Garbage Doughnuts

If you are the Seinfeld fanatic that I am, you might have read the title of this post and think that I'm going to talk about the episode where George's girlfriend's mother catches him eating a doughnut out of the trash. Or maybe the episode where Elaine is having an affair with the Green Lantern and they eat a bear claw in the alley behind the bakery. That is not really where this post is going though. This is about an actual incident of me eating doughnuts out of a trash can...sort of.

It was back in the wonderfully fun days of working at The Benz. It might have been someones birthday, or maybe a random Friday, or maybe someone was just selfishly providing breakfast for everyone. But in any case, someone had brought in Dunkin Donuts Munchkins one particular morning for my team. Everyone grabbed a few to have with their morning coffee, but after that, there didn't seem to be much interest in finishing the leftovers. So A threw the rest of them away.

Later that afternoon I started dragging. Usually around 2:00 I find myself struggling to keep my eyes open. Usually this can be solved with a can of Coke to get enough of a caffeine fix to get me through the rest of the day. But on this day, that wasn't doing the trick. Perhaps my weariness was caused by the sugar high from that morning's Munchkins wearing off. Or maybe I just hadn't gotten enough sleep the night before. But it became pretty clear to me that in addition to some afternoon caffeine, some sugar was going to be in order.

I went to see my friend C, who sometimes had mini Reese's PB cups at her desk. But she hadn't made a candy-run to Walmart in awhile and was out of Reese's, or anything else that might have boosted my energy level. But she remembered that there had been some doughnuts left over from that morning. I told her they had been thrown away. Shocked at the silly thought of someone throwing away perfectly good Munchkins, C went to investigate the situation herself. She asked A what had been done with the leftovers, and A pointed to the trash can in the empty cubicle next to her.

C walked over to the trash can, pulled it out from under the desk, and peered inside. Indeed, there were quite a few Munchkins still in the box. She took the box out of the garbage can, picked up a doughnut hole, gave it a little squeeze to confirm that it hadn't hardened or staled since the open box had been tossed earlier that morning, and took a bite.

I was horrified! "Those were in the GARBAGE can!!"

C: They were still in the box, in a can at an empty desk, with no other garbage in the can. What do you think could be wrong with these?

Me: They were in the GARBAGE can!!

C: But they taste fine.

She ate another one, as if to prove to me that they were indeed fine. And she was either really convincing, or I was really just so cheap, lazy and tired that I'd rather eat garbage doughnuts instead of going down one floor to the break room where the vending machine was located.

As it turned out, C was right. They did taste fine. They were so good in fact, that she and I ended up finishing the rest of the box by the end of the day. And it was just what I needed to get me through the workday without falling asleep at my desk.

And in my further defense, Jerry tells George that "adjacent to refuse, is refuse." But my garbage doughnuts were not adjacent to anything. So I guess it really doesn't even count as garbage :)