She told everyone her chili was perfectly safe, and then she stood there and watched as a young intern clawed at his throat, gasping for air.
This woman at my office had appointed herself my personal food police.
At every potluck, she’d publicly shame my plate of cookies while showing off her own “organic, sugar-free” sludge. She insisted she was just trying to “save me from myself.”
But her whole perfect, healthy lifestyle was a lie, and the truth wasn’t just in her bad attitude—it was printed on the ingredient label of a plastic tub from a cheap downtown deli.
The Potluck Prophet: My Sad Little Cookie
The third Tuesday of the month meant potluck. It was one of those mandatory fun things our marketing firm did, a flimsy attempt at camaraderie that mostly resulted in a conference room smelling of lukewarm chili and passive aggression. I was a senior project manager, old enough to remember when office lunches involved two martinis, not a lecture on gut health.
Today, I’d brought cookies. Not gluten-free, not sugar-free, not blessed by a monk on a mountaintop. Just classic chocolate chip cookies, made with real butter and flour, the recipe on the back of the Nestle toll house bag. My son, Ben, had helped me make them last night, a rare moment of teenage enthusiasm that involved him mostly eating the dough. Placing them on the crowded table felt like a small, quiet act of rebellion.
Then Chloe arrived.
Chloe was twenty-six, with the taut, wiry physique of someone who runs for fun and considers kale a food group. She floated into the room, holding a glass container of what looked like gray sludge. “Hi, everyone!” she chirped, her voice an octave too high. Her eyes scanned the table, a predator seeking its gluten-filled prey. They landed on my cookies.
“Oh, Sarah,” she said, her smile a perfect blend of pity and condescension. “White flour. That’s just pure inflammation, you know. A total gut bomb.”
She placed her own offering down with reverence. “I brought my activated charcoal and chia pudding. It’s a wonderful detoxifier. No sugar, of course.” A few of the younger staff murmured in appreciation. I felt a hot flush creep up my neck. I just wanted to eat a cookie, not have it autopsied by the wellness police.
I picked one up anyway, holding it like a shield. I took a bite. It was delicious. Chloe watched me, shaking her head slowly, as if I’d just lit up a cigarette in a nursery.
The Gospel of Kale
It wasn’t just the potlucks. Chloe’s crusade was a daily affair. She treated our shared office space like her personal wellness blog, and we were the unwilling audience. The behavior had become a pattern, a series of micro-aggressions disguised as concern. If I had a bagel at my desk, she’d walk by and say, “Carb-loading for a big day?” If she saw my can of Diet Coke, she’d leave a printout on my chair about the dangers of aspartame.
Her own desk was a shrine to her lifestyle. A Himalayan salt lamp cast a pink glow on her ergonomic keyboard. A water bottle with a built-in crystal infuser sat next to a bag of organic, air-puffed lentil snacks. She didn’t just eat this way; she performed it. Her Instagram was a curated gallery of her holding yoga poses in exotic locations and sipping green juices, accompanied by captions full of empty hashtags like #liveauthentic and #cleanliving.
One afternoon, I was making a cup of tea in the breakroom, reaching for the container of Coffee-mate. She appeared at my elbow as if summoned. “You know, dairy is incredibly mucus-forming,” she said, her voice soft and conspiratorial. “And the hydrogenated oils in that are basically poison. Have you ever tried oat milk? It’s much better for your biome.”
I just stared at her. My husband, Mark, would have found this hilarious. He’d tell me to just laugh it off. But he didn’t have to work with her. He didn’t have to feel this constant, low-grade scrutiny every time he reached for a snack. It was exhausting.
“I like my poison, Chloe,” I said, my voice flatter than I intended.
She didn’t flinch. She just gave me that sad little smile again. “I know,” she whispered.
Office Whispers
I wasn’t the only one. After Chloe would sweep through a room, leaving a trail of unsolicited advice, my coworkers and I would exchange looks. The kind of weary, eye-rolling glances that build a strange sort of foxhole solidarity.
“Did she tell you about the nightshades in your salad?” Maria, from accounting, asked me one day over the cubicle wall. Her voice was a low hiss. “Apparently, my tomato is giving me arthritis I don’t even have yet.”
“She told me my tea was creating mucus,” I whispered back.
“The girl is a menace,” Maria said, shaking her head. “But Dave loves her.”
Dave was our manager, a man whose spine seemed to be made of jelly. He was terrified of any kind of conflict and saw Chloe’s “passion for wellness” as a positive, modern attribute. He’d once praised her in a team meeting for promoting a “health-conscious culture.” Chloe had practically glowed.
The whispers were a comfort, a confirmation that I wasn’t crazy. But they were also a reminder that no one was going to do anything. We were all too professional, too conflict-averse, too tired to make a scene. So we complained in hushed tones and let the resentment simmer. It felt weak. It felt like we were letting her win, letting her define the terms of our own lunch breaks.
The problem was her certainty. She spoke with the unwavering conviction of a true believer. It made you question yourself, even when you knew she was being ridiculous. Was my cookie really that bad? Am I slowly killing myself with powdered creamer? The insidious nature of her campaign was that it planted a tiny seed of doubt, and she was always there to water it.
An Unwanted Savior
The confrontation I’d been avoiding finally found me. I was refilling my water bottle, trying to mentally prepare for a budget meeting that was guaranteed to be a bloodbath, when she cornered me.
She approached without a sound, a ninja in expensive athleisure wear. She placed a hand on my arm. It was cool to the touch. “Sarah, can I talk to you for a second? Just woman to woman.”
I wanted to say no. I wanted to pull my arm away and walk back to my desk. But I was trapped, pinned by years of social conditioning that taught me to be polite, to not make a scene. “Sure, Chloe. What’s up?”
“I hope you don’t think I’m being mean with my comments,” she started, her eyes wide and full of what I was supposed to interpret as sincerity. “It’s just… I see you. I see the stress you’re under. And I see what you’re eating, and I know it’s connected.”
My jaw tightened. “I’m fine, Chloe.”
“Are you, though?” she pressed, her voice dropping. “All that sugar, the processed foods, the caffeine… it creates a cycle of inflammation and anxiety. I’m not just trying to be a pest. I’m genuinely worried about you. I’m just trying to save you from yourself.”
The sheer, breathtaking arrogance of that statement stunned me into silence. Save me from myself. As if I were a child who couldn’t be trusted to make her own choices. As if her twenty-six years on this planet had given her all the answers, and my forty-eight had taught me nothing.
She leaned in, her fake sincerity a suffocating perfume. “There’s a team lunch tomorrow at The Burger Pit,” she said, her voice a hopeful whisper. “Dave is making it mandatory. Promise me you’ll at least try to order the salad. For me?”
The Line on the Table: The Burger Pit
The Burger Pit was exactly as advertised. The air was thick with the smell of sizzling beef and fried onions, a scent so unapologetically unhealthy it felt like a declaration of war against Chloe’s entire philosophy. Classic rock blasted from unseen speakers, and the vinyl on the booth seats was cracked and sticky. It was loud, it was greasy, and it was glorious.
Our team was crammed into a large circular booth in the back. Dave, our manager, sat beaming, as if presiding over this forced social interaction was the crowning achievement of his career. Chloe was seated directly across from me, studying the menu with the intensity of a scholar deciphering ancient texts. She’d already asked the waitress if they could steam some plain broccoli for her. The waitress had blinked slowly and said, “I can check.”
About the Author
