if you leave it, they will eat

My department has a small kitchette as a break area. Sometimes people will bring leftover party foods into the office. If the items are larger, they'll be left on the round table in the kitchenette. Often it's dessert.

So, when I went to make a cup of tea the other morning, I wasn't too surprised to see most of a large, highly decorated cake on the table. I hadn't seen an announcement regarding the cake (email is usually sent to the department) but there were three of my coworkers standing around it with cake on their plates. I figured one of them must have brought it in.

As I made my tea, I listened in to their cake critique. Apparently, it wasn't a traditional cake at all. Rather, it was layers of crisp chocolate meringue with chocolate cream filling. The shape of the cake was also odd; a rectangle with a log across the top. The whole thing was covered in a hard chocolate ganache.

At a lull in their chat I asked, "Who brought it in?"

"We don't know" they chorused.

All I could do was laugh. "You're eating a strange cake and have no idea where it came from? I think I'll pass and maybe see how you all feel an hour from now."

No one ever admitted to bringing the thing in. As the day progressed, the cake became more and more mangled as people tried pieces of it. I never bothered. It seemed too sweet, and the crunchy meringue didn't appeal to me.

I still think it was funny; the clutch of coworkers surrounding a lunch table, eating and critiquing crumbling pieces of overly sweet cake, with no idea from where it came.