Someone's lucky I'm so Healthy

I work in an office with less than 10 in-house personnel and we all love a reason to relax and eat cake. Anytime someone has a birthday, we have a “surprise” party for them. The birthday individual knows it’s coming but pretends to be shocked anyway. Usually it’s easy to get the cake in the conference room, gather everyone together, and somehow need the birthday person to join the group; however, I make it a little harder since I sit directly to the left of the conference room. Any traffic through the glass front door passes by me. I knew my “office” birthday would be on Friday since a true celebration would require coming to work on Saturday. I got the biggest kick out of pretending to not know what was going on as I watched my coworkers try hard to get everything past me.

It started when I got back from lunch and Michele tells me that Jordan is “out running an errand.” Translation: he’s the lucky one that gets to pick out the cake and card. Jordan calls; Michele answers and I hear this side of the conversation. “Hmmm really? Then don’t go that route. … Yeah, just get two tubs. … Yes, that is what we need to do.” Tubs? Tubs of butter? Cakes don’t come in tubs. Maybe tubs of ice cream? Hmmm… About five minutes later Michele has to “go out to her car to get something she forgot”. She comes back in but goes across the foyer to our neighbor’s suite with a big brown box. So she put the cake in a box to get it inside. Now she has to get it over here. Jordan walked in – empty handed – 2 or 3 minutes later.

I must have missed the Transfer-of-the-Cake-from-Suite-to-Suite bit when I went to either send a fax, get some water, or go to the bathroom. At some point Michele goes to the conference room and I hear the crinkle-crinkle of the cake lid as Michele tries to quietly pop it apart.

The crinkling continued.

Even longer.

What was she doing? It sounded like a layer of plastic was carefully being cut off. I pretended to not hear. I went back to burning cds for some of our clients. Michele came to my desk and said I needed to hold all the calls for the guys since they were in a “meeting” in the conference room. Riiiiiight. Of course, of course. That just left me, Michele, and Claudia still in the office. Michele cracked the conference room open and said, “Oh, you need Charlotte in there too?” I was biting my lip to not smile and laugh. Michele turned to me and said, “Charlotte, they want you in there to take notes.”

I smiled and said, "You know it's getting harder and harder to make it a surprise."
“I know. Just get in there.”
“Does Claudia need to “take notes” too?”
“Oh yes. Claudia, we need you in the conference room.”

I walked in as my coworkers sang an off-key rendition of Happy Birthday and then started laughing. In the middle of the table there were not only two tubs of fruit but also a vegetable tray complete with candles in the broccoli and cauliflower! Tubs of FRUIT. Ahhhh…it made sense now. And the crinkle noise was the plastic seal being cut off. Of course! What did surprise me was the fruits and veggies though. I know I try to eat healthy but never anticipated those habits rubbing off into my office birthday surprise treat. I think my coworkers are glad they only have to celebrate birthdays with carrots once a year. There was considerably more left-overs than when we have cake.

On Fridays we get out at 4pm so I try to go to the gym during the last hour of work and walk/run for 40 minutes. I decided I would rather stop by work after the gym and pick up the left over rabbit snacks than risk car-steamed veggies after my run. So I went; I ran; I glistened.

I returned to work to find FLOWERS! I had missed the delivery while I was at the gym. I quickly opened the note to see who had sent them.

("Happy Birthday One Day Early. This Way It Is More Of A Surprise. Someone")

Someone’s lucky I had to come back and pick up my veggies.

Someone made my day.

Thanks Someone!