Treat Drama at Work

It's not full-fledged drama, I don't think we're interesting enough for that, but it was enough to annoy me a little. Do you know that expression, "How can you tell if someone is a vegetarian? They'll tell you." It's a mean joke and it's not true. If someone tells you they're a vegetarian, it's probably because you've offered them meat more than once and they're letting you know you're barking up the wrong tree. Or at least that's what I assume based on my own experience.

It started on the day with the See's candy. I politely declined and got the usual barrage of incredulity, like who could possibly not want to eat candy?! I understand the incredulity, trust me. It's downright inhuman to turn down delicious See's candy. I get that and trust me it is hard as hell to do. But when they kept asking, "why not?! just one?" I finally said, "I don't eat sugar." Nevermind that I had just committed to that the day before, the fact was the same, I wasn't going to eat any sugar.

So then later in the day a student gave me the third degree about why don't I eat sugar? Am I hypoglycemic? What do I eat when I want something sweet? I find those kind of questions terribly personal and invasive, but he's a nice guy and I went ahead and was candid and answered his questions. I found out after the fact that he was doing reconnaissance for my going-away meeting today at work. They had already made plans to get me a fancy cake and then all of a sudden they needed to change them.

The reason I found this out was that I mentioned that I was thinking of bringing in cupcakes for my last day. Regular bakery cupcakes with delicious icing on top. Enough for the whole office to share with everyone and say thanks for a great couple of years. So then they have to level with me that they're already doing something so I shouldn't bring anything. That's how I found out about the earlier reconnaissance, which made sense.

But of course people have to be clueless and say insensitive things, because that's how people are. The exact quote was, "Brad was going to get us a cake from Cecilia's, but you ruined that!" Excuse me? I don't remember ruining anything. In fact I'm pretty sure I just said I was going to bring cupcakes in before I was told not to. I said they should just go ahead and get the cake or whatever they want, but then the boss got the impression that that meant that I would eat it, to which I was like, "No, but seriously, it's okay. I wasn't going to eat the cupcakes either," and they're just like, "no no no! It's your thing, we have to have something you can eat!" and then proceed to grill me about what I can eat and shine a spotlight on how difficult I'm being when I never asked for anything in the first place.

Why do people have such a problem with that? I had the same thing at my birthday years and years ago where I didn't want any cake and someone in the office was downright aggressive and in my face about it, like, "It's your birthday! You have to have cake!" and the more I refused, the more pissed off she got, like I was the one being rude. Here's an idea. If it's my special day, how about you stop pushing the issue with me and let me enjoy myself?