Eating lunch at work stinks.  There’s just no good way to do it. 

OPTION #1:  Restaurants get too expensive.  Even if you can afford it, if you work in a busy office or a school like I do, you probably don’t have the luxury of time to eat out, visit the corner deli, or tip the delivery guy at the front door. Subway might be quick and cheap, and that guy Jared proves it can be reasonably healthy too, but how many $5 footlongs would it take to kill you with boredom?

OPTION #2:  Packing a lunch from home is a pain and a drag.  How many times must a man settle for last night’s leftovers?  How many times are we supposed to make the same sandwiches, the same soups, the same salads over and over again before we go insane?  Worst of all, how many kilowatt-hours of your poor office microwave oven’s life must you squander warming one pathetic Lean Cuisine after another? 

OPTION #3:  Schools, hospitals, and certain businesses provide cafeteria lunches, but then, so do prisons.  Institutional food never exhilarates.  At times it satisfies—when I worked as a newspaper reporter at the state Capitol, for example, I grew to appreciate the cafeteria’s chicken Caesar wrap—but only in rare instances do such kitchens rise above depressing mediocrity Monday through Friday.

SOLUTION?  The PTO where I teach welcomed us back to school Monday with a generously catered luncheon resplendent with plump and chilled cocktail shrimp, pizza and chicken wings, trays of pasta primavera, cream puffs for dessert, and lots more.  Local restaurants donated enough delicious food that many of us were able to carry take-out containers home.  Phil’s MarketPlace in Westerly sent along sandwich wraps, and The Pizza Lady in Pawcatuck contributed a boldly spicy batch of sausage and peppers that I could have eaten for breakfast, lunch, and supper. 

But, alas, this was all just a tease.  If the PTO could make me my lunch every day, all would be right with the world, but on Tuesday I was on my own again.  I ate a banana for lunch. 

Tomorrow I’ll eat the turkey pita wrap with spinach that the teacher next door gave to me this afternoon.  She just didn’t feel like eating it.  See what I mean?  One day into the school year and she’s already sick of lunch from home.  181 days to go. 

Maybe tomorrow night I will summon enough motivation to cook up some tilapia and sweet potatoes for Thursday.  But probably not.

Another of my colleagues brings nothing but an apple for lunch every day.  He’s been doing this for years.  God bless him.  He must’ve learned a long time ago that it just isn’t worth trying. 

I’d be eternally grateful if someone could tell me how to make eating lunch at work exciting again—if it ever were.