when office potlucks go wrong

by Alison Green on November 10, 2022

As we approach the season of office potlucks and other meals with coworkers, let’s discuss the many ways they can go wrong … from alarming cuisine to the person who takes an obscenely large share and never contributes anything of their own.

To kick us off, some stories from years past:

•  “One of my old workplaces had a cookie baking contest, and the winner used store-bought dough. It became the source of gripes about cheating for years.”

•  “I had a coworker who thought any treats were just for him. If breakfast tacos were ordered for my department, we’d usually offer other departments nearby any leftovers. As soon as he heard that leftovers were being offered, he’d go through and get *all* of the ones he wanted (example, all the brisket) and hide them in his desk drawer before the other department could get any. He’d also get in line first or near-first (he volunteered to help with setup), and would take massive amounts of what was there. If some folks didn’t get firsts while he was loading up his second, he’d say folks should have gotten there faster. Management did talk to him, but his answer was that he didn’t care.”

•  “Our department used to have a huge holiday potluck every year. One coworker would always bring the same thing every year, a certain stew. But it wasn’t enough that he brought it; he hyped it up. Like, he’d send emails beforehand to the whole department alerting everyone that he was bringing his stew! On the morning of the potluck, he’d let everyone know what time the stew would be arriving! And send a special email thanking everyone that helped him do his job, and the stew was his repayment. It was like he believed the entire potluck revolved around his stew. (It didn’t.) Thing is, I don’t think anyone actually liked the stew. I think the only people who tried it were new people to the department that hadn’t tried it before.”

•  “I used to work with an awful guy who used to dig his hand into bowls of catered food at our work lunches. Like pasta salad. it’s one thing to grab a few chips with your hand, but he’d put his dirty ass hand into a BOWL OF MACARONI. he was a total pig and if there was an email that said ‘leftovers from whatever meeting in the kitchen now!’ people would run to make sure they got there before old filthy hands got there because once he was spotted in the kitchen, all food was officially considered contaminated.”

In the comment section, please share your stories of potlucks, cooking competitions, and other office meals gone awry.

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  1. Ask a Manager* Post author

    I will likely compile some of these stories into a holiday post next month. If you don’t want yours included, please note that and I’ll make sure it’s not!

  2. The Original K.*

    My “favorite” (in quotes because this is gross) is the woman who volunteered to bring in cookies and she had the cookies strung around her dog’s neck, with dog drool all over them, and couldn’t figure out why no one was into it.

        1. Llama Zoomer*

          I tried to explain to my husband why I was falling off the chair laughing at the reminder of the cheap ass rolls story. I did not succeed in explaining, though I did hit the floor…. Every time! Can’t stop laughing.

          1. Kim*

            The cookie bakeoff story reminds me of a time many years ago when my company had a bake off contest. The judges could only be from management (most of whom don’t cook) , even if a non management staffer had a degree from the Culinary Institute of America they were rebuffed.
            The winner was , as you might guess, a manager who pulled a recipe off the internet at the last minute.
            This enraged another contestant, who from a home computer , and an inscrutable email address , wrote a scathing letter proclaiming her recipe was superior , the contest rigged. Apparently the email went viral through the company . They never held another bakeoff again. But they do have softball games. The coaches can only be from management. Even if you were once a three time All Ametican Div 1 athlete but not in management , you cannnot coach . Absolutely ridiculous .

    3. Dust Bunny*

      Okay, I have a bone-shaped cookie cutter and have made (human-intended) cookies that looked like dog biscuits for pet-related events, but at no point did they actually come into contact with any animals, I promise.

      That is just foul.

      2. Sally*

        I mean, I would eat something that had come unto contact with my dog, but (1) I would never expect or even ask someone else to do so, and (2) I would not eat something that was carried around by an unknown dog.

        1. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

          My dogs would like to know what kind of self-respecting canine would let themselves be covered with cookies and not devour every blessed crumb.

          1. Lynn*

            My cats have the same question. They might (sometimes) be more dignified than the dogs I have had in the past, but they are still willing and able to pig up enormous amounts of anything that they aren’t supposed to have if we don’t pay attention.

        2. Happy meal with extra happy*

          Yup. My dog has rarely managed to get a lick in when I’ve eaten something while sitting on my sofa, and I’ve still eaten it, but I would NEVER dream of offering it to others.

        3. CommanderBanana*

          My dogs both know how to eat off of forks and we have a strict sharing policy for ice cream cones in my household, but I would never assume other people have the same level of tolerance for dog slurps that I do.

    4. Quail*

      Breakfast taco guy is fine; he’s smart actually.

      1. People who help with setup SHOULD get dibs. Setup should also include teardown, so if they don’t help with cleaning, make that part of the deal.

      2. Dept snacks = dept costs. There are budgets for this so it makes sense that it goes to the dept that paid for it first; even if that means it’s a guy hauling ten breakfast tacos home.

      Hes maximizing his benefits.

      3. The only questionable one is going back for seconds before the first round, but that’s fine depending the timing. 20 minutes? Hold it, bud. An hour? They had their chance.

      1. shuu_iam*

        The complaints pretty clearly weren’t about him taking any of the tacos, but rather about him taking *all* of whatever type he liked and hiding them in his desk, or a disproportionately large amount of the food overall, or such. That’s just being selfish. If the department is deliberately ordering enough that everyone can take ten home, sure, but it’s much more likely that other people were losing their chance to have any because he decided he deserved more.

        2. Erica*

          Also filling your desk drawer with MEAT is a pretty good way to attract rats, roaches, and funky smells. Desks get wiped down periodically, not so much the inside of desk drawers.

          1. Snell*

            How about let everyone get firsts before you go back for seconds (thirds, fourths, fifths…)? Helping set up≠entitled to take all of entire dishes.

      3. Feral Humanist*

        Except we are adults, presumably, and therefore we understand that the point is not always to “maximize benefits” at the expense of everyone else. This guy presumably knew that this all made him look like a jerk to his colleagues and didn’t care.

        I have no issues with anyone taking food home at the end of an event, if it’s clear that no one else wants any more. In fact, I provide to-go containers at events for this very purpose! However, if I saw someone loading up a to-go container with ALL of one type of anything before people were done eating? That would be a jerk move and I would say something.

        1. Hannah Lee*

          Yes!

          Back in the before times, when we had an employee luncheon before shutting down at the end of the year until after new year’s, part of the event budget was “containers for folks to take home left overs”

          The first time we did it, we did have one person who grabbed some containers and filled them to the brim with “all the good stuff” leaving others with some cold mashed potatoes and whatever bits were hanging around in the other chafing dishes. He ate well that week, but did not endear himself to his co-workers.

          After that one time, since I’m the person who organizes the whole thing, I took it upon myself to command the buffet line with ALL the containers and pack up the to-gos. I’d make multiple containers of each dish that had multiple servings left over, and stacked them at the end of the buffet line. So if there were 4 portions left of prime rib, I’d put each one of them into it’s own small container and put the stack of 4 at then end, next to 6 containers each with a serving of chicken parmigiana, 3 containers of roasted veggies, zip locks of 6-10 cookies and chocolates, etc. That way when people were ready to head out (we get a half day the day before holiday break and most folks leave right after the luncheon) That way when people were leaving, they could come grab a couple of containers of different things already boxed up. There’d usually be some horsetrading like someone saying “ooh, my family really likes Italian, anyone care if I take 3 of the ziti and meatballs?” and people answering “sure, as long as I can get 2 of the chicken parm” or or someone asking to take a whole plate of cookies because they were heading to a friends’ house and forgot they were supposed to bring dessert. One time when some guy’s family was away and he’d be alone for a couple of days, folks offered him first crack at the to-gos and told him to take as much as he wanted so he didn’t have to make dinner for one the entire holiday weekend. (it was kind of sweet; he wasn’t a pushy or grabby guy, but he really seemed to appreciate the gesture and the thought of being able to just heat something up that was tasty instead of cooking or getting take out)

      4. JSPA*

        Do you live someplace where this is in any way normal, or have you simply opted out of the social contact in favor of writing your own code of conduct on the basis of first principles?

        This is no longer even a watertight argument for (say) gathering loot in a multi player game; even there, these days, cooperative behavior has some value.

        Helping with setup is help, not a ticket to gorge. It gets you an early chance to look at what’s there, and then taste a bit of whatever you fancy, once the line is open–not to take heaping big piles to hide for later (nor to sample before the party starts).

        1. SpicySpice*

          Yes, thank you! “Well he helped set up so therefore it’s totally cool that he got two plates of tacos while other attendees had to go without.” Nope!

      5. Lenora Rose*

        No; Breakfast taco guy is not fine. People who help might get dibs in the order of, say, taking home to or three leftover tacos instead of one, not in taking so much others get nothing. Second, it sounds like he wasn’t taking the extras just from his department, but from every department – he was just also doing so before any OTHER department could. Third, if his behaviour was at the point where management has to talk to him, he’s obviously not holding off for an hour or in any way at all. Management doesn’t get involved if it’s minor.

        The only time I got ALL of a thing I really wanted was after literal hours of others being explicitly invited to take items, and being invited more than once to take even more home than I did or wanted. (Leftover homemade lumpia FTW – the person who brought it bought only half what she made and very firmly did not want to take more home.)

        1. CommanderBanana*

          Also, taking all of one kind of a thing is crappy. If every other taco is pork or beef and you take all of the fish or veggie ones, I can’t eat any of the ones remaining.

        2. Not Your Admin Ass(t)*

          I cannot imagine homemade lumpia NOT being the first thing to go around here! You wouldn’t even have any leftovers to beg people to take home. Anyone I know would have teleported to your office and scooped up all that precious lumpia in a flash as soon as they heard it was available. :D

          (We have a large Pinoy population, so people *know* the power of lumpia around here.)

          1. SixTigers*

            I’d have been there in 0.2 seconds if I heard there was extra lumpia that was free to a good home.

        4. Princesss Sparklepony*

          This site really needs a like button on replies. You would get many likes. Great comment.

