After a holiday weekend, the managing directors often request that somebody (that’s me and my compatriots) get coffee and donuts for the department for the first morning back. They know that everybody will function better when jacked up on sugar and caffeine after spending a weekend mucked up on beer and charbroiled grease.
We have a Dunkin’ Donuts less than a mile away, and they set us up nicely with dozens of donuts and ten-serving boxes of java whenever the need arises. They don’t close for blizzards, and the owners’ holidays never seem to affect or clash with ours (I used to know a place that actually closed for Chinese New Year and Tet). Bless the poor schlub who invented the box with the disposable bladder inside to fill with hot beverages: the famous “Box O’ Joe” is the most popular portable outside food an office full of grumpy co-workers ever had.
Of course, I’m the weirdo who drinks tea, and DD doesn’t do Boxes O’ Tea. I never have figured out what it is about coffee I don’t like, but over the years I have tried, unsuccessfully, to develop a taste for it. It’s as much a part of the human population as IPhones(R) (which I don’t have, either). I do remember the first big step I took to try and enjoy coffee. I was at the local bank with my fellow Girl Scout troop, selling cookies in the lobby next to a complimentary coffee dispenser. I poured a cup, added some sugar and creamer, took a sip and made a face: it tasted like cardboard. I added more sugar, more creamer, back and forth, to no avail. It didn’t taste one bit better.
Fortunately I do like donuts. Every variety. When you get a few dozen to feed a hungry horde of employees, you get to sample anything the folks at DD invent for the donut lover in the office. I have downed candy autumn leaves and Valentine pink hearts on orange or pink icing, sucked up gobs of Boston or whipped cream or fruit jelly from overly injected centers, licked gritty sugars from the perimeter of my now ruined lipstick, sneezed at powdered sugar, played tug-o-war with twists and desegmented crullers, sat like Cleopatra while savoring sour cream perfections and puckered until my lips met the back of my head when confronting a lemon lovely. This is the way of the office donut ritual.
The thing is, I’ve wanted to bake cupcakes for the office for the past two Sundays, and now that I have the time and ingredients, I won’t do it since we’ll all be bursting at the seams with donuts. I have carrot cake, chocolate, vanilla and blueberry cupcakes waiting for my creative hands to breathe life into them. They’ll have to wait behind the donuts and coffee.
No wonder the bakeries close on Mondays.
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