! STOP eating other people’s food. We don’t know your name. Yet.

What kind of grown up steals food from a colleague anyway?

 

***

 

            There were no incidents for a couple of weeks – Pip and Alice made do with tedious talk of rent, bills, loans, job prospects, and non-existent love lives. Mid-morning one Tuesday however…

 

Another incident this morning!!! :-| Lunch?

 

            ‘I really thought that note had done the trick.’

            ‘What was it this time?’ said Alice

            ‘Half a big bar of Dairy Milk.’

‘Who brings a big bar of Dairy Milk to work with them?’

‘That’s beside the point. Pete in HR left it on top of his lunchbox in the fridge first thing, goes back to grab some around eleven and it’s been snapped in half! I was in the kitchen with him at the time.’

‘Blimey – you might have just missed them! Did you see who came out of the kitchen before you went in?

‘No.’

Pip and Rob had been keeping a close eye on the kitchen. It was far from a perfect stakeout; sometimes they had meetings, were out the office, and crucially their desks were around the corner from the entrance. All traffic could also be heading for the stairs, lifts, or toilets. She made frequent trips to the water machine.

            Her eyes pursued people going to and fro. Were they carrying food? Her eyes burned holes through each person looking for anything suspicious in pockets, clothes or on faces.  She worried about getting a reputation for staring. The office gawker.

‘The only suspect I’ve got is Miriam from the Legal Team,’ said Pip. ‘She uses the kitchen a lot. But I’m worried I just suspect her because she’s a bit…large. You might have seen her coming in or out – short, bit squashed, reminds me of a Pug. Purple glasses, lime green coat.’

‘Oh yeah, I’ve seen her. Sort of waddles? You’re right - she is a bit of a heifer. It’s probably fattist or sizist or whatever, to suspect her just because of that.’

Pip sighed, ‘I know.’ Inventing excuses to visit every corner of the floor she had slipped around the office after the incident, surreptitiously peering into waste bins for signs of purple wrapping.

‘What now? Secret camera? Wiretap? Another note? Maybe all in capitals!’

‘Laugh all you like, but a stronger note is probably all I can do.’

***

 

To the person who is still stealing chocolate/sweet items that are not his or hers:

STOP! Did you buy them? NO!

Solution: go to the shop and get your own. You cannot be that hungry. If you are, gnaw the face off a homeless man.

Remember: Karma will find you…

 

***

            Late the next morning Alice was fighting a losing battle with Excel, trying to merge spread sheets that had other ideas. Her phone made a whip crack noise. Pip had messaged.

 

F***ing teeth marks in my mini roll!!! :-( :-( :-( Lunch today?

 

WTF!!! Vom, vom, vom. Yep, 12.30.

 

It was raining, so they met in the lounge bar next to the refectory, buying the cheapest drink and furtively eating their homemade lunches.

 ‘I’d even hidden it.’

‘Hidden it?’

‘Behind a tub of soya spread in the fridge door.’

Alice inspected the teeth marks in the half-eaten chocolate roll. ‘I’d joke about you sending it off for a DNA sample, but its not even remotely funny anymore is it?’

‘I’m angry now. And I feel sick’, said Pip. ‘Put it in the bin - I don’t even want to look at it. I’m the only person to be targeted twice.’

Anger focussed on her ham wrap, she munched aggressively. An escalation of proceedings was in order.

‘I don’t know how, but I’m going catch them. The time for notes on the fridge has passed.’

She caught a whiff of Alice’s sandwich. ‘What on earth are you eating?’

She smirked. ‘A marmite, cheese, houmous, lettuce, and cucumber sandwich.’

‘How can you eat that? Disgusting.’

It did give her an idea though.

***

Pip decided to set a trap.

She shouldn’t be taking matters into her own hands, but then people shouldn’t take what didn’t belong to them. The culprit should get their just desserts! Ha! She’d have to remember that one for Alice; she’d enjoy that. But what product would entice the thief? The next Sunday evening she made some Rocky Road. With a difference. Instead of marshmallows on top - salt dusted balls of toothpaste, and she’d used half a jar of wasabi powder in the chocolate mix for a touch of horseradish heat. Nothing too crazy, she thought.

            With guilty anticipation Pip placed the plastic box of neatly cut rocky road squares in the fridge early next morning. Her adrenaline charged limbs were restless; focus on work was difficult. Her right leg jiggled uncontrollably. She managed to check the box three or four times during the day. Nothing. She left for home a bundle of nerves.

            On her third trip, for coffee, to the kitchen the following day she opened the fridge for milk, immediately noticing that a portion had gone. She hurriedly replaced the milk, wanting to get back to the office, alert Rob, and start scanning the office.

            With two hot drinks in her right hand she carefully opened the weighty kitchen door with her left. Stopping the door with her foot, to allow transfer of one mug back to her left hand, she was set to continue when John, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Enterprise and Community Engagement, came running around the corner towards her.

            Such was his velocity his tummy was lurching from side to side. Pip was briefly aware of a curly hair poking out of his stripy shirt, and that his tongue was trying to escape from his mouth. Were his eyes streaming? And red? His nostrils were flaring.

The culprit!

            ‘Wor-da’, he shouted, ‘WOR-DA!’

            Pip was a rabbit in headlights. John was a freight train. His considerable girth simply didn’t fit through the gap between her and the door. She managed to move the coffees out of his path but he knocked into her on his way through.

Water. He wants water!

Pip bounced into the door, rebounding into the drinks. Coffee spilled over her hands. Instinctively she dropped both mugs to rid herself of the scalding liquid. Time became elastic. The heavy door began its closing procedure pushing her into the path of the falling mugs of napalm. In grotesque slow-motion she watched them bounce off her thighs and smash on the floor. She stumbled, and fell painfully to her knees.

As Pip wrenched a curved piece of china from her right knee she realised her flaming pink hands needed water. She turned towards the sink.

John was there. He was twisted over it, stomach bulging against the worktop. His head was under the cold tap, alternately gulping water or letting the torrent cascade over his tongue whilst he panted like a dog.

            As the scrum of bewildered colleagues at the door grew, Pip stayed on her knees below the water machine, both ‘cool’ and ‘ice cool’ taps numbing her hands.

 

(…While seeking revenge, dig two graves – one for yourself. Douglas Horton)