          It’s kind of amazing that everyone commenting on this main comment is all “nope, not cool.” Although I’m ok with the people doing set up getting a sample taste of what’s there while doing setting up. (As long as it’s hygienic – no bare paws into the dishes. And what did that guy do when it was hot food?)

          1. Not Your Admin Ass(t)*

            And what did that guy do when it was hot food?

            I honestly hope he burned the f*** out of himself.

      7. Ellis Bell*

        Where are these “maximising benefits” moves being taught and can we get a list of attendees for reference purposes? Those of us who haven’t been to the smash and grab seminar are operating on the basis of, well, manners. The whole point of sharing food at work is to … share, (I’m genuinely not being sarcastic by stating such basic things) and to show that you have some self control and consideration so other people will basic-level trust you.

        1. Siege*

          I cannot imagine demonstrating such behaviour in front of my coworkers, quite honestly. Even though I don’t like half of them (and am secretly rooting for them to quit or in one case get very deservedly fired so we can replace them with better people) I need to have relationships with them, and I don’t feel like “taking all the food through underhanded means and hoarding it” is really the best way to maintain those relationships.

          1. Autumnheart*

            Exactly. Whatever I might think of my coworkers, there’s no way I’m going to give myself a reputation as Potluck Food Hog or whatever. People talk.

        2. GreenDoor*

          Exactly! The point of an office potluck is to have an hour or so to de-stress, socialize, meet coworkers you’ve not met before, and get a little break from the workday. The point is certainly not to pack your desk drawers with enough food to survive the apocalypse.

      8. Momma Bear*

        Strong disagree. He’s being greedy and should wait until everyone is very done before taking anything. Otherwise it’s not a “leftover”.

      10. L Dub*

        Absolutely not. It’s a community potluck, not that one random dude’s opportunity to go grocery shopping so no one else can have any.

      12. Still trying to adult*

        Oh, gosh, hoarder & Mr. Dirty Hands need to be disciplined,

        Hoarder needs to be called out ‘No, you do care, it’s just that you only care about yourself and not about any of your colleagues. And that’s a problem. BTW, now that your management and coworkers know how you feel about them, (fill in the blank about how he will be treated and viewed)

        Mr. Dirty Hands needs to be written up immediately and disciplined, and standard disciplinary escalation. 3rd time, he’s not welcome at any more events, and his manager will fill a plate for him.

      13. Bob Wilson, Anchorman*

        What profiteth a man if he gains all the breakfast tacos but loseth the respect, goodwill and camaraderie of his colleagues?

        Mark 8:36 (ish)

    5. KoiFeeder*

      The brisket has always been one of my top “favorites” because of the bureaucracy in trying to figure out where literal blood was coming from.

      1. Elitist Semicolon*

        That story is horrifying on multiple levels, but (to me, at least) most horrifying because the night manager’s reaction was, “eh, we don’t have a key; we’ll just leave it for the day team.” Like, it is BLOOD. Dripping on someone’s DESK. At WORK. Even if you can convince yourself that’s not an environmental safety/hygiene issue, pry that shit open with a crowbar to make sure the day guy isn’t a serial killer stashing severed hands in there.

    6. Kay*

      I knew a woman, who it turns out owned lots of long haired dogs, who decided to make lots of cupcakes for a fundraiser. I had offered to loan my cupcake transporters for the event and showed up to drop them off as she was finishing the final frosting process for the last few cupcakes. The amount of dog hair covering every surface of her house was disturbing (kitchen included), and I did my best to raise my concern and protect the remaining cupcakes from the hairs floating around them (think-oh gosh, the dog hair floated in here so fast/oh no! best cover those before any dog hair falls on them!). I politely declined the offer of a free cupcake for the use of my transporters and have been wracked with guilt ever since for not throwing myself on the cupcakes 2 year old tantrum style while screaming YOU CAN’T SERVE THESE TO HUMANS!!!!

    1. RB*

      I’m the writer of #3! Unfortunately, Stew Guy was nowhere near as lovable as Kevin. And I’m sure Kevin’s chili was much better than the stew. (As long as the chili wasn’t scraped off the floor)

      1. anne of mean gables*

        I really wish your Stew Guy was more lovable, because I am really loving the energy of a guy who hypes up his very mediocre stew for the office potluck. On the right personality it becomes endearing, I think (see: Kevin).

        3. Sevenrider*

          We had a stew guy who was NOT lovable. He kept notebooks of transgressions committed against him, however minor and made veiled threats at people. He constantly called the police on his neighbors, etc. He was scary crazy! Every potluck he brought a beef stew and NO ONE ever ate it. We were all too afraid of becoming deathly ill or worse.

          1. BlueSwimmer*

            I worked with a very sweet older lady who always hyped up her special casserole for potlucks in this same way. She called it “Jazz!!” casserole and always made jazz-hands when she said the name, which she pronounced with a drawn out A sound, like she was in the cast of Chicago doing a musical number. It was basically pasta and cream of mushroom soup, super boring and not jazzy at all. She was so sweet that everyone took a little bit to be mannerly and told her it was good, which meant that she kept on bringing it to every potluck until she retired.

            2. Marna Nightingale*

              I think I know that casserole and if it’s the one I think it is it kind of IS “jazz” casserole.

              Pasta, cream of mushroom soup, tuna, frozen peas. Optional topping of potato chips. That one?

              At one time it was fairly famous among impoverished dancers, musical actors, and musicians (and students of these things) as being the cheapest possible reasonably balanced and sufficiently caloric meal.

              If that’s how she got the recipe I can see how it had a certain odd glamour for her.

              We used to call it “fairy pudding”, which would have been inexcusable had we been a bunch of straight or mostly straight people but as we weren’t I’m going to go with “jazz casserole is MUCH better.”

              1. Marna Nightingale*

                I feel like I should add, the thing is objectively terrible, UNLESS you spend basically your entire day doing vigorous exercise and drinking water like you were being paid to while eating little or nothing to avoid being full when you need to dance or sing.

                And then it’s somehow just the most incredibly good supper you can imagine.

              2. Ms. Carter*

                “Fairy pudding” is hilarious and is the only name I’m using for tuna casserole from now on. (I’m gay and mostly hang out with gay people, I’m allowed, lol.)

        4. Katy*

          We had a Bone Broth guy at my work a few years back, and he was not loveable at all. He was intensely narcissistic, and hyping up his bone broth was just one of the more minor ways it manifested.

          1. Ampersand*

            Bone broth: useful as a base for soups, arguably good for you, and (IMO) tastes terrible.

            So you’d better have some magical, delicious bone broth if you’re hyping it up!

            1. KoiFeeder*

              Parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, salt, pepper, garlic, onion, and meat browned/precooked (if you’re using chicken) in butter.

              1. Ampersand*

                Maybe the trick is to make it and not buy it premade. I imagine, like many things, it’s better if it’s homemade/fresh vs. store bought. Which sounds obvious now that I say it. :)

                1. Marna Nightingale*

                  It’s surprisingly good hot when you’ve just come in from the cold, but I may be biased by growing up in a generation and class where Bovril and toast was regarded as a light and nourishing meal.

              1. Alien*

                Don’t remember seeing the story here, but it is a terrific story told by author Sarah Gailey on twitter. It gets revisited in the holiday season because it happened at a holiday party where she brought a lot of juices and a clueless vinegar evangelist did the unthinkable…

                1. Alien*

                  And I realized I should have linked her thread – and it’s gone! :(

                  Long hilarious story short – she intended lovely juices for kids and mixing with champagne for adults at a potluck holiday fest. Vinegar evangelist annoyed many people at the party with his pitch, but somehow found no takers, so took it upon himself to add freaking apple cider vinegar to ALL THE JUICES.

          3. Sleeve+McQueen*

            I love the confidence of Stew Guy, Bone Broth Guy and Jazz Casserole Gal. I sometimes bring in extra jars of pickles if I have them and am totally “you don’t have to take it to be polite” because I have no idea where they sit in the pickle panoply.

            1. Princesss Sparklepony*

              I’m of the opinion that it’s hard to have a bad pickle. Although some are more spicy than my stomach can handle. Pickles rock!

      3. Nathan*

        I’m still holding on to my pet theory that Stew Guy was fully aware that his stew was awful and it was a subtle middle finger to all his colleagues (what gets me is the “[he would] send a special email thanking everyone that helped him do his job, and the stew was his repayment”)

      4. i babysit adults in the sky*

        Was it brunswick stew? I can imagine someone hyping it up, because people get super insistent their region’s version is the first/best. (They’re all wrong though, my mother’s is the best)

          1. Little Bobby Tables*

            I grew up in a family where they held that it’s not real Brunswick stew without squirrels. Although they really just take on the flavor of the other ingredients.

            1. Clisby*

              I’ve heard that, but my father made really good Brunswick stew without squirrels. Now, for all I know it would have been even better with squirrels. My husband grew up on a farm, and his family ate squirrel reasonably often – he likes it.

              1. TheAG*

                I’d try it. My husband says it tastes nutty, but I’m not sure if he’s just saying that to mess with me or being serious

        2. Sweet 'N Low*

          My grandmother gave me one of her old cookbooks that has a recipe for Brunswick stew that calls for 70 whole squirrels.

          I have not made it (yet).

          1. Artemesia*

            I got married the first time in 1966 and was given a Joy of Cooking which I still have minus its cover and some of its index. It has a recipe for cooking beaver tail that involves first charring it over a fire and peeling off the skin.

          2. Anon+Supervisor*

            I love those old cookbooks. I have one full of Depression-era recipes and one of them is for roadkill.

        3. Cat's Paw for Cats*

          I don’t know if I’m more impressed that you found the recipe or that you actually read the Terms of Service.

        5. Kay*

          Wow! I’m no connoisseur of Terms of Service, but I certainly hope there are more like this! Makes me think it might be a cool place to work.

        1. FCPHRLady*

          I’ve never commented here but religiously read AAM. Imagine my surprise when this came up! I’m the HR manager at the publisher who published Brian’s (Kevin from The Office) chili cookbook. I am also the glorified “test cook” for many recipes for cookbooks, including 25+ recipes from this one. I can confirm that his chili recipe is scrumptious. Both his actual recipe, and the Kevin recipe!

