No meating in the meeting room please

One of my colleagues was late in today. Not just a bit late, but substantially late.

One of the very few blessings of this, is that I did not have to bear witness to the bacon sandwich routine. Every morning when he arrives, he goes to the cafeteria and gets a bacon sandwich and a coffee which he brings back to his desk. This is regardless of whether he turns up half an hour early or dead on time. This is, also, highly illegal.

My workplace has a policy that you are not allowed to eat hot food at your desk. The idea behind it is that cold food smells considerably less than hot food, although with my brief snack of chilli flavoured crisps I may have challenged that assertion. But it is a rule which I heartily endorse; particularly with the bacon sandwich.

The company provides us with a lunch break over which to have lunch; but if you want to have breakfast in the office rather than at home, you should get to the office early enough to do so without disrupting your work. Snacking at the desk - so long as you continue to work - is fine. If it were me, I would have an outright ban about eating your lunch at your desk, whether it be hot or cold. I have seen people do considerable damage to their desks, computers and other equipment with a few flicks of salad dressing. I have to say, I think our health and safety team would also approve of people not eating lunch at their desk. Not simply from a point of view of the body acquiring the germs and bacteria that have bred like wild-fire over the keyboard; nor from the notion that the remnants of lunch themselves turn into a breeding space for mould and nastiness; but mostly that it actually forces people to take a break from the eye-strain of the computer monitor.

The bacon roll does take the biscuit a bit though. The smell does permeate all the corners of the office, and it lingers a lot longer than my crisp smell. For some reason he refuses a proper plate as well, being satisfied instead with a flimsy napkin. As such his desk gets absolutely covered in crumbs; which get into the law books we all have to share. And then there is the tomato ketchup dripping out...

Don't get me wrong - I love a bacon sandwich. But I love them at home. Or in a cafe. Not at work. My colleague is not the worst offender either - there is someone on one of the other teams who throughout winter eats his soup at his desk. And I have seen people try to cope with jacket potatoes smothered in chilli whilst sat at their desk.

I do realise that it is, to a great degree, due to my circumstances. At the time of the bacon sandwich, I have already been without food for a good two to three hours since my breakfast at 6am. And as the late luncher on the team I don't go until 1pm or on some days 1:30pm, so the people snaffing away at noon are just as I am starting to get ravenous. So yes, there is a degree of envy to it. But mostly it is a matter of professionalism and courtesy.

We recently had to 're-establish' the company dress code after it became apparent that some people considered 'appropriate officewear' to include ripped jeans, scruffy t-shirts and even football tops. Considering we provide professional advice to our clients, this is utterly unacceptable. Now 'appropriate officewear' has been properly defined and - for the moment at least - people are sticking to it. I await to see when the first lapses occur and how they are dealt with.

And that is another problem. Whilst these policies are all within the staff handbook, they are not enforced. I will hold my hand up here - I should be the person enforcing the no-bacon-roll-at-the-desk-particularly-when-you-are-supposed-to-be-working-and-I-am-hungry policy against my colleague (actually an underling); but there are a number of problems with this.

Firstly, if I try to impose the letter of the law, there are so many examples of other people being let off, allowed exemption, actively disregarded, managed in absentia or blind-eyes being turned that it makes it seem unfair for me to be so strict. Secondly, and more majorly, my colleague is unmanageable. Again this is for two reasons, partly due to his natural nature and temperament; and secondly because the company as a whole never sought to manage him in the slightest until I was promoted from being level with him to being his senior. And that of itself is an uneviable position to be in, suddenly having to enforce rules which perhaps have never been enforced before.

Anyhow,  I have to pop to the loo to wipe this ketchup off my jeans...