Month: April 2011

This story originally appeared in the April 14, 2011, issue of The Trussville Tribune…

I’m not much of a soft drink drinker. I don’t keep them around the house, and ever since kicking a mid-morning soft-drink-and-crackers habit I’d gotten into, I don’t drink them at the office anymore. The calories were catching up with me, and the carbonation kept me burping (excuse me) until lunchtime.

Sweet tea and coffee are my preferred poisons, and I can never seem to get enough of those. But soft drinks? I can take ‘em or leave ‘em, and I mostly leave ‘em. So imagine my surprise when a recent attempt to streamline the soft drink selection at the office caused an outcry akin to the ruckus caused by last year’s Gulf oil spill.

It started when the secretary designated “office grocery shopper” left the firm. With no immediate plans to hire a replacement, the bosses doled out her duties among other staff members, and stocking the break room refrigerator fell to me.

I had no problem with the arrangement. After all, what woman doesn’t like to shop – and with somebody else’s credit card, at that? Trips to the store would also allow me to escape the confines of the office on occasion, and as much as I like my work, a shopping break is never a bad thing.

So I happily launched into my new responsibility by taking inventory and making a list of things we needed. That’s when I realized the firm was not only providing a water cooler, several kinds of coffee, iced tea (sweet and artificially sweetened), hot chocolate and flavored vitamin water, but EIGHT kinds of soft drinks as well.

All that seemed excessive for an office of fifteen people, but I figured my tendency to squeeze a dollar, no matter whose dollar it is, might be driving my thoughts on the matter. So I contacted former co-workers and a couple of office managers at other firms for some outside opinions. As it turned out, every person I polled expressed astonishment at the generous amount and variety of liquid refreshment our firm provided, and several even offered to rush right over and assist with the overflow.

So I naively sent out an interoffice soft drink survey, trying to fairly determine what could be struck from the lineup. And that’s when the uproar began. You would have thought I was proposing to cut off the oxygen supply to the building instead of trying to trim the soft drink selection. Folks got downright hostile.

Some perceived the idea to be miserly on the bosses’ part. I quickly assured them I was the miserly one. Others whined, apparently believing the prospect of doing without his or her favorite soft drink while others got theirs was deprivation, not to mention employee discrimination, of the highest order.

Yet others complained because, well, they complain about everything and didn’t want to miss out on such a golden opportunity to carp. For a few days I huddled in my cubicle, unused to being cast in the role of office pariah, desperately trying to lay low until the dust settled. My people-pleasing nature had run slap up against what little business sense I possess, and the inner turmoil was upsetting, to say the least.

When all was said and done, we managed to limit the soft drink selection to a mere six kinds of soft drinks, which is still a lot, if you ask me. But the soft drink drinkers at the office obviously aren’t interested in my point of view.

And while I can now see the humor in the whole episode, I’m serious when I say I won’t be sharing my opinions on such matters in the future. Anyone who knows me knows I sometimes have a hard time keeping my mouth shut, but in this case, self-preservation is a powerful motivator. In fact, just to be on the safe side, if the subject of soft drinks ever comes up at the office again, I think I’ll just crawl under my desk and hide.

This story originally appeared in the March 31, 2011, issue of The Trussville Tribune…

Heads up, ladies! It’s that time of year again. With spring and summer weddings in the offing, the 2011 Bridal Tea Season has begun. If you haven’t already received scads of invitations in the mail, look for them to arrive soon. And if they don’t, well, you must have licked your fingers or done something equally offensive at the last bridal tea you attended, and word got around.

A Southern female tradition of the highest order, the Sunday afternoon bridal tea is a chance to see and be seen by the cream of your social crop. It’s also prime time for catching up on local gossip, checking out the latest in crock pots and china patterns, and sharpening your motor skills by juggling a dessert plate, fork, punch cup and handbag while managing to carry on a conversation and remain upright in heels at the same time.

My initiation into the world of bridal teas came at age five, when my Aunt Bibby was about to marry my to-be Uncle Doug. Since I was the eldest niece – and because the only other niece at the time was two years old and lived in California – I was appointed to collect gifts at the door.

Well, that lasted about ten minutes. I found it the most boring job imaginable, especially since the gifts were for somebody else. And who wanted a vegetable slicer or set of bath towels, anyway? I cared neither for vegetables nor baths very much in those days, so those items seemed useless to me.

Relieved of duty, I happily spent the afternoon ducking around grown-ups’ legs and crawling under the dining room table to get to the petit four side. There’s no telling how many of those things I ate, but I clearly remember suffering a terrific stomachache on the way home.

As badly as that first attempt to draw me into the world of bridal teas went, matters eventually improved. When I was growing up, Mama was always serving as a hostess at one bridal tea or another, and on occasion, she still does. So with such an example, I couldn’t help but learn the ropes at a fairly early age.

The first tea I helped with took place at our house when I was about thirteen. Dressed at the height of early 1970s fashion in a pale pink knit dress with hair teased to kingdom come, I stood for two solid hours at the south end of the dining room table behind Mama’s silver tea service. As the guests, invariably clad in pastels and pearls, teetered past the nuts, mints and petit fours, I poured coffee for all I was worth.

Yes, coffee, not tea. Nobody ever served tea at a tea in those days because nobody in the South back then drank any kind of tea that wasn’t poured over ice into a former jelly jar. It just wasn’t right. In fact, I was half-grown before I knew there was such a thing as hot tea, and even older before I knew anybody who actually drank it.

But my, how bridal teas have changed! Not only do the liquid refreshments now frequently include tea (iced and hot), the array of food is far more extensive than the cake-nuts-mints menu of my era. At a recent affair, I chowed down on tiny chicken salad-filled pastries, mini heart-shaped brownies, chocolate-dipped strawberries and spicy cheese straws dipped in salsa. If I’d known an entire meal was going to be served, I would have skipped lunch.

After a feast like that, I was tempted to lick my fingers, but the thought of what could happen helped me resist. Being struck from The Official Bridal Tea Invitation List, never to be served another heart-shaped brownie or spicy cheese straw… I’m not sure I could bear it. On the other hand, if it meant spending springtime Sunday afternoons in shorts and t-shirts as opposed to dresses and high heels, I might not mind at all.