OUTLAW INLAW
Now that I’m back in Rockdale part-time and I’m a lot older, I’ve been pondering many philosophical questions about life, the universe and everything.
Namely, how long a person can go without washing their office coffee mug before co-workers start thinking they’re unsanitary?
One of the first things I did when I arrived was to dust off the white Black and Decker coffee maker from the year 2000 (I am not exaggerating), find a place for it and plug the life support device in.
Next, I picked up the nearest coffee mug and I’ve been using it every week, since July.
I started questioning my lack of hygiene after reading a Wall Street Journal article by Heidi Mitchell last week.
After reading her article, I realized that I haven’t washed my office mug in five months. This fact brought back a host of office related battles, I mean, memories.
What I deduced from the memories was that there are two types of people in world; those who wash their mug regularly and those who cover up the crusted coffee stain at the bottom of their cup with a fresh pour.
I’ve always known that there’s nothing wrong with those people in the later category and that we were in fact not raised in a barn as one of my previous co-workers once suggested.
This insult came from a woman who threw out perfectly good food from the office fridge at the end of every week without permission, labeled all the food she put into it with signs that read: “Linda’s food. Hands off!”, wiped off every surface in the office break room with her pink sponge and also heated fish up in the company microwave every Friday.
Someone who does those things deserves to have bites of food taken from her meals, especially when she tosses out a plate of perfectly good migas from Cisco’s on East Sixth Street, hypothetically speaking of course.
Linda’s favorite color was purple and there were many times when she opened her sack or Tupperware lunches that her face turned a shade of purple that matched the formal separates that she always wore.
She did eventually catch on to who was nibbling on her meals and she likened this person’s disgusting coffee cup to a trough and had many other barn yard animal analogies for the snack-er.
Linda was the person who came to mind as I read the article because it turns out she couldn’t have been more wrong.
My problem was that I lacked the scientific evidence to back up my life saving habit. Now, thanks to Heidi, I know that microbiologists and infectious disease experts say it’s okay not to wash my mug regularly as long as I don’t share it with anyone else.
Turns out that letting my mug live in its own filth is safer than scrubbing it with a gross communal office sponge.
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