  4. Sara*

    Not a pot luck, but we had a vendor buy pizzas for the entire company as a holiday treat. As they were being brought in/set up, one woman grabbed an entire cheese pizza and took it back to her desk. When she got called out, she said she was bringing it home for her kids for dinner and did we want them to go hungry?

    The nerve of some people lol

    1. Sheworkshardforthemoney*

      Last summer I organized the thank you pizzas for the staff after a major event. I polled people to find out what kind they preferred and how many were going to stay for the pizza. I ordered enough for everyone to have 4 slices each. When I came back with the pizzas several people told their friends about the “free” pizza so there were about 6-8 more people than I had ordered for. Most people got 2 slices and I had to order several more to make up for the shortage. I ended not having any pizza at all.

    2. Eye roll*

      Ug. I had blocked this memory. At a temp secretarial job back in the day, the owner had a buffet set up for the employees as an appreciation lunch for completing a particular project (which was why I was there to temp since it was an all hands/emergency situation). One of the very well-paid senior employees took an entire tray of meatballs and an entire tray of pasta off of the buffet line, after the managers/seniors went, but before any of the other employees, who had to take a slightly later lunch that day. When called on it, he said something similar – that he needed it to feed his kids for the week – and the owner said if the only way he could feed his children was by stealing from his job and taking food from lower-paid employees, he was welcome to it. But the owner would be accompanying him to the food stamp office to apply or reporting him to CPS if he refused, because feeding his children should be his first priority and if his children could only be fed by stealing, that wasn’t something that could be ignored. It turned into a public argument about how the owner was shaming him for liking expensive things and needing a little help sometimes. Ended up as the employee’s last day. Employee was gossiped about multiple times per day for his public tantrums, calls, and repeated visits to whine about getting his job back for the next month (and maybe longer, but I stopped temping then).

      1. Juicebox Hero*

        Jeez, good for the owner. Being a parent means sacrificing your wants for your kids’ good, Mr. Moochy McMoochface.

        1. Artemesia*

          Even the lowest paid employee should be chided for doing this before everyone had a crack at the food — although you might be good with her taking all the leftovers.

        1. Eye roll*

          Don’t get too excited. This was possibly the most dysfunctional boundary-stomping place I temped for (I actually stopped temping altogether after this). The owner was okay (and this was possibly his best moment), but the managers were crazy-pants, ranging from one who thought this new-fangled computer thing was going to ruin the business and “contaminate” the files (this was around 2000) to the one who was a full-on gossipy mean girl, despite being a 70-year-old man.

          1. Observer*

            Well, obviously there were some management problems there. Because although the owner seems like a decent person – he certainly handled this situation well! it also seems to me that a manager THIS bad must have shown some other problems before this happened. So how did he last so long?

            1. Eye roll*

              Meatball guy wasn’t a manager – he was a senior employee. Sort of like a lead or chief contributor. And I don’t know how long he’d been there, but he at least seemed well entrenched.

            2. So they all cheap ass rolled over and one fell out*

              I disagree that the owner handled it appropriately… he should have done it in private.

              1. Still trying to adult*

                Heartily disagree. Perp did it in public, boss called him out in public, and if perp had acquiesced then & there, it could have been over. But he doubled down, and then doubled down again. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

      3. Slow Gin Lizz*

        Whoa. That company owner is my hero and wow that employee sure was a jerk. (I would use stronger language but I don’t want to get blocked.)

      4. CLC*

        Wow that is an incredible story. Also so horrible for a senior leader to claim poverty in front of their employees who probably make a fraction of what they do.

      6. HigherEdAdminista*

        It is amazing that this guy threw away his entire job because of a tray of meatballs and a tray of pasta, one of the cheapest things in a store. It’s incredible the petty hills people are willing to die on!

        1. Eye roll*

          I know! During, I was wondering if there was alcohol, gambling, or something going on and he was really having problems. But at the point he was quitting over it and the owner was showing him out the door, I just thought, “nope!” I’ve been scrounging for food broke (including shortly before that period of temp work) – I’d have never risked my job when I was broke. Rage quitting is for people who can afford it.

      7. Citra*

        Good for that owner! What an awesome guy. If I worked there, I would have sent him a thank-you note for that.

      8. Snell*

        The “I have to feed my kids” entitlement seen here always seems to ignore the fact that they’re stealing from other people who also have to feed their kids.

      11. One Potato Two Potato Three Potato Four*

        The owner handled this extremely well. He put it back on the senior employee and I’m sure no one was sad it was that senior employee’s last day.

    3. PhyllisB*

      This story about pizzas reminds me of one Wednesday night church supper. The dinner that night was pizza. My grandkids and I got there about 10 minutes after serving started, and there was not ONE BIT of pizza left.
      Luckily, there was a gas station not far away that sold awesome pulled pork sandwiches, so I went and got that for our dinner. What killed me was, I found out later the reason they ran out is because of the women had taken whole pizzas and put them in a bucket to take home FOR HER DOGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
      Well, I complained to the pastor’s wife about that she said there was nothing she could do about it. The ironic part is this woman didn’t even attend services!! She just came on Wednesday night to eat and then left.

        1. PhyllisB*

          Yep. She usually took stuff that was left over and asked folks to put their leftovers in the bucket. All of which was fine, but to take whole pizzas and do that was just…I have no words.

      2. Slow Gin Lizz*

        Wow, the pastor totally could have done something about it. Probably grow a backbone, for one. (So maybe the wife couldn’t but presumably she told the pastor and he refused to do anything, right?)

            1. Slow Gin Lizz*

              Yeah, that’s the real reason, of course. Not that they can’t, but that they don’t want to.

            2. whingedrinking*

              My response when someone says “I don’t want to cause a problem” is “Too late. We already have one. What you mean is that you don’t want to deal with it.”

      3. Shan*

        Oh man. I can’t remember if I’ve told this story here before, but my ex-husband was Mormon, so I half-heartedly was as well, and we served on the Activities Committee. Lots of luncheons. When it was just our ward (about 150 people), they all went pretty smoothly – you always have a handful of odd ducks, but for the most part, no issues. A combined thing with the second ward – also went smooth. Well, a third ward was added to our stake centre, and the bishopric wanted us to host a tri-ward luncheon to welcome them.

        It was a *nightmare.*

        It was a potluck, and we had the people who were bringing dessert put them in one of the rooms off the kitchen. Everything else went out in the cultural hall where the party was happening. The activities committee was providing the main course, which were burgers. Hundreds and hundreds of burgers. We had them staying warm in several giant slow cookers. With so many people, we were having people self-serve from both sides of the tables, with a few people manning the tables. We’d never had any problems before, so we assumed the same would be true that day.

        Right off the bat, people were taking four or five. Not to bring back for the table – like, a family would be in the queue and each take that many. The people manning the tables tried to tell them to stop, but they were ignored. My ex quickly got on the mic and requested that everyone limit themselves to one and come back for seconds after everyone had been served. That slowed it down, but people were still taking two or three if they could. The last groups of people didn’t even get one, despite the fact we’d had more than enough for every single person to have two.

        Of course, with that many people, lots of people were done their burger(s) before other people had even started, which meant they started to demand dessert. For obvious reasons, given what had just happened with the burgers, we explained we weren’t going to bring the desserts out until everyone was mostly done. We weren’t talking waiting for hours – it would have been 15-20 minutes. They started trying to break into the room holding them. We’d locked the main door, so they started trying to come in through the kitchen. I explained that we’d be bringing them out shortly, and that they really needed to leave the kitchen. They tried to shove past me. One of the other activity members tried to close the door, and people were actively pushing back, trying to force their way in. When we finally did bring the desserts out, people where basically snatching up everything they could get.

        95% of these people were living in pretty affluent neighbourhoods, driving nice cars, and they lost their minds over subpar burgers. It was honestly the most appalling thing I’ve ever witnessed, and really drove home what could happen during widespread shortages. Actually… I bet every single one of them was hoarding toilet paper in March 2020!

          1. Shan*

            I was honestly just in shock at the time it was all happening! Plus, I was like 25 at the time – 40 year old me would be a lot more likely to say something.

        3. Artemesia*

          I was at a conference of people in a social service profession (think social workers, or psychologists, or teachers) and there was a lovely buffet after the banquet of lovely mini desserts. The organizers had planned on about 4 per person. The first half of the line piled their plates with up to 8 or 10 desserts and the last half of the line got nothing — they requested that the kitchen ‘bring more out’ — but of course, only 2400 items had been ordered and that was all there was.

          1. Shan*

            It’s such a weird thing to watch! I mean, there’s no way any of the people at my event were hungry enough to each five full-size burgers. But I think we’d passed whatever the magic number is that allows a group to self-regulate, plus a third of the people were largely unknown, and it just became this frenzy to hoard resources as people witnessed other people doing it.

          2. Sandgroper*

            The number of people who grab the coeliac/gluten free “because it looks better” and so on is bonkers. Good conference facilities have learnt to glad wrap the meals on a separate table off to the side (stops cross contamination too), with the registered participant’s name on it. Otherwise all the allergy food (even if set on a separate buffet table) gets eaten first.

            1. londonedit*

              Same happens with vegetarian/vegan stuff. Meat-eaters go through the buffet and take a helping of the veggie options because they look nice, not realising that those are the veggies’ *entire meal*, not just another side dish. The best barbecues I’ve been to have asked the veggies and vegans to come up first, so they get first pick of the veggie burgers/sausages etc and first go at the side dishes.

              1. Marna Nightingale*

                I’m in favour of just straight-up declaring—and if need be posting—the “vegetarian” rules. (Vegetarian in brackets because it applies to all food provided to people with restrictions.)

                You can have some if there’s any left once the vegetarians have had enough time to come back for seconds.

                Obviously some people are jerks, I know. But if you make it an explicit part of your potluck culture it’s a lot easier to identify the jerks, because you remove the “maybe they just didn’t know” category, and it’s easier to push back.

