Terminally Incoherent

Here is a social experiment you can conduct in your own office. The only requirement is that you have both male and female coworkers. It also helps you have a good area where you can set up the bait, and observe your victims.

Here is what you do.

Ingredients:

• 1 Box of Donuts (Dunkin Donuts brand)

Setup:

• Open the box, place on table, invite coworkers to have some.

Observations:

Male coworkers will:

1. walk up to the table
2. briefly inspect the contents of the box
3. pick a donut and eat it.

Female coworkers will:

1. Observe the box from their cubicle/office
2. Walk past it 2-3 times jokingly commenting how much they hate you for bringing them into office
3. Make comments on how they can smell the donuts from their cubicle/office
4. Solemnly swear that they will not have one at all
5. Walk up to the box and stare at the donuts loudly exclaiming how bad these things are, and how they will not give in to the temptation, then go back to their desk
6. Cut a donut in half, noting how they plan to hit the gym/exercise/run a mile right after work
7. Tell everyone how they are only having a salad today for lunch so it’s ok to have a piece of a donut
8. Gaze longingly at the donut box from their cubicle
9. Walk by the box few more times
10. Try to talk you and other people in the office to eat the rest of the donuts so she is not tempted
11. Periodically check how many donuts are in the box
12. Ask others to eat that second half of the donut she has left in the box
13. Move the donut box somewhere else
14. Come back for the second half of the donut promising to skip the lunch today or something like that
15. Obsessively count how many calories she just injested
16. Make comments about feel guilty for eating the whole donut
17. Frequently check how many donuts are left in the box
18. Try to convince others to finish the box
19. Jokingly argue with other female coworkers who should take the remaining donuts home at the end of the day

It is important to note that some females will completely ignore the donuts, and will not participate in this ritual. They will however join in the female group making comments about caloric content and etc…

Conclusions:

Most women feel that self-indulgently stuffing their face with sweets in the presence of their peers is not socially acceptable, and thus they feel compelled to conduct this dramatic performance. I suspect that the choice to eat a donut is made within the first 5 minutes since the box is placed on the table.

From that point on they either mostly ignore the donuts for the rest of the day, or get involved in the elaborate social ritual that allows them to indulge themselves while still appearing as weight conscious individuals.

These are just my personal observations. I admit that I may be completely wrong here. But if I am, why do we need all this drama?

This entry was posted on Friday, August 18th, 2006 at 7:54 pm and is filed under humor, random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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