So I wanted to delve into an exploration of the social and political implications of the seemingly all-important “interoffice lunch”. What am I talking about? Speak English you say! Well, here’s the thing, I find in my office lunch is a huge affair. I wonder if this is true in all offices. It’s not what is eaten, or where, but who goes with whom that seems to be a really big deal. Why is that? I mean are people, especially in the computer field, so bereft of social company in their outside lives that lunch is a huge social pressure? It’s really quite annoying.

Not only can lunch in this office be pressure filled, it seems to have direct impact, at least in certain people’s minds, about the social pecking order of the departments and the social standing of people with each other. I personally find it all to be quite absurd. I mean, sure, sometimes I like to go to lunch with people just for the hell of it, or I get caught up in the need to go and gripe about this or that, but I do not feel that lunch is really that big of a deal.

What I find though around here, is that, people are very weird about it. Like, one time I infiltrated some Marketing and Sales women’s lunch outing because an office friend, I’ll call Joanne, of mine is among that group, and the general vibe I got is that I was probably unacceptable company. They didn’t really seem to like the funky Content girl among them, or maybe they are just kind of stuckup girls, I really don’t know. Of course part of the reason I went was because I knew it would irritate some people, but I mean hey I get bored.

I used to go to lunch with a foursome, that included me the for-mentioned Joanne, we’ll call the other two Bill and Ted. Two of the people, Ted and Joanne, it was pretty obvious, wanted to be alone. They would ask me to lunch as a cover and then rush ahead and leave me and Bill behind, and Bill was only attaching himself without an invite, which is yet another social lunch faux pas. Bill wasn’t even really the person I wanted to lunch with, so I didn’t appreciate getting stuck with him. It really sucked.

In my dept. there are several people who often want to go to lunch with me, unless they are mad or disappointed in me for a variety of different reasons. I don’t like feeling responsible for another person’s lunch. I came to find out that one person, may have covert plans by asking me to lunch, and I think he just might be delusional enough to think of our lunches as dates. Well, when I figured that out I really got scared. One girl, got her feelings really hurt because she felt like this other guy, never asked her to go to lunch with us and it started a big fight between them, and now they hardly speak! Oh the drama of it all.

There seems to be a similar social dichotomy with the smokers, although it’s not as big of a deal because not as many people smoke that also eat lunch. Only certain people smoke together, sometimes these lines overlap, but it’s generally taboo for the social pecking order to be broken. Like it seems that the European contingency smoke together, and I could go out there with them, but they give me funny looks, like I am just a silly American to them. There are other breakdowns of social orders as well. Naturally these cliques usually are broken down into departments. Really, it reminds me a lot of high school or even grade school, and so many of the things that I hated about it.

The social implications of who eats lunch together around here are possibly remnants of that high school mentality in this young office, where the average age is 25. Personally I find it all to be very obtuse (yay! I actually used that word in a sentence.) It just seems like, when you get a bunch of people together, the old playground social structure madness rears it’s ugly head. It reminds me of the days of grade school kick ball when teams were picked and this social hierarchy was displayed during recess. Anyway, I think I am getting too old for this crap.