      4. HotSauce*

        Well that’s not only rude, but incredibly stupid. Garlic is toxic to dogs & most pizza sauces contain garlic.

        1. c_c*

          It is toxic to dogs, but the amount in pizza is really not going to cause harm. It’s about 30g per kg of dog to cause issues. Unless a really tiny dog ate a whole pizza or it was a garlic lover’s pizza or something, it’s not really an issue.

          Still a terribly rude move.

        2. Mekong River*

          The cheese is going to worse for them. And the oil, if it’s a greasy pizza. Pets are prone to pancreatitis from greasy people food.

      5. QuinFirefrorefiddle*

        My favorite church potluck story is much sillier. I worked for a congregation for a while that refused to plan their potlucks, everybody just showed up with what they wanted to bring and “it all worked out in the end!”

        Until the potluck that shall live in infamy, because that was the potluck with, I counted, 14 kinds of potato salad! About three main entrees, and a couple of jello salads for dessert, and other than that it was just all potato salad as far as the eye could see. After that one, they started planning their potlucks and having sign up sheets for bringing entrees versus side dishes versus dessert.

        1. TheAG*

          That sounds like one of my nightmares. I will pretty much only eat my homemade potato salad (and I know it’s not for everyone because everyone likes their own potato salad lol)

        2. Princesss Sparklepony*

          I don’t know – an all potato salad buffet is right in my dream wheelhouse! I’d be tasting all of them. All of them!

        3. yetelmen*

          Unassigned potlucks are TORTUROUS for me. I am not an anxiety-prone person and have always been food secure, but something about not knowing whether there will be enough in each category is a special kind of hell.

          1. Splendid Colors*

            The latest church potluck assigned categories by where your last name fell in the alphabet. Whoever set it up probably had the RSVP list so they had a good idea of where to divide up the names so they’d get appropriate quantities of entrees, sides, salads, desserts, and beverages.

        4. Zee*

          Something similar happened at a place I worked! It was like a potato salad tasting party. We had to order pizza.

      6. Juneybug*

        I disagree with the pastor’s wife – she could and should have asked the lady to allow everyone to go through the line for first and seconds before allowing her to take the “leftovers”.

        1. Eisbaer*

          Did the pastor’s wife actually have any authority in the matter? I’m a pastor’s/pastor’s wife’s daughter and my mother was absolutely not employed by the church.

      7. Cynan*

        Amazing that this happened in a church when there’s literally a Bible verse about feeding the children before the dogs (Mark 7:27).

    4. CR*

      I’m like Kevin in Home Alone, I prefer cheese pizza and I’m always disappointed when there isn’t any or everybody else takes it all. But I wouldn’t steal a whole pizza for myself!

    5. Education Mike (she/her)*

      Omg so this was based on the premise that she was going to let her kids go hungry that night if there hadn’t been a random pizza party?? Wild.

      (If I thought there was any chance this was about actual food insecurity I would obviously feel very differently but this seems to very much not be that.)

      1. Slow Gin Lizz*

        Yes, she was obviously preying on people’s feelings about letting kids go hungry, knowing that people wouldn’t be willing to call her out on that for fear of seeming like they’d be willing to let her kids starve. That’s gross. It’s nice that someone above the person in Eye roll’s story actually called him out on it but I guess it’d be hard for an underling to do that to someone.

        1. I should be working*

          I may be too sarcastic for my own good, but I’d be very hard pressed not to ask if the person’s children only ate when a parent had a pot luck at work.

          It’s no more ridiculous than claiming one’s children will go hungry because their co-workers wouldn’t provide them with food.

          1. Slow Gin Lizz*

            Yes, I probably would be sarcastic in that way about it too. At least now that I’m middle aged and DGAF what rude people think of me.

      2. Lou*

        IDK pizza is expensive, could be she was saving it for her kids not because they wouldn’t eat otherwise but because she couldn’t afford to buy them a pizza.

        1. Slow Gin Lizz*

          I’d think that could be a possibility except she asked people if she wanted her kids to go hungry, which implies that she otherwise wouldn’t be able to feed them. (I mean, that’s the impression she’s trying to give to everyone, whether true or not.)

        2. Siege*

          We don’t have to excuse all bad behavior on the grounds of “something we don’t know is going on”. Some people are rude, entitled jerks, and I would argue that someone blatantly taking food from a potluck rather than hoovering up the leftovers is a rude, entitled jerk rather than a person who is food insecure.

          1. Yuh*

            Hard agree.

            Plenty of people suffer or struggle quietly but I’m not giving literally every single person the benefit of the doubt. Some people just suck.

            And yea, big diff between scooping up all the leftovers versus assuming you can just take it all for your family, even if you are in need.

          2. HigherEdAdminista*

            And the truth is, I have known students who were food insecure. Did they go to events where there was free food? You bet! Did they try to hide their food insecurity by being extra normal about the food or only taking any leftovers when people weren’t around? Yes!

            I’m not trying to turn anecdotes into data, but all the people I knew who came around to take as much free stuff as possible were not those who actually needed it.

            1. Chauncy Gardener*

              Hard agree. Any time I’ve had students/interns at work, they were always very circumspect about taking food. And we ALWAYS gave them ALL the leftovers.

            2. The Starsong Princess*

              When I was in grad school, at the end of every event, the Dean would whip out a roll of baggies and instruct the students to pack up and take home the leftovers. But she was quite strict, only the students got a baggie.

            3. Curmudgeon in California*

              At my last University job we had breakfast stuff served once a week for the first three years I was ther. We fully expected students to be on the prowl after the event was over. I usually got there too late but could still have some breakfast.

              Of course, when they moved us all to open plan buildings they made the breakfast earlier, only monthly, and much smaller, so there were no leftovers by the time I got in.

        3. Eyes Kiwami*

          Pizza is not that expensive. If you can’t afford to buy a pizza for your kids then that doesn’t mean you get to openly steal one from your company potluck.

    6. Similarly Situated*

      At my first job out of school, the building management would host a buffet lunch for all the offices. People would come in with MASSIVE tupperwares (like the size of a casserole dish) and load up on food. It was super awkward.

      1. HigherEdAdminista*

        I had a colleague who did this once. There was an event and they brought these chafing dish containers and was loading up on food to take home before any of the guests had even been through the line.

        The other folks in the office just tried not to look because it was so embarrassing we didn’t know how to handle it.

      2. theothermadeline*

        In the graduate program I was in our Director of Finance literally worked an entire section into her orientation speech about how we should always have tupperware in our bags, ready to snatch up leftovers from anywhere. It was true, we constantly had group lunches etc. that had leftovers, alas it all disappeared with COVID times…

      3. Elitist Semicolon*

        My uncle used to do this at family Thanksgivings and it was even awkward around people he was related to. It’s one thing to accept leftovers when offered (or even to ask, “could I take some of that home?”) but to show up with a brown grocery bag full of containers and announce, before anything was even served, “these are for my leftovers” was a bit much to the rest of us.

    7. Marya*

      I noticed that even in my usually rather communitarian tech office, when one time there was not enough pizza, most people fell into two camps: either the “there isn’t much pizza, I’ll take a little and get more if there’s enough” and “there isn’t much pizza, I’d better take three pieces so I’ll be full.”

      1. Artemesia*

        It is a real study in character isn’t it? I better take one so there is enough versus, oh there might not be enough so I’ll take 4.

    8. Kettle Belle*

      We had Pizza Fridays over the summer. It started out fine, but after the first two weeks it became “The Hunger Games”. The pies were put in a common area and you were to get a slice or two. Folks started pushing and shoving and grabbing whole pies. It even got to the point where folks would wait at the service elevator and grab pies off of the delivery guy’s cart.

        2. londonedit*

          We had a similar thing at an office Christmas party a few years ago. There quite clearly wasn’t enough food, and the trays of canapes were being brought out extremely sporadically, so people started crowding around the door where the waiting staff were bringing stuff out and descending like vultures as soon as any food appeared.

    10. Autumnheart*

      My employer (in the beforetimes when we had catered lunches) would buy SO much pizza for our holiday pizza lunch. They ordered something like 80 pizzas for a 50-person team. They also posted pizza police and had a rule: First trip through, 2 slice maximum. Second trip through, 2 slice maximum. Then they’d send out an email that told people to help themselves. Then they’d put the leftovers in the break room and let everyone on the floor have at it.

      It was effective because everyone got pizza who wanted it, everyone could eat as much as they liked, and if you waited long enough, you COULD take home a whole pizza if you were determined to do so.

    11. Nobody*

      What blows my mind about this is that I’ve seen the exact same behavior out of at least three other places that I’ve worked. Every single time came with the, “you want my kids to go hungry??” excuse.

      At one very small office, it was a manager who would take literally anything left in the fridge at the end of the day home – so you couldn’t leave a preferred coffee creamer, a pack of lunch meat for the week, a frozen meal, etc. He always left an infuriating nate that said, “(daughter’s name) says thank you for the (stolen food item)!”

  5. Elle*

    You know how Allison says that when we go for an interview we are interviewing the company as much as they are interviewing us? We should all be asking about their potluck/bday/holiday situation because the worst offices always have the craziest stories.

    1. Old Academic Librarian*

      I went to an academic interview (so, overnight trip) where the meal I had on the first night, typically in a restaurant at every other interview I’ve had in my 25 year career, was a potluck in someone’s living room. There were cats roaming around the tables and there weren’t enough places to sit, so I was trying to awkwardly stand with my solo cup and paper plate with unknown casseroles, doing my best to make a good impression but also worried that I didn’t know what was in all of the dishes and am sensitive to a few things (interviews aren’t where you want to have food sensitivity issues!). They didn’t have a budget for more than one meal for my visit. While the creative solution was nice, this was a huge red flag that there probably wouldn’t ever be enough money for anything (including salary!).

      2. LCH*

        You were decidedly correct. The one university interview I had we ate at the nice university restaurant because they got a discount. But it was nice!

