I have come up with a way to curb my cravings for junk food, but it isn’t one that just anybody can take up themselves, as it requires specific job skills and circumstances which create a psychological aversion to those very foods.
That is what happened to me when I became a food runner this week.
Four days before the New Year, I was tasked with assembling an assortment of snacks to help the 24-hour work crews at my office over the weekend. This meant a BJ’s run to that mecca of super sized merchandise and abundant quantities for the hungry office phone staffers, who know what keeps their body clocks ticking.
Actually, it took two runs. I have a mid-sized car, and it only holds so much. So does one of their huge carts, unless you come with a friend and a second cart. It was just me, one cart and one car, and no budget. As long as they eat, have it to be eaten, is the motto under such circumstances.
Everybody was taking phone calls to help customers with extreme cold weather issues, including me. When they put folks like me on the phones, you know they need help. Eventually, however, necessity won, they took me off the phones and had me don my related duty hat.
You quickly learn in a customer service office environment that related duties are the most intense of any you ever trained for. That’s why they don’t train you on those.
So there I was, doing seat-of-the-pants shopping for food at the big wholesale club. It’s hard, because the only time you seem to get feedback is when something you got them doesn’t fly. We found out that one department does not like hot chocolate, because nobody drank it. You can’t even survey something like that. Well, you could, but I found that my department is a little slow when it comes to using email voting buttons. But I digress.
So I bought stacks of 400 plates and packages of cups the size of a nine-month-old, boxes of pastries, dried fruit pick-me-ups and natural clusters of grapes. Napkins and brownies. Granola bars and cookies.
Then came the soda.
Even though I am not Catholic, I decided to try giving up soda for Lent last year; that Saturday I had to argue with McDonald’s because they would not substitute a shake for a soda, so I was stuck that early into the trial. Since then I have had soda twice more, and both times at Mickie D’s. But every time I go on a food run, there I am carting around two-liter bottles of the various concoctions by the armfuls. Yesterday, on what I hope is my final food run, I carted off 14 bottles of Coke and Pepsi from Acme, along with bottled water, chips and mustard and mayo for sandwich trays this weekend. My bill said I saved 30 percent with the sales I took advantage of. I also didn’t touch a drop.
But between the two-day BJ’s run and yesterday, I had to order catering every single day. We are talking about vast 20-person trays of ziti and meat slathered in sauce and Parmesan cheese, cool green salads, garlic rolls (mmmmm) and waterfalls of soda.
My daily routine became dividing up quantities by department, ordering, finding who in management had money left on their corporate card, signing, tipping, stacking food on a trusty mailroom cart (which became my companion for four straight days and lived in my cubicle), elevator rides and trips through the departments to distribute and set up, then scan receipts and move to the next order.
I have seen and smelled a variety of food this week. Normally I would sample some, but I didn’t touch any of it. Which goes back to the concept of a diet which may work.
I was so tired of all that food, that I didn’t want it. I consider myself cured.
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