A coworker asked me where I went for lunch every day and then immediately apologized because she realized that, well, that’s an invasive question. She was just curious because every day at noon I pass by her cubicle with my journal. Not that I have anything to hide but I’d never ask someone where they go because they might have their reasons for wanting to keep that information private. I don’t know if anyone else is like me but when I’m off the clock I want to get as far away from work as possible, and when I’ve gone to lunch with people I work with I try to steer the conversations to pretty much anything but work. I have the advantage of working on a college campus and even when classes are in session there are a lot of empty classrooms or just lounge spaces where I can hide out for half an hour. I’ve worked in office buildings out in the middle of nowhere and felt trapped during lunch because there wasn’t anywhere to go. There was a break room and a dining area with vending machines but if I wanted to get out and walk, go somewhere truly away from work, my options were the parking lot or, just beyond that, the interstate.
It’s really funny to me that, as is the case with a lot of older college campuses, there are lots of buildings that have old exteriors but they’ve been renovated from the inside, usually over years, sometimes over decades, and that’s created some mazelike interiors with rooms I think even people who work in those buildings forget are there. One of these days one of those buildings may be knocked down entirely and they’ll find a grizzled old professor behind a wall, still diligently working away at a monograph on Phoenician etymology.
Anyway, without really thinking about it I started telling the coworker that some days I’d walk a few buildings over to one that has a nice lounge area and an outdoor patio that no one else seems to know about since it was only added during a renovation that happened about five years ago. It wasn’t until I was on my way there that I realized I’d given away a valuable secret and now I need to find a new place to get away. Maybe there’s a space next to that professor’s office.
Consider yourself lucky in the sense that you can actually leave work to go to lunch. During my fire department years, all meals had to be prepared and eaten at work, so there was literally no way to escape work, nor the chatter that came along with it. I tried to steer the conversation away from my personal life, as I had always been in girl/girl relationships.
We had one person working at the fire department that believed that he could sterilize things by microwaving them. One of the things he tried to sterilize was a kitchen sponge, which ended up catching fire. Thanks for the nostalgia, by the way. 🙂
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I’m sorry you sometimes had to steer conversations away from the personal. Also I know a microwave can be used for sterilizing a kitchen sponge but you’ve got me wondering how long that one person put the sponge in the microwave. Anything more than fifteen seconds is overkill. But that also reminds me of the coworker I had who put a bag of super butter popcorn in the microwave for five minutes. When he pulled it out smoke was pouring from it and he walked around the kitchen opening and closing the bag and making train noises. That made me laugh harder than it should have.
I can relate to everything you wrote here, Chris, and I’m glad that I visited the places you’re describing when I was in Nashville — it made your descriptions even more vivid. I also loved where you and I went out to lunch but I’m not going to give that away here.