        1. Siege*

          The community college I taught at had a really kickass culinary program and had multiple restaurants on campus to give students ways to learn different standards of service. I *never* felt bad taking people to the fancy restaurant there. And I was very excited when the administration did a take-a-teacher-to-lunch, where students could get vouchers to that restaurant to take a teacher they liked to lunch. I was pretty flattered that several of my students wanted me to be that teacher.

      3. Artemesia*

        I was the guest speaker and the night before was invited to the chair’s home where the meal was a big spicy pot of bean chilli with lots of onions. I am hyper sensitive to onions and spicy beans before being a presenter is not my best plan either. Smeared it on my plate, ate bread and salad and was really hungry.

    2. Jaydee*

      At my former job, there was a long-standing half-joke that “what will you bring to office potlucks?” should be an interview question. I think interns who applied for permanent jobs sometimes did get asked that since they already knew the office culture and wouldn’t be put off by it. But potlucks were taken pretty seriously there.

      2. Wordnerd*

        Our office usually has a “meet and greet” with candidates and the rest of the department that wasn’t on the committee. It’s supposed to be a little bit of a “get to know the culture” but not a straight up interview, so we do actually default to “what would you bring to a potluck” as a conversation starter, but fully 1/4 of our department is on chips/plates, so no one gets dinged for saying they don’t bake or cook.

      3. Nina*

        as a woman who works in a heavily male-dominated industry and had ‘will you bring in baking for everyone’ as a job interview question and turned out to be entirely typical of the sexism in the office, I cannot sufficiently strongly recommend that that never become an interview question.

      4. yetelmen*

        I had a friend who interviewed in a notoriously cliquey department on campus and that was their final interview question. She didn’t end up getting the job and couldn’t help but wonder if she’d chosen the wrong dish..

    3. The OG Sleepless*

      That’s a great idea. Not foolproof, though. My least favorite job actually had one of the nicest holiday parties, a price fixe dinner at a nice restaurant.

  6. what's in a name*

    I know someone whose workplace has banned an employee from participating in the potluck because she put essential oils in the food she brought and didn’t tell anyone about it until after they had eaten it.

      1. Dust Bunny*

        They can be. Also, you don’t want to put unexpected ingredients that might trigger allergies into foods and not tell people. Like, don’t cook something with peanut oil that could just as well be cooked with vegetable or olive oil, since so many people have peanut allergies.

          1. Ragged and Rusty*

            A lot of essential oils are also not technically food: they are WAY too concentrated to consume.

            And then you might be like me: I’m very allergic to all essential oils, no matter how diluted. I did find this out the hard way. Having a “surprise ingredient” like that could potentially put me in the hospital.

            1. KoiFeeder*

              Seconded. The one time I’ve run into this is at a family gathering and they used so much that it thankfully caused a reaction long before I put anything in my mouth, but essential oils are not food-grade and many people have allergies to them. It’s just a bad, bad thing to do.

            2. MEH Squared*

              Yup. My brother got into sniffing essential oils from a bottle. I am allergic/sensitive to almost everything. He handed me one once and without thinking I sniffed it. My head snapped back and I almost threw it back at him. It was lavender, one of the scents I’m sensitive to. Thankfully, it wasn’t one of the worse ones, but I cannot imagine what would happen if I ingested it.

        2. Education Mike (she/her)*

          Yikes! If you have a common allergy like peanuts you learn to ask people who share food what it was cooked with, but why would you ever ask if there were essential oils in my food?! I think even if I had an allergy I would assume that was a no. So scary.

      2. LolaBugg*

        Usually they concentrations at which they are sold in the bottle are considered too high to be ingested without dilution.

      3. Mekong River*

        I don’t believe they are regulated as food, so they may not be safe to eat based on manufacturing concerns alone.

      4. what's in a name*

        There’s not really any regulation or oversight in the manufacture and sale of essential oils, so there’s not a reliable way to know if the ingredients they include are safe to consume. They also tend to be more highly concentrated than fresh or dried herbs, so even if it’s an ingredient that’s usually safe to eat, it could still cause bad reactions in people if it’s consumed in that concentrated form.

      5. GladImNotThereNow*

        There are “food grade” essential oils – for example, I’ve used a drop of bergamot in Earl Grey tea before to enhance the flavor. But, one does need to be careful – not all oils are, and even if safe in that regard are highly concentrated. A little goes a long long way.

        1. UKDancer*

          Yes I’ve used peppermint extract before now to flavour icing but I use the food grade extract (which is mixed with water and diluted) not the essential oil version because it’s safer and less likely to give people unpleasant side effects. Some versions of things are designed for human consumption and others are not.

            1. metadata minion*

              Yeah, I have various extracts, which I use by the teaspoon, and then I have a bottle of food-grade lavender oil, which I very carefully measure out two or three drops of for an entire cake.

      6. Shynosaur*

        Not many of the essential oils that are out there in the market are actually food grade. If you’re using food grade essential oils and following a recipe, there’s nothing wrong with it. (For example, my sister once made heavenly orange frosted cookies with a food-grade essential oil following a recipe designed to use the oil. They were incredible.) But just doping random food with random oils? Nopeity nope nope. And there’s no way someone being that careless was actually using a food-grade oil.

      7. Mekong River*

        Yes, it would be diluted if it were mixed well into macaroni salad.

        In a water-based soup, it would probably have to be emulsified to be well mixed.

      8. Sad Admin*

        Something can be diluted without being diluted enough to be safe to eat, especially something that’s not food grade in the first place. Really feel like you are determined to be obtuse about the common-sense points people are making in this thread so I am done engaging.

    3. GRA*

      Certified Aromatherapist here –

      You can safely use essential oils internally, BUT there are so many guidelines that need to be followed that I would never use them in food that was being shared. I don’t even use them in food that I cook for myself or my family!

    1. RJ*

      Amen to this. I’ve loathed potlucks for years because large or small, food does bring out the worst in people IME.

    2. HigherEdAdminista*

      It’s true. I love to bring in things to share, but I myself never check out a free food situation at work because it’s always a mad house. People will rush a conference room to snatch up left over wraps like they are getting manna from heaven!

      1. Capt. Dunkirk*

        Tangential example: One time a popular sit-down chain restaurant was opening near my work. They were doing a “soft opening” where you could reserve a table online and eat for free from a trimmed down version of their normal menu.
        I guess the idea was to get the restaurant staff used to the flow of a packed house before the actual grand opening.
        When word of this got around the office people went MAD trying to reserve tables and figure out what would normally be the most expensive food they could get for free. (

        You’d think they hadn’t eaten all week!

        The prospect of free food does weird things to some people.

    3. The Starsong Princess*

      It does. And the mood can quickly change. I remember the Great Lasagna Debacle of 2015. The Staff Appreciation Committee organized an appreciation lunch for the entire office, then about 150 people and hyped it up as a big event. The chair of the committee organizing it was young but promising and this was an opportunity for her to gain some leadership experience. She ordered exactly 150 portions of lasagna and salad. She told me this and when I asked her if that was enough, she said that was what the longtime catering company we used recommended as not everyone would attend. But it all went horribly wrong. It turns out that the catering company’s idea of portion of lasagna was about two inches by two inches and they ran out of food after about the first 50 people. But more and more people kept arriving expecting to eat. There were all these hungry people milling about and the crowd’s mood was shifting. A group started chanting “We want lasagna! We want lasagna!”

      Fortunately, our managing director saved the day. He got the attention of the hungry people (who were one step away from becoming a mob with torches and a rope at this point) and announced that he was getting pizza for everyone. When the pizza came, he rallied the senior leadership to deliver it to everyone’s desk with a thank you for their work that year (the staff appreciation part). As for the committee chair, she left a few months later. She wasn’t fired or anything but at every meeting, people kept asking her “So what about the lasagna?” Oh, and we got a new catering company.

      1. Barnacle Sally*

        I kind of feel bad for that young lady as that’s literally a large part of the catering company’s job to know portions for large crowds–they did her dirty by recommending 150 portions.

        1. Splendid Colors*

          And a 2×2″ portion of lasagna is only appropriate if you’re at a potluck where people sample umpteen different entrees. Not for the main course!

    4. Dhaskoi*

      Free food specifically, I think. There’s something about free food that hits us instinctively, often to ill effect.

  8. Juicebox Hero*

    The thought of someone digging their bare hand into a bowl of macaroni salad is making me want to barf.

    I wonder if he was doing it on purpose because he knew no one would want to eat something he’d just had his mitts in so he’d be able to snaffle the whole thing…

      1. Athena*

        It’s disgusting. And must have happened Pre-Covid because I think someone would have shut him down if this happened recently.

        1. Education Mike (she/her)*

          Did this get somehow less acceptable post Covid? If no one said anything I think it was more because of shock, or general fear of what someone who has that little regard for others might be like in a confrontation.

          I see this as similar to licking a coworker. It’s not worse after Covid because it was already maximum level bad.

          1. East Coast Anon*

            There exists an established maximum level of bad? I’m certain someone somewhere is saying “hold my beer”. Yarg.

    2. BethRA*

      I worked in a college cafeteria one Summer, and whenever I’d bring out a fresh tray of cookies or other desert, I’d be swarmed by football players all trying to stick their fingers in as many items as possible so no one else would claim them.

      1. Zombeyonce*

        This has the same energy as my dad sticking his thumb in several of my mom’s freshly baked chocolate chip cookies to make them “rejects” so she couldn’t take them all to whatever food event she was attending.

        1. what's in a name*

          Which is the exact reason that when I’m cooking treats to take to an event, I do a 1.5 recipe so there’s enough to leave at home.

        2. SixTigers*

          If someone, and I don’t care who, was sticking his thumb into my fresh-baked cookies, I’d declare, “Oh, well, look at that, THAT one’s ruined! And so’s that one! And that one! Shame I gotta throw ’em out!” and into the trash they’d go.

          And I’d think long and hard about whether or not I wanted to make any more. Ever.

          That’s just gross — and awful.

