I’m Fairly Certain There’s a Worm Hole in the Company Refrigerator

No, that’s not a frozen turkey

A few weeks ago, I began my work week by stopping off at the local Panera Bread to pick up a nice fat bag of bagels and a large tub of reduced-fat cream cheese (which, by the way, tastes almost exactly like it’s full-fat twin brother, yet I feel much less guilty about slathering all over my morning bagels). This may or may not have been the day that I ended up with Bandit’s rawhide dog-chew stuck to the back of my shirt. I’m not really certain.

Oh wow, this blog entry makes me think I may be something of a Panera Bread whore! Now I wonder if they recognize me when I go in there, like I’m Cliff from Cheers. I’m sure the store manager must be thinking, “Oh, here comes that weird guy from Ohio that walks around with dog chews stuck to the back of his clothes! I bet he is going to order a pizza bagel along with chive and onion cream cheese!” Shit. Now I’ll feel self conscious when I go by there tomorrow morning!

So, anyway… that Monday morning I bought a bag of like six bagels. The nice dim-witted teen at the counter had cut an extra one by mistake and gave it to me for free. I so love stupidity bonuses!

After arriving at work, I took out one of the bagels for my breakfast and threw the rest in one of the Sub Zero freezers in our company dining area. The bag was tied off and I didn’t really think about putting my name on it or anything like that. I mean, who would accidentally take a big honking bag of bagels, right? I can see accidentally running off with someone’s Lean Cuisine. After all, they all pretty much look the same. It would be fairly easy to grab the wrong frozen dinner and not realize it.

The next morning, I spent my entire commute thinking about having one of those yummy bagels as soon as I got to work. Would I toast up the pizza bagel or go for my old standby, the Asiago Cheese bagel?

After arriving at the office, I headed down to the cafeteria and pulled open the freezer drawer to grab by big ass bag of bagels. Except, it wasn’t there.

I stood there for a second, in a state of shock, staring at a drawer containing a couple of Lean Cuisines and someone’s pint of frozen yogurt.

What.

The.

Fuck!?

Perhaps I had put it in one of the other two freezers. I quickly double checked those as well.

No. No bag of bagels.

So I triple checked, even looking under the Lean Cuisines.

It was gone.

Some douche nozzle had snagged my entire bag of bagels! What the Hell?

I clamored back up the stairs to our office, pissed off like a midget trying to shoot a jumper against Dikembe Mutombo. Who the freak would steal a bag of bagels out of the fridge? It’s not like we work for a horrible company that pays chump change to it’s employees! Perhaps someone needed them for a spur of the moment business meeting? Perhaps the bagel elves had sneaked off with them in the night? Who knows, really….

I mentioned the theft to my supervisor and some of my co-workers, who politely told me to be sure I put my name on my food because sometimes other people mistake food in the refrigerators as their own. At this, I though to myself, “Who mistakes a see through bag full of bagels as their own?” Perhaps, next time, I will leave a friendly little post-it note on the bag of bagels stating:

“Hi, potential bagel thief! I see what you did there! Just as a courtesy, I’m letting you know that I personally licked all six of these bagels prior to putting them into the fridge. Regards, Andrew”

I’m quite sure that doing this would greatly reduce any chance that some devious food grabber will again run off with my breakfast. Also, it would let everyone know just how entirely crazy I really am.

My supervisor also advised me to send off an email to HR, so they could document the incident. Of course, me being me, got lost in Facebook that morning and entirely forgot to let HR know about it. One of my co-workers did, however, and that afternoon, a generic email went out to the entire company, reminding us to label our food prior to storing it in the refrigerators and to make sure we pay attention to what we take out of the fridges for lunch. I later ran into one of the HR reps who advised that they couldn’t send out anything that would be misconstrued as “accusatory” in nature, such as:

Dear employees,

It has come to our attention that some worthless scumbag of a leech has been stealing bagels and possibly lunches from the cafeteria refrigerators. Please understand, that stealing is a crime, and if your are caught, you will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Plus you will likely lose your job and all of your ex co-workers will talk about you on social media behind your back. Also, you will likely end up being black listed from working in the financial services field, and will have to make ends meet washing dishes at the local Taco Bell. Or Panera Bread. Because karma is a bitch.

Regards,

HR

Well, that’s how I would have handled it, anyway. I guess it’s a good thing I do not work in HR.

Fast forward to a few weeks later. Today, in fact.

I went downstairs to drop off my Lean Cuisine (which did not have any kind of post-it or anything written on it) in the freezer. After tossing it into the drawer, I noticed what looked like a bag with a big-ass frozen turkey in it. In my mind, I thought, “Who the hell brings a turkey to work? Thanksgiving is like months away from now!”

I closed the freezer drawer, but then opened it back up. It wasn’t a turkey at all!

It was my six missing bagels!!!!

WTH!?

Somehow, the bag of bagels had mysteriously reappeared in the freezer drawer. Not just A freezer drawer, but THE freezer drawer they had been maliciously stolen from!

“How could this have happened?” I though.

I walked back upstairs and let the events ferment in my brain for a few minutes, eventually settling on three or four likely (or unlikely) scenarios to explain the magical reappearance of the bagels:

1. Someone stole the bagels, but was deathly allergic to Asiago Cheese, thus they decided to return them after a few weeks, hoping that the heat had died down.

2. Whoever ran off with the bagels read the HR memo, felt guilty, and returned the bag unharmed.

3. Inspired by those traveling gnome photos a few years back, someone has flew all over the world, posting random shots with my bagel bag on Instagram next to national monuments like the Eiffel Tower, the Pyramids, and possibly a Panera Bread in Wichita Falls.

4. There’s a rift in time and space that exists in the bottom of the freezer, causing the bagels to by sucked into a worm hole and mysteriously returned weeks later.

Considering the events, I’m pretty sure it’s not the second scenario. Oh, and I’m not touching those bagels. No f*cking way. Who knows how many times they’ve been licked…