I arrived early last Wednesday morning — about 06:00 — to follow up a lead from Marketing. According to local legend, their kitchen is haunted by a spoon-like object that, in the words of the locals, “has the amazing ability to pick up food like a fork. It’s a revolution in kitchenware. It’s two utensils in one!”
I would normally ignore such tales as myth or, at best, a cheesy sales pitch. No stone, however, must be left unturned and no market-speak left untranslated. Damn those evil marketing copy writers, forever obfuscating and hyperbolating. I’d cut through that like a … a cutting thing through something that’s all soft and… cuttable. Like chocolate cake. Or pizza. I’d cut through it like a spatula through an omelette. Like pinking shears through a dill pickle. Like bolt-cutters through a Nerf football. Like a chainsaw through Jell-O. Ooh, that’s a good one. Just like that.
Anyway, after setting up a cubicle dweller blind, I observed the locals arriving for work. Typically, they’d enter the kitchen, fill a mug at the vending machine, then leave. Was that in itself a suspicious pattern? Every time it was the same. Enter, fill the mug, leave. Like a ritual. Was this the infamous Cult of the Coffee Bean founded by Juan Valdez back in the seventies?
By 11:00, I wondered if I was approaching this correctly. I still had no solid leads. Also, all that coffee really made me have to pee.
I struck camp and retreated to my cubicle.