      2. Clisby*

        My son once worked a summer seasonal job at a popular cookie shop. Near the register, there were cookie jars with free samples. Accompanied by big signs saying something like “Ask us if you’d like a free sample.” He said it was a rare day when someone didn’t stick their nasty hands into a cookie jar to get a sample on their own. Which meant they had to throw out the whole jar of cookies and wash it thoroughly before reuse.

        I told him he was gaining valuable skills in learning how to deal with the public. He said, “Yeah, I’m learning that the public sucks!”

    3. JanetM*

      Not an office potluck, but I once saw someone at a salad bar scoop up potato salad, eat it off the serving spoon, and then shove the spoon back in the salad. I immediately told a manager, who told the person to leave, and removed the container from the salad bar. I can only hope it was thrown out, and not put back when I wasn’t looking.

      1. Artemesia*

        Odds are at least 50/50 it went right back on the serving bar. I avoid potlucks having observed so many gross things over the years including managers who just pour new food on top of old sat out food in a tray and food that is contaminated and then sent out again when the coast is clear.

      2. Baby Yoda*

        We watched a man “sample” all the soups from a hot food bar in a Safeway super market. Never trust do it yourself soup bars.

    4. Admiral Thrawn Is Always Blue*

      I’m very particular about my food. I just don’t like touching it, so I use a fork or spoon, including for snack food, like chips. I have had *so* many comments and strange looks at work because I am using a fork but I don’t think it’s strange. But this guy… I absolutely would not eat anything he had the slightest possibility of having touched. Massive ewwwwwww.

      1. JustaTech*

        I had a coworker who was a germaphobe (which is interesting when you work in a lab) and his response to the idea that we didn’t all use the tongs/scoop on the tortilla chips is that he would microwave them (the next day when there were leftovers) to kill the germs.
        OK, sure, you do you.

        Until he tried it with potato chips, which caught fire.
        (Small fire, went out immediately, no damage done.)

      2. Princesss Sparklepony*

        One of the “hacks” for eating Cheetos and other salty or powdery snacks that I read recently was to use chopsticks for eating them so your hands don’t get all messy. So just tell them it’s a hack…. I’m not sure I have the dexterity needed to use chopsticks on different types of the snacks. I see M&Ms shooting across the room… potato chips I see breaking, but I could probably do Cheetos…. maybe.

      3. RLC*

        Same here on preference for picking up food with utensils. Even if my hands are sanitized, I may not want food residue all over them. I think Victorian era etiquette advisers were wise to suggest that most food should be handled with utensils whenever possible. We collect Victorian era flatware and have fun trying to identify and properly use the more arcane utensils. (Saratoga chip, aka potato chip, and cracker serving spoons were a thing!)

    5. Elenna*

      I’m extremely hard to gross out and even I wouldn’t eat that salad. Or at least I’d scoop out the part he obviously touched and toss it before eating the stuff underneath…

    6. yellow haired female*

      It’s like when I was little and would lick something so my brother wouldn’t eat it….

      1. Cold Call Catastrophe*

        At my previous workplace, we got a rare pizza lunch provided. The top-earning executives descended on it first, taking up to 6 slices each. Admin people, like myself, who got there about 10 minutes later got one slice each. The receptionist had a staggered lunch time, so she got nothing. When she complained, an exec tried to bully other admin staff into giving up their one slice for her! When everyone pointed out we’d eaten our single slice, the exec gave the poor receptionist $2 to get her own slice later. We do not live in an area where pizza is sold by the slice.

    7. TheraputicSarcasm*

      That guy reminds me of Garfield touching every food on other people’s plates so that they’d give it to him.

    8. anon in affordable housing*

      We had a tenant who would come home from dumpster-diving for our building’s parties and gross everyone out–but at least he was grabbing serving utensils with his grody hands, not the food.

  9. Viki*

    Panini press brought in, for grilled cheeses, in a small conference room.

    Fire alarm went off, and office/mall since office was in a mall shut down for three hours.

    Oddly not the first time a panini press at a pot luck has shut down a building in my life.

    1. Tinkerbell*

      Ooh, my sister’s small museum did food for their quarterly all-staff meetings and once had a “waffle bar” with various toppings. Unfortunately, the break room was NOT wired for four waffle makers and they shorted out that whole side of the (historic, sporadically renovated) building…

      1. The OG Sleepless*

        My MIL insisted that we come to a “luau” at her assisted living facility, which among other awesomeness featured virgin pina coladas that someone was mixing in a residential quality blender. It took forever as this guy made one pina colada at a time, and shockingly, the blender didn’t hold up after two hours of nonstop crushing ice. Sigh.

        1. Momma Bear*

          Old office years ago when k-cups were new. Coworker got a Keurig as a gift. We learned that her making a cup of coffee at the same time my space heater turned on would blow the circuit. After the second time, Maintenance threatened to confiscate both appliances if it happened again.

      2. RLC*

        Same story but at a 1960s building with many slow cookers and electric frying pans inadvertently plugged into the same circuit as the entire computer network. My 1955 vintage electric frypan full of tamales was the final straw. Network shut down for half a day and IT staff thereafter labeled appropriate outlets for high wattage appliances.

      3. L'étrangère*

        Famous Ivy League University’s entire campus would regularly lose net access during the summer. It took us a while to figure out that if the a/c window unit in the upstairs conference room was on, turning on the microwave in the adjacent staff lounge would also shut down the part of the building that housed all the essential servers. Sadly, the physical plant was controlled by the mafia so 7+ years didn’t see a real fix. And no amount of (big, red) signs kept people from leaving the a/c on when not needed, or of course from trying to warm up their chicken soup whenever they felt like it..

    2. EPLawyer*

      Wait, you can’t leave it on that cliffhanger and just disappear. What’s the OTHER panini press story?

      1. Viki*

        High school pot luck party before finals, fire alarm went off, and the entire high school had to be evacuated in January in Ontario for two hours.

        He had to go on the morning announcements to apologize the next day.

    3. KYParalegal*

      “If I had a nickel for every time… I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it’s happened twice.”

    4. Feral Campsite Raccoon*

      That reminds me of this story.
      I worked as an assistant director at a summer day camp. We had a lot of very lovely, very enthusiastic, but somewhat immature counselors, mostly college-aged.
      At some point during the summer a few of them instituted a weekly breakfast ritual. They’d all get together in one of the teaching spaces, during work hours but before kids arrived, and eat a potluck breakfast together. We’d know when it was happening because it’d be ten minutes before camp opened and we wouldn’t be able to find the staff.
      As the summer went on, the breakfasts became more and more elaborate. Until finally one of them brought in a portable doughnut maker, and accidentally set the building on fire. The fire department responded. Camp did not start on time that day.
      The counselors were very unhappy that they were not allowed to use their paid time to eat fancy breakfast together anymore.

    6. turquoisecow*

      Not a potluck but this reminds me of the year my company – a large food retailer – did their annual food show at the office instead of off site. Someone was cooking (I forget what) inside a closed room with no ventilation, alarms went off, everyone had to clear out and wait for the fire department to come by.

      After that they went back to having the show offsite, which was a shame because we had been able to take a lot of food home after the show.

    7. BasketcaseNZ*

      Which is interesting, because I’ve worked in a number of offices where there is no toaster (because smoke hazard), but there is a sandwich press…

      1. JustaTech*

        One day I showed up to work to discover one of my coworkers in a bit of a tizzy because the toaster (which she used to make her breakfast) had disappeared.
        Now, this was upsetting partly because bread is not the same as toast, but also because the toaster and the panni press weren’t actually company property, they were things individuals had brought in to share.
        I didn’t have anything super pressing, so I offered to find out what happened. Asked facilities “where’s the toaster?” “They’re not allowed by fire code.”
        Interesting, we’d had them for years and they were fine. So, being in A Mood, I went and checked the fire code for our state, county and city. Nothing about toasters (or sandwich presses) in any of those documents. Check with our landlords, nothing about toasters. Check with the Health and Safety person, again, there’s nothing wrong with a toaster.

        What I finally found was that, at a high-rise building we used to rent a few floors of, *there* toasters were banned, because of the major disruption if a smoke alarm went off.
        I take all this information back to the facilities folks and say “toasters are not against any regulation, and if you decide we can’t have them you need to give them back to their owners.”
        The toasters reappeared.
        (Apparently someone who had been moved to our building from the fancy high-rise was surprised that we had toasters and through a game of telephone this got turned into “ban toasters”.)

      2. BeachMum*

        My child can have a toaster in her dorm room (that has a kitchen) but not a toaster oven because it’s a hazard. Meanwhile, my late-FIL used to set fire to his toast weekly at the office. At the funeral, someone mentioned that they’ll never smell burnt toast without thinking of him.

  10. Meghan R*

    At my last job potlucks were always … interesting. I worked in an area that was farmland and a lot of the employees were avid hunters. So, anytime we had potlucks, they’d dig deep into the deep freezer and pull out the strangest things. One potluck we had venison, pheasant (both fairly normal where we live), but then someone brought in elk, pickled beef heart, pickled beef tongue, and smoked swan!

    2. londonedit*

      Swan! Swans are protected in the UK, you’re definitely not allowed to smoke them. Unless I suppose one happened to die of natural causes right in front of you. But you might still have to ask the King first. Technically all unmarked mute swans in Britain are owned by the Crown, but the late Queen only ever used to exercise said ownership on certain stretches of the Thames, and only really for the ceremonial ‘swan-upping’ tradition which is basically a swan census where they’re caught and checked over and logged and whatnot.

      1. UKDancer*

        I’ve been to the swan-upping a couple of times, hours of fun watching people try and catch them for the census.

      2. Swanning around*

        And the marked Swans belong to one of the guilds so some have two nicks in their beaks which got corrupted over the years and is why there are quite a few British pubs called the “Swan with 2 Necks”.
        The guilds are The Abbotsbury Swannery, The Vintners Company and The Dyers’ Company.

