Get your hands off my banana

There is a new breed of predator roaming amongst us in the corporate world. They are known as the Fruit Nazis, or FN's if you prefer to be discreet. Every office has at least one. The term is flexible, depending on the types of freebies that one's office provides--from daily fruit deliveries, to occasional leftovers from catered meetings, to the ever-popular holiday gift baskets-- the [insert freebie] Nazis wait for these goodies to arrive and will stop at nothing pounce and pillage the offerings.

When I first started working for my current employer, I was delighted to find that a variety of fresh fruit was delivered on a daily basis to encourage healthy snacking. This was until I discovered the reality that my office was a jungle, full of predators who hide beneath their cubicle walls and wait for the sound of the fruit cart to roll by. Each day at 10:30am their ritual begins. They line up at the basket and proceed to TOUCH EACH PIECE, looking for the ripest of the bunch. Oranges, pears, bananas, grapes-- even the coveted strawberries-- none are safe from the Fruit Nazi's grip.

Their strategy varies. If they are feeling bold, they will simply pile up as much as they can carry, walking away with arms overflowing with fruit. Or, if they sense that the enemy is near by, they will make more than one trip for the goods, coming back up to four times to reap the bounty. Either way, within 5 minutes the fruit basket is EMPTY, lying naked and disheveled on the breakroom table with perhaps an apple or two strewn about.

And to our horror, it does not stop with the fruit. When the occasional announcement is made that leftovers are available in the kitchen, the FN's are ready to strike. They load up their plates with mounds of food to hoard at their desks, chuckling with glee at their victorious efforts. Good luck leaving your lunch items in the break room fridge; random lunches have been known to mysteriously disappear.

Do these people eat at home? Does anyone really need 8 pieces of fruit a day? Are they stocking up to prepare for nuclear war? More importantly, before they man-handle every single piece fruit, do they wash their hands after using the restroom??? These are questions that we can not answer. All we can do is hope to hear the basket before they do, so that at least once or twice a week we can have one goddamn banana.