“You should be fostering a culture of ethics, not protecting people’s fragile feelings so they can keep eating their murder burgers in blissful ignorance!”
That’s what she actually said to me. She said it in the company kitchen, right after she’d systematically dismantled our second monthly potluck.
She’d cornered a grandmotherly woman over the ethics of store-bought eggs and lectured a new hire about the secret evils of bouillon cubes. All this, from a woman who never brought a dish. She called it ‘bearing witness’ to our ‘culture of violence’ while waiting for her own twenty-four-dollar salad to be delivered.
She had no idea her whole self-righteous empire was built on a bed of the cheapest corporate lettuce imaginable, and my next catering order was about to expose the entire lie in front of everyone.
The Anatomy of a Casserole
I love the third Thursday of the month. It’s potluck day at Sterling-Price Solutions, a tradition I started a decade ago when I first became office manager. It’s more than just a free lunch; it’s the one time a month the data analysts and the marketing creatives actually talk to each other. It’s where Brenda from Accounting’s legendary seven-layer dip gets its annual moment of glory, and where Dave from Sales proves, once again, that his “secret ingredient” for chili is just an extra can of beer.
This month felt different. We had a new hire in marketing, a twenty-something with a name that sounded like a wind chime: Brianna. She’d been with us for three weeks, gliding through the office with the serene, judgmental aura of a yoga instructor who just caught you eating a Cinnabon. My email announcing the potluck theme—”Comfort Food Classics”—had gone out last week. The sign-up sheet was full of the usual suspects: mac and cheese, fried chicken, potato salad. Comfort.
I was arranging paper plates when she appeared in the doorway of the large conference room we used for our feast. She wasn’t carrying a dish. Instead, she held her phone like a shield, her expression one of pained tolerance, as if she’d stumbled upon a dog-fighting ring. She surveyed the buffet, a long table groaning under the weight of Crock-Pots and casserole dishes. A faint, theatrical sigh escaped her lips.
This, I thought, was not a good sign. The first rule of potluck is you bring a dish. The unspoken second rule is you don’t look at someone’s offering as if it personally offended your ancestors. Brianna was already breaking both.
An Inquisition Over Deviled Eggs
The room filled with the low hum of happy chatter and the clatter of plastic cutlery. People were piling their plates high, laughing and catching up. I saw Brenda beaming as Dave spooned a third helping of her deviled eggs onto his plate. It was working. The magic was happening.
Then I saw Brianna corner Brenda by the water cooler. She wasn’t eating, just observing. Her arms were crossed, and she was leaning in, her voice low but carrying a distinct prosecutorial tone. I edged closer, pretending to need a refill.
“…but are the eggs from cage-free, pasture-raised hens?” Brianna was asking. “Because the battery cage industry is just horrific. The de-beaking alone is a form of torture.”
Brenda, a grandmotherly woman who wore cat-themed sweaters, looked utterly bewildered. Her smile had vanished. “They’re just… from the grocery store, dear. The extra-large ones.”
“Right, but that’s how they get you,” Brianna pressed on, a self-satisfied little smirk playing on her lips. “The consumer is kept intentionally ignorant of the suffering embedded in the supply chain. Every single one of those eggs represents a day of misery for a sentient being.” Brenda’s hand trembled slightly as she set her plate down. She mumbled something about needing to check a spreadsheet and fled. Brianna watched her go, then shook her head with a sigh, as if mourning the moral bankruptcy of the entire accounting department.
The Carnage of Chili-Gate
Her next target was Dave from Sales. He was a big, hearty guy, currently mid-story about his son’s soccer game, a dollop of his famous chili on a cracker halfway to his mouth. Brianna glided over, her eyes fixed on his bowl.
“Is that beef?” she asked, her voice dripping with a kind of clinical pity.
Dave, mouth full, just nodded enthusiastically. He swallowed and said, “The best! Ground chuck. And a secret ingredient.” He winked.
“Chuck,” Brianna repeated slowly, letting the name hang in the air like a death sentence. “So, Chuck was a cow. He probably had a name, a mother he was torn from at birth. He was fattened up in a feedlot, standing in his own filth, before being led down a chute, the smell of blood thick in the air.”
The entire table went silent. Dave’s hand froze. His jovial, ruddy face paled. He stared at his bowl as if he’d just found a finger in it. Someone coughed awkwardly. Brianna, however, looked completely unbothered, as if she were merely discussing the weather. “It’s just something to think about,” she added brightly. “The violence we casually consume.” She then turned and walked away, leaving a crater of silence in her wake. Dave slowly put his cracker down, his appetite apparently gone.
The Lingering Aftertaste
By one-thirty, the party was over. Usually, people lingered, grabbing one last cookie, finishing conversations. Today, the conference room emptied out in record time. Half-eaten plates were dumped in the trash with apologetic haste. Brenda’s seven-layer dip was still mostly full, and a thick skin had formed on Dave’s abandoned chili. The room felt funereal.
I stood there amidst the wreckage of our monthly tradition, the smell of stale food mingling with a new, bitter scent: self-righteousness. Brianna hadn’t brought a dish, hadn’t eaten a bite, but she had single-handedly consumed all the joy in the room. She’d turned a communal meal into a series of individual moral failings.
As I scraped the remains of a perfectly good macaroni and cheese into the garbage, a cold knot of anger formed in my stomach. This wasn’t about veganism. I had no issue with that; we’d had vegans participate before, bringing delicious lentil salads or roasted vegetable platters. This was different. This was a performance, and we were all her unwilling audience. And I, as the organizer, was the de facto stage manager. I had a feeling the next show was going to be even worse.
A Pre-Emptive Strike via Email
A month can feel like a long time, or no time at all. In the weeks leading up to the next potluck, I watched Brianna. She never ate with anyone, instead having a single, expensive-looking salad delivered to her desk each day from a place called “Verdure,” a name that sounded as pricey as it was. She’d eat it with meticulous care while listening to a podcast, a tiny, satisfied smile on her face.
I decided to try a diplomatic approach for the second potluck. The theme was “Global Bites.” Two days before, I sent a carefully worded email to the entire office. “Just a friendly reminder that the potluck is a celebration of community and sharing! It’s a judgment-free zone where we get to enjoy each other’s company and cooking. Let’s focus on the ‘fun’ part of our feast!”
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