      3. Joyce to the World*

        In the US, they were at one time protected and not legal to hunt. Not sure if this has changed or not since I am not a hunter. My Dad went goose hunting with a few friends (40 years or more ago) and the one guy who had never been ever in his life showed up a few days early and shot the biggest “geese”. Which happened to be swans. When he was told, he freaked. The ones that had not been dressed were left anonymously in the back of the game wardens truck. Some had already been dressed by a professional (who never said a word to him). He gave them to the others in the hunting party. All I can say is that swan is tasty, but even greasier than duck.

        1. KoiFeeder*

          Honestly, the one time I had swan it had such a distinct fishy taste that I wasn’t into it. And yeah, the grease. I’m greasy enough without adding more of it into my diet, sob.

          1. UKDancer*

            Yes that’s the problem with goose as well. There was a time when it was very fashionable in London as an alternative to turkey. I tried it once at a restaurant out of curiosity and it just tasted way too greasy for my comfort. So I’ve never had it since and would prefer not to have it again.

            1. KoiFeeder*

              I’d probably try peking-style goose, because peking duck is the least greasy way of cooking duck I know of. But outside of that, I’ll pass on goose.

            2. General von Klinkerhoffen*

              Goose is great for Christmas Dinner, but very much too rich for any meal you need to move after.

            3. Anon+Supervisor*

              I love goose, but if it’s greasy, it isn’t cooked right. You have to constantly siphon out the drippings so that it doesn’t ruin your oven and stink up the house. My grandmother made it a lot for Christmas because my grandfather hated turkey and loved to take a sip of hot goose fat (he’s extremely German).

              1. KoiFeeder*

                I mean, before puberty, I definitely did that with bacon grease. I can see it. But please, give me the degreased goose secrets! Do I need a special grease vac or can I use my hand vacuum?

                2. Rockette J Squirrel*

                  A good friend and excellent cook would use a blow dryer on duck. (Yes, seriously.) I helped, and you would not believe how much grease that duck “sweated” while being thoroughly warmed. We did it about 30 minutes, then she roasted it. It was delicious, and not greasy. It had about the drippings as a roast chicken would, and the gravy had to be portioned out it was so good. (She served everyone’s plates in the kitchen and we brought them out.)

              2. SixTigers*

                Goose grease is really useful for frying things, later, and you get SO MUCH OF IT off of one goose. You have to keep siphoning the grease out of the pan, and it really helps if, ahead of time, you stab the goose carcass repeatedly with something really sharp like a wicked two-prong fork.

                It’s really tasty meat, if you lower the grease content, and the bones and scraps make a wonderful soup base, but man, you got to work to get that grease under control.

            4. Trixie the Great and Pedantic*

              My family did a Victorian Christmas one year, complete with Christmas goose. Mom apparently almost set the kitchen on fire because of the goose grease.

      4. Meghan R*

        Its illegal to hunt them in certain states in the US as well! He had gone hunting a state over to get it.

    3. Phony Genius*

      Early in my career, I was at a potluck (in a big city), and one of the suburban commuters was a hunter. His wife (who also worked in the office) brought venison balls. (Venison meatballs, not the other thing.)

    4. UKDancer*

      I’d be interested to try smoked swan. In London (perhaps in the rest of the UK too, I don’t know) swans are considered to belong to the monarch so they don’t get eaten much because they’re a royal prerogative.

      2. Ellis Bell*

        Swans are protected across the UK. I was a small town northern reporter and we were rescued from a very slow news day by some swan bones over a campfire. The readers were genuinely horrified and basically organised volunteer canal patrols.

    5. Bexy Bexerson*

      Elk is delicious! I like it far more than venison. My parents were avid hunters, so I’ve tried just about everything…one time I visited them while they were living in Montana and my dad dug into the freezer and pulled out every type of meat he had, and then processed to grill a giant feast for the family. We had venison, bison, moose, elk, antelope, and I don’t even remember what else. Excellent meal.

      1. Amorette Allison*

        I LOVE antelope and elk. Moose has to be cooked carefully and Im not a big venison fan. LOVE goose, just make sure all the shotgun pellets are removed or you’ll break a tooth.

      2. Tasty treats*

        I was on Safari in Kenya 20-odd years aho, they served us Eland which we realised were the large Antelopes we’d been viewing on the game drive that day. Sweet Gamey Chicken in flavour.

      3. SixTigers*

        I had an elk burger when I was in Montana once upon a time, and it was deeeelicious! Absolutely scrumptious!

      1. Bexy Bexerson*

        Did you like it? I think squirrel is straight up NASTY. I’ve eaten just about everything that can be hunted in the US, and squirrel is the one thing I’ll never touch again. My dad was a big hunter, and when I was a young kid he did a lot of squirrel hunting…I think it was a combination of needing to feed a family on a tight budget, and also wanting to go hunting as a reason to get away from my mom for a few hours (she was horrible…he eventually divorced her and then got remarried to a super cool lady who ended up being his best hunting partner).

        I can still imagine the smell and taste of squirrel, and it’s been close to 40 years since I’ve eaten it. NEVER AGAIN.

        1. Kimmy Schmidt*

          I did! The hunter that shared it had grilled it in a homemade barbecue sauce, kind of like a BBQ chicken thigh. I don’t really remember the meat taste itself, just that it was juicy. But I’m about the most unpicky eater ever and willing to try just about everything.

        2. Me (I think)*

          A guy I went to college with used to hunt squirrels on campus, with a sling shot and a dab of peanut butter on the toe of his boot. He ate a lot of them, but I was never interested in tasting any.

      2. Bagpuss*

        I tried squirrel once and liked it. Grey squirrels are an invasive species here (uk) and a bit of a pest, so I believe hunting them is classed as pest control.
        the meat is very lean / healthy.
        In fairness though I did have it in a very good restaurant. I would imagine it could easily be very dry and tough, and must be even more fiddly than rabbit to prepare.

        I do generally like game, and enjoy goose and venison etc. And hare, although that’s not readily available and the last one I had came to me with all its skin, head and feet on which was a bit of a challenge!

      3. Rockette J Squirrel*

        We moved to the second poorest county in Texas when I was middle-school-aged. The cooks were grandmotherly farm wives and, man, could they cook! About three weeks after school started, everyone was sent to the cafeteria/gym during last period. We had a big bowl of the best stew ever, and fresh cornbread with butter. I was surprised, as in my big-city (where the food was horrible) had never done this. I quietly asked, and was told that all the game confiscated from poachers was processed for free, and when there was enough meat it was donated to the school. For a great many of the kids, it was one less meal they had to go without. And I noticed that the cooks would come around and offer seconds when there were any, but none of the kids who had homes with enough food said yes, and that saved more for the kids who needed it.
        My mother was absolutely horrified – she would not touch any game with a 20-foot pole. She had called another mom, who said there was always venison, squirrel, rabbit, and sometimes possum, turkey, etc. She told me to not eat it and my daddy (who hunted fowl) told me to make my own decision. I loved it, so I’d have a small portion.
        My friend also told me that if the wardens caught someone poaching to truly feed their family, it would either not be confiscated, or confiscated, processed, and returned, saying that no one they normally donated to needed any.

    7. Nea*

      There was a local hunter who labeled his crock pot offering “Venison stew.”

      And under that, in case anyone didn’t know the word venison, he’d added “Bambi stew.”

      1. Ace in the Hole*

        Reminds me of the potluck where various chilis/stews were subtitled with the meats: “oink,” “moo,” “quack,” and “I dunno what bunnies say.”

              1. Not Your Admin Ass(t)*

                And a much louder snort-noise when they’re being dramatic! My bunn sounded like a tiny pig in distress when it was time for the dreaded monthly nail-clipping. You’d think I was going to slaughter him for “pork” chops with those clippers. Every. Single. Time.

    8. Mallory Janis Ian*

      When I was in college I went with my then-boyfriend to his hometown and we visited some of his friends who were still in high school. It was a tiny town where grades K – 12 were all on the same campus with a shared cafeteria. The day we visited, the cafeteria ladies were cooking venison that had been hunted and donated by one of the local dads. They had the venison with a stew of potatoes, carrots, and celery, and some homemade yeast rolls. It was delicious!

      1. UKDancer*

        I am very fond of venison. My butcher sometimes has it in and I can make a really good casserole, cooking it slowly in red wine with juniper berries and carrots and parsnips.

        1. Bagpuss*

          I know a guy who does culls as needed. As much free venison as I can Cary. Last time I saw him he gave me some muntjac, which I hadn’t had before.

          Venison does make a great casserole – I tend to adapt my boeuf bourguignon recipe and add redcurrant jelly and a bit of mustard sand, as you say, some good red wine.

    10. Mitford*

      I worked for an Alaska Native Corporation’s office in the DC area, and the shareholders in Barrow would bring muktuk (consisting of whale skin and blubber) to us for the holiday party.

      1. mli25*

        Whoa. I think I would be interested in trying it just because I would be unlikely to have a chance to try it in any other context. Any comment on what it tasted like?

      1. SixTigers*

        I’ve had beef tongue several times, and it’s delicious. It looks terrible if it’s put whole on the table, but the flavor is wonderful.

    12. Workin' for the Weekend*

      My friend was having a chili cook-off at her work and she brought in chili made with bear meat, spoils from one of her husband’s successful hunting trips. There was some kind of surprise element with this cook-off, so didn’t disclose what kind of meat it was, only to find out that some people were livid at finding out they had consumed bear. We do live in an area in the upper Midwest where hunting is extremely popular, but I guess bear is a different level for some, even amongst hunters, as no one had issue with the venison chili.

    13. Interplanet Janet*

      Comments like this remind me that despite having lived in medium to major cities for most of my adult career I am still at my roots from the sticks because I would not have batted an eye at any of these turning up! lol

    15. RLC*

      Similar experiences in past workplaces for me (Washington state USA) but add moose, bison (colleague’s family had a bison ranch), smoked salmon and steelhead, and fresh clams (prepared in traditional ways by colleagues who were members of the Yakama Nation). Delicious foods I’d never otherwise have a chance to try; where I’m from the most we could get was mule deer venison and brook trout.

