Potluck Do's and Don'ts!

I can hardly control my excitement today.

Why you ask??

It is not because it is Friday and that means no work for a bit....

and it is not even because I am going to see the comedic stylings of

Ron Swanson (the greatest man in America) tonight.

No my friends, I am ecstatic because today is the day of the monthly potluck at work.  Call me white trash if you want, trust me I've been called worse, but I love work potlucks. 

They combine my three favorite things on earth:

-Eating

-Cooking

-and Not Working

Each day I wait and wait for my lunch break, dreaming about my delicious salad and lemon water...counting down the minutes until I can stop working for an hour and shoot the breeze with my co-workers.  Lunch is by far the most wonderful time of the day, and the monthly potlucks are like the King of all lunch breaks.  These potlucks always have a theme of some sort.  Today's is baked potato bar.  There are 31 employees so that means a shit ton of food.


(I googled potluck and this is what came up, trust me ours looks way trashier)

Myself and my two BFF's at work are the organizers of the potlucks.
 It is great because we have really maximized the getting out of work aspect of them.

We take at least an hour to "set up".  My boss has never noticed the only set up involved is putting up three folding tables, bringing some silverware and plates into the conference room, and maybe heating up our own items.  This all takes about four minutes, but we stretch it a tad.  The clean up takes even longer.  I mean we have to throw away the plastic table cloths, clean like five serving spoons, and talk trash about our co-workers we hadn't seen in a while.  This takes an hour+.  We just want to do a good job.

Potlucks are not all fun and games though my friends.  No not at all.  I have really learned a great deal about potluck etiquette from some of my co-workers.  I am going to share the rules with you so you won't have to learn the hard way like I did. 

Potluck Do's and Don'ts!

(note these facts are all 100% true and have happened at my place of work)

• Do not eat anything brought by co-workers that exhibit hoarder tendencies.  (we have 3).

•  Share the DO NOT EAT LIST with the ones you love .  We thought this was common knowledge and then discovered our wonderful boss did not know rule #1!  We quickly showed him the car of one of the  list members and he threw up in his mouth a little.  This car was so packed with crap (an SUV mind you) that only one passenger could fit.  I am not exaggerating.  If you can't sit in someone's car, don't eat their food.

• Do not eat anything brought by your co-workers that have more than 3 cats.  A former co-worker of mine had over 15 cats.  We only allowed her to bring chips in a sealed bag, or unopened packs of plates.

• When the theme of a potluck is appetizers, do not bring a can of corn that you open at work and put into a Tupperware container and act like you are contributing. 

• Do not bring an open, half eaten sleeve of saltine crackers to the chili cook off.

• Do not bring a tub of anything that has been used.  We don't want the last scoop of your sour cream.

• Do not bring a dish called tomato and tuna pie.  What the fu*K is that even??

Otherwise anything goes at a potluck.  They are a really great way to get your weeks worth of calories in one meal, and a great reminder on a monthly basis of why you eat lunch with just your 2 BFF's the rest of the month.