I used to be excited about pot lucks at work. I used to try out new recipes and made sure I prepared tons of food. Coworkers used to do the same. We all participated, cooked, ate, and shared recipes afterward. At a different company, all of that changed. "Pot lucks," where everyone cooked (and made excuses if they had to stop by the store for a package of cookies), gave way to "Food Days." Where teammates went to fast-food places or grocery stores to bring "food."
   I regularly have to hear that people won't eat home-cooked food anymore because they don't trust the person or know what's in it or because it's been sitting out too long. A box of tacos or a pizza has somehow become more trustworthy than a crockpot full of homemade scalloped potatoes.
   At first, I stopped trying new recipes, since I would take home the majority of my own food at the end of the day. There might be some evidence that one person had been brave enough to dip a carrot in my dill dip or try a piece of one of my pies, but odds were that I would be finishing off my own food over the next several days.
   To placate my picky coworkers, I began taking the same dip every time. It was the one item that people seemed to eat, probably because it was just a souped-up version of ranch dip. But, when strange pecking orders and prohibitions began to get attached to the "Food Days," I lost my enthusiasm.
   First, even though we had enough food for the entire department three or four times over, strict orders were given that, "only people who brought food were allowed to eat." If someone ran late, forgot their food at home, or just forgot altogether, their punishment would be watching the rest of us with heaped plates of food gorge ourselves. Pretty medieval. People would even treat their doggos that way.
   To add insult to injury, the "organizers" of the "Food Day" would go through the line first, followed by their friends from other departments who did not contribute! Sometimes there would be so much food, the "friends" might be seen taking two heaping plates of food back to their desks. Next, the rest of the unwashed, who brought food but were not lucky enough to be counted as friends of the team leaders, could get something. Of course, the leaders and their "friends" would probably need to go through again if there was something particularly yummy so they could "make a plate" to take home to their family members who, sadly, would be left out of our team "Food Day" otherwise.
   I brought two types of dips to one of the last "Food Days" I participated in, enough for the whole department (not just our team), while the company supplied the fried chicken for everyone. I sat beside a coworker who was told she couldn't eat because she forgot her food at home. Oh, and because all the chicken was taken by people "making a plate" to take home to their family members, those of us who worked evenings and went to lunch at 5pm (and didn't want to eat fried chicken for breakfast—an hour and a half before our shift began) were out of luck. Even though I brought two big bowls of dip that day, I ate my own dip and some left-over macaroni and cheese for lunch. I'm just glad that someone who did get to eat our company-provided meal was able to take home a heaping plate of chicken for their kids, so they didn't have to cook dinner also (the unimaginable horror!).
After that debacle, I participated in one more team "Food Day," and ended up taking home two whole pies, minus one piece that one brave soul tried. It took me a week to finish them off by myself.
   So, I stopped participating in "Food Day" at all. I'm quite confident that if we gave the equal amount of food to a bunch of children, there would, of course, be the requisite few who ran up to the food and selfishly dug in without waiting. However, not having the little voice in their head that adults do that tell them that they should try to get along and not make waves, the children would not have any qualms about calling out their greedy cohorts and tell them that division of food wasn't fair. It might take some hair pulling and shoving and a bloody nose or two before it all got sorted, but those kids would probably be able to come up with a more equitable distribution of food than coworkers can.
   Altruism or pity must have gripped the hard heart of someone, because although the afore-mentioned rules still apply to "Food Day," the serfs who didn't bring anything are now allowed to go through at the end and feed off the scraps of their betters.
   I still refuse to participate in an institution that has been going on for four million years among our ancestors. If our caveman cousins could figure out how to pot luck, I am in constant wonder that my (supposedly) evolved brothers and sisters find some way to screw it up each and every time.
   Maybe I'm a jerk for not participating anymore, but I feel I'd have been a jerk even I had been a caveman—except I wouldn't have to be passive-aggressive about it.

Mog: (brought a roasted tuber delicately seasoned with garlic and edible flower petals)
Ugg: (brought a raw Dodo bird)
Oog: (brought gourds filled with leech-infested, green lake water)

Mog: (shook his head, beat his chest, grilled the Dodo, and fetched fresh water)

Ugg, Mog, and Oog ate well. Bellies full.

Ugg and Oog napped.

Mog killed Ugg and Oog with a rock, so he didn't have to be the only goddam one to bring something halfway edible. Mog happily ate Ugg and Oog in peace, topped with parsley, avocado, and a runny Dodo egg, because that made it a "gourmet nouveau cuisine food trend" instead of "cannibalism."

Be sure to check out the picture on his next Instagraaargh post!