But Do We Even Deserve Free Lunch?

A few weeks ago, I ate a rack of ribs in the office for lunch. TikTok sent it everywhere. Children in famine-wracked countries watched it with their bellies rumbling and their mouths drooling. I like to think that my video played a small part in getting those kids off their asses to start creating content. As Dave said, all you need is a phone. With any luck, they're now making their way towards blue checkmarks and collaborative marketing posts that will generate income they can use to feed their fellow villagers. Rice is SO cheap these days. In other words, I fed them. And sometimes, that's what it takes: a content creator a world away, fearlessly eating a full rack of ribs on camera with sauce all over his face, eradicating hunger in forgotten pockets of the globe. 

Someone recently commented that my efforts to establish tone in the early paragraphs can bewilder the reader. Listen here, fuckface: I'm not here to ease you in. We're not doing a warmup run on the fucking bunny slope. This is double black blogging, and if you didn't prep your quads in the off-season, there are plenty of young adult pieces to side-slide through as you eat your waffles. Go crack one of those like you're fucking Lebron seeking attention in the locker room, spreading your copy of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay for the photographer you hired to capture. 

I purchased the ribs from Mighty Quinn's Barbecue. I've always loved Mighty Quinn's and on football Sundays, lifting a large delivery order of burnt ends, ribs, brisket, chicken, and about 400 sides of beans is a surefire way to fall asleep at 7:25PM before the scaries make you feel like you're breathing at altitude. Turns out, the good people at Mighty Quinn's saw my video and a few days later, I received an email from the co-founder himself! 

Lunch for the entire office! Mind you, this is the New York office we're talking about—not the Chicago office. That's an important distinction because the Chicago office seems to eat free lunch every single day. If I were to tell Big Cat I'd earned a free lunch for the entire Chicago office, he'd tell me to donate it to some local soup kitchen because when would we find the time, even? When would we slot in my free lunch against a packed calendar of free lunches? Give it away, give it away, give it away, yeah. 

Meanwhile, the New York office only gets free lunches when we switch to a different 401K software and some guy from Oregon in a vest pops up on the screen to explain the benefits of waiting until we're 59 to touch our money when—for real—93% of the people in the room won't live to 59 anyway. Especially not if we keep eating gigantic platters of catered Italian subs for lunch like this.

I couldn't wait to surprise my colleagues with a delivered feast for the ages. Imagine the glee on their faces! John Rich hasn't eaten a square meal since his heroin days, during which he accidentally swallowed his arm tourniquet in a senseless haze and it tangled around his stomach like seaweed fouling a propeller, shrinking his capacity for calories to ballerina portions. But the others look at food like it's medicine wrapped in Chic-Fil-A heat-retentive space foil. I've watched hetero-disavowing Pat devour spicy chicken sandwiches without chewing, especially when he's nursing heartbreak, which is when I speak softly to him in lightly discouraging terms to see how many of his feelings I can get him to eat.

By the way, I may very well have the worst eating habits in the office. I've been bingeing on sugar with reckless abandon as part of the terminal velocity death plunge I'm currently exploring, so the above condescension applies FIRMLY to me. Should we turn things around, team? Not until they install a proper defibrillator on the wall. 

As I penned my reply to Mighty Quinn's, I thought about whether we deserve this free lunch. It is violently apparent that a portion of the audience does not approve of the work coming out of New York. Each video, each blog, each noteworthy moment born from our cavernous commercial space is met with cries of "Shut down the New York Office!" and "The New York office is dead." After a while, your only choice is to register a burner and add some commentary yourself. It's wrong, but at least you're swimming in the right direction with the rest of the salmon. Even if it's straight into the jaws of a sloth of grizzlies. 

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I replied: 

If I've learned anything about leadership, it's that hunger is a powerful motivating tool. I believe the withholding of this barbecue lunch is the first step towards regaining stride with the Chicago outfit. In no time at all, we'll be the lean, mean, fighting machine of yore! 

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