Back to the office: stuff this food in your desk drawer
After a year and a half of muddling through in the home office, it looks like more and more people are expected to work at the office a few days a week. Going from fresh espressos from your own Clooney machine to sour vending-machine coffee can hurt. With this secret stash in your desk drawer, you’ll make it through those office days after all.
Can you still remember the open-plan office, with all those desks in one big room? And do you remember what the coffee corner smelled and felt like, with those passive-aggressive threatening notes on the noticeboard: ‘clean up your own mess, your mother doesn’t work here’? Lunch in the canteen, with the choice of a soggy toasted sandwich that had been sitting under a heat lamp for half an hour, a salad with the texture of wood shavings, or the vegetarian berenhap?
A bit of an adjustment
However much people have grumbled about working from home, and however difficult it is to balance your laptop on the ironing board and Zoom with Piet Piraat and Bumba in the background – going back to the office will also take some getting used to. And not just because the Bol.com delivery driver will keep finding himself standing in front of a locked door.
But wait: with these groceries in your desk drawer, you can make the days bearable. Put a thick file on top, so your colleagues never get to your secret stash. So what do you do? First, make a trip to the supermarket, then cheerfully swipe your access pass through the revolving door again. Back to the office, let’s go!
Printer on, coffee ready
Those coffee machines are getting better and better at most offices. But nothing beats an espresso that drips straight out of your lovely coffee machine. Gather all your loyalty points and dig out the envelopes with VVV gift vouchers, and buy yourself one of those little pod espresso machines. Put it in a deep desk drawer, because if the Facilities team finds out you’ve plugged in an electrical appliance they haven’t approved, a vein will start throbbing in their temples.
Coffee time? First turn on the copier or printer to mask the sound, and hey presto, you have a lovely fresh cup. Of course, let it run into a cardboard cup so you don’t arouse suspicion. Nice colleagues may have a cup too; you’re not the worst. But: absolute secrecy is mandatory.
Oat milk in the fridge
That coffee, anyway. If you like a latte or cappuccino, you’ll probably get some weird synthetic milk foam from the machine. No, no: bringing a carton of barista milk, regular coffee creamer or little coffee-creamer cups from home (ugh, that powdered creamer!), or even oat milk to the office is really no unnecessary luxury. Mini cartons are also available, and they can be kept outside the fridge. And if possible, schedule a meeting or consultation off-site and pop into a coffee shop. It’s all difficult enough already; you simply need a decent latte macchiato.
Chasing away slugs
The tea options in the pantry are just as pitiful as the coffee machine. Those weird tea flavours, such as cranberry-green-tea-permanent-marker-liquid or acai-berry-rooibos-felt-tip-pen, are only useful for chasing slugs out of your vegetable garden. You’re not being punished, are you? Of course not, so from your laptop bag emerges a packet of loose tea from the tea shop, along with a little box of teabags you can fill yourself. Small investment, great workplace happiness.
Mini Tabasco
Those sad canteen meals – oh no, since the reorganisation it’s called the company restaurant – get a quick boost if you can stir a little harissa into the pumpkin soup or macaroni dish yourself. Alternative: Worcestershire sauce or Tabasco, in a mini bottle. Do it discreetly, though; you don’t want to offend the kitchen staff with your meal enhancers.
Pack it airtight
If you get peckish for something savoury a few hours after lunch at home, that’s no problem at all. You can nibble on a handful of nuts, cut off a piece of aged cheese, or simply have some crisps. Difficult at work, with all that crunching and munching, and besides, your laptop will end up covered in crumbs. Rice cakes are an option, as long as you’re alone in the office, because that smell is unbearable. Otherwise, you’ll have to make do with little bags of nuts.
Colleagues have already been spotted with Bifi sausages, and that sounds disgusting in the morning, but as the clock approaches five, you’ll fancy one too. Major advantage: you can keep them practically forever. As long as you put them in an airtight container – because practically every office has mice.
There it is again
Last tip: bring back the sweets jar. It was banished a while ago because everyone wanted to eat gluten-free, vegan and carb-free, but they’ve all long since forgotten about that. So no ‘sugar is worse than cocaine’; bring back that jar and fill it with marshmallow sweets, English liquorice or kruidnoten. Good for workplace morale too.