    16. allathian*

      I’d try all of those. Moose meat is very good when it’s prepared right. It does taste gamey, but that’s sort of the point…

      When I was a kid we lived for 4 years near the coast. Lots of fabulous fish. You get sort of spoiled when you have fish for lunch that you know were still swimming in the sea that morning… I’ve also eaten waterfowl as a kid, but not swans because they’re protected here. I’ve also eaten hare. It’s been so long, though, that I don’t remember what it tasted like.

      1. Hopalong, nothing to see here*

        I kind of do remember the rabbit I ate. Conecho on the grill at a Mexican family reunion about 50 years ago. Good enough I kept wanting to try it again, but I just can no longer get past seeing the whole one in the butcher case! (Maybe if they cut it up for me first?)

  11. ZSD*

    This isn’t a potluck, but back when I was in elementary school, the company my father worked for had an annual summer picnic that the employees brought their whole families to. And one year, the meat in the hamburgers was bad.
    So every employee, and all the family members of every employee, got food poisoning.
    It was memorable.

    1. Dr Sarah*

      Were there any vegetarian employees? I have visions of them having to keep the entire office running while everyone else was out…

      1. NotRealAnonforThis*

        And this is how we determined it was the turkey at Thanksgiving one year. Everyone except for me wound up with food poisoning. And I was the only one who did NOT eat the turkey.

        2. Macgillicuddy*

          As a kid, more than once I woke up Thanksgiving night having to toss my cookies in the toilet. Not every Thanksgiving, but enough times that it was ickily memorable. My mother always blamed it on “you must have eaten too much”.

          As an adult, I remembered that my mother would always defrost the frozen turkey by leaving it on the kitchen counter for a couple of days. I’m sure now that all of that “you ate too much” was really food poisoning.

          1. Not Your Admin Ass(t)*

            We shared a mother, obviously! I spent most of my life thinking (more like, constantly being told) that I was a “picky eater” with a “weak stomach.”

            Then I learned to cook for myself and discovered that I’m actually a pretty adventurous eater with a normal stomach! I just didn’t have enough of an iron stomach to handle my mother’s total lack of food safety for every meal.

            (My worst memory is just a few years ago, when I was visiting and saw she’d put a bag of pork chops in the sink to defrost. Full of room temperature water. That was also used soapy dishwater. That hadn’t been changed in probably well over a week–when I stuck my hand in, horrified, to drain the sink? That hand came out covered in slime from the filthy water. I put the pork in fresh cold water in the fridge and DID NOT eat it when it was cooked.)

      2. ZSD*

        This would have been around 1990, when I, at least, had not heard of the concept of vegetarianism, and I would bet that a lot of the adults in my state hadn’t, either.

    2. Susie*

      This happened at a Thanksgiving meal for employees of one the largest manufacturing facilities in our state (just down the road from where I work). They manufacture tires. The employees got really, really sick. Some even had to go to the ER and a few were admitted their cases were so bad. One of our colleagues has a son that worked there and he said he just stayed in the bathtub of the guest room for days.

    3. Cedrus Libani*

      That happened at a science camp I attended in high school. They got catering from a nice Italian restaurant, except it was standard American fare, which I guess they weren’t used to. The hamburgers were cooked rare. I woke up the next morning to find the bathrooms fully occupied, and trails of vomit in the halls from people who didn’t make it there in time. I was the only omnivore who didn’t eat the burgers (I prefer hot dogs), the vegetarians were also fine, but everyone else had been puking their guts out for hours.

      Bonus: our scheduled activity was what our camp lovingly referred to as “Bag of Dead Animals Day” – a day-long dissection workshop. It’s a challenge, from a sights and smells perspective, even when you’re well. People tried to rally, but…it just wasn’t happening.

    5. learnedthehardway*

      Oooh. Not a potluck and not even work, but the closest I’ve got was last year of university, 9 flatmates and 1 bathroom and Salmonella from our end of year dinner together.

    7. Asenath*

      At one point while I was a part time student and part time worker, I often ate in the dining hall that served most of the student residences. People who didn’t live in the residences could buy a special category of meal tickets, and they were extremely good value for money. Mostly. By some chance, which I have always been thankful for, I didn’t use my meal ticket the night the cream puffs were contaminated with something – I heard salmonella, and that the sights and smells in the residences were terrible.

  12. Mekong River*

    I’m relatively new at my company, and I have learned that my group typically has a yearly potluck. Honestly, good potluck experiences are much more common than people digging in with their hands or tying cookies around their dog’s neck, but I am still not jumping enthusiastically into the return to the office potluck.

    1. The Cosmic Avenger*

      Yes, we used to have project potlucks which were great, which is not as surprising with a small group, especially at a great employer. And when we catered client events in our office, leftovers were always put out in the break rooms, and while they sometimes ran out quickly if there weren’t many leftovers, I never saw anyone walk away with more than a meal’s worth of food. Maybe it’s also because we work largely in health and social service consulting, people here may trend towards people who are more likely to think of others.

    2. Elenna*

      Yeah, my team hosted a potluck a few weeks ago and everything was fine, people brought enough food, nobody took way too much, etc. Glad I work in an office with sane people!

      1. Lynn*

        I read these horror stories with interest, mostly because I can’t actually imagine them happening in my family or friends group. Or, honestly, in any workplace I have ever been in.

        My motorcycle club has joked that we are going to start asking people to bring designated eaters to the potluck events, just to be sure that more of the food that gets brought is eaten. Well, we are mostly joking. But not entirely-and anyone who attends one of our food meetings as a first-timer who was unaware of the potluck is welcome to join in the eating as there will definitely be sufficient food for everyone.

        The few folks who can’t cook well, or bring weird things are are easily offset by the chronic overcookers (I might be one of the guilty parties here) who always bring way too much food to these things.

        1. Lenora Rose*

          Vegetarianism is hundreds of years old. Most of my bad potluck experiences are when there are no controls t what’s brought for the potluck so you get heavily unbalanced meals. (example: a potluck which ended up with everyone bringing a dessert, usually with chocolate, except two items: the chocolate-banana muffins were technically not dessert, and there was a carrot salad. This got supplemented a bit when the cafe nearby turned out to have a bag of apples off someone’s tree; the small sharp kind that are almost crabapples, but still a bonus.

          1. Lenora Rose*

            Wow, that first line was from a comment I decided not to post as it seemed unnecessarily unkind, I wish it hadn’t somehow snuck in at the top of this one.

            (also, to clarify, the cafe was giving away free apples, in addition to the paid for drinks we visitors were sneaking off to procure)

        2. Free Meerkats*

          Back in my SCA days, there was a miscommunication for one Crown Tourney and everybody in the group brought food to feed the entire group two meals instead of one meal. We had so much food! Then someone said, “Hey, Henry is always hungry.” Said Henry was 6’3″ and about 120 pounds. We had him to our camp every meal after that and no one took home any food. That boy could eat!

        3. MaryLoo*

          I’ve been to church potlucks where for example a (well-off) family of 4 would bring a small casserole dish with 4 servings of a side dish. I never understood why they thought this was mathematically ok.

          Someone finally quoted the rule about number of servings in the dish you bring equals the number of people in your party, times the number of “courses” at the dinner. So if the potluck has main dish, salad, and dessert, then a family of 5 would bring something with 15 servings (5 people X 3 courses).

          And they had people sign up for salad, main dish, or dessert, after a memorable potluck where everybody brought baked beans.

          The annual meal that followed was the shortest one in years.

    3. Artemesia*

      We never had abusive potluck experiences — the professionals with the bigger salaries brought meat dishes, staff and grad students brought salads, breads, chips, desserts. But even so, many of those student dishes looked like maybe they didn’t come from a good kitchen — I avoided the creamy saladish things or anything in a salad with protein and stuck to the green salads, breads and cookies from that end of the table.

  13. Minneapolis Nonprofit*

    Okay this is more of a story of how things go right but still very amusing! In our staff team of nine, we have a rotation of someone bringing treats for each person’s birthday. It works out well because everyone only has to do it once and everyone gets celebrated. Usually it’s something like a box of donuts and some fresh fruit. But not our admin! She goes all out. For the last birthday that she was in charge of she brought in three full charcuterie boards (all very delicious!), coffee, tea, sparkling water, juice, hot cocoa, two different kinds of pastries, and of course a chocolate cake.
    The only problem with this is that it took so long to set up that our one hour staff meeting was delayed by 30 minutes! I think our boss had the talk to her later about scaling it back.

  14. Snow Globe*

    #3-I have a friend like that. She always brings a certain baked good to any parties or pot lucks, and goes on and on about it. She makes it for gifts. They are beautiful—magazine ready. But no flavor at all. Our other friends, who are all very polite, always gush about this dessert, so I’ve wondered if it is just me. (But my husband agrees with me.)

    1. Bex*

      I had a coworker who “loved to bake cakes” but actually I think she only loved to decorate them, as they were always beautiful but often sort of dry/stale. She made cakes as a side hustle and when we had a potluck, she would always bring a cake that tested out a new technique. There were a few funny things, mostly related to how you couldn’t predict the flavor by looking at it (the blue icing on one batch of chocolate cupcakes turned out to be peanut butter flavored; there was something chocolate mint once in a color that definitely did not imply “mint”), but the most notable was the elaborately decorated 4-layer cake that had a layer of white chocolate on top and artfully drizzling down the sides. Not white chocolate icing. Not white chocolate ganache. Straight up white chocolate that she had melted and poured on, which then had of course hardened. Pretty. Shiny. Way too intimidating to cut through with four layers of cake underneath. We didn’t even have plates big enough for a 4-layer cake slice. The cake sat there, pristine and untouched, all through the potluck and for the rest of the day in the kitchen because no one knew what to do with it.

    2. Roy G. Biv*

      Beautiful baked goods, with all the ingredients and labor involved. And no flavor. I want to cry at the thought!

      1. SixTigers*

        Years ago, a coworker’s wife was taking a cake decorating class. He’d bring in her work, because the family was Sick And Tired of cake and there they were, every week, looking at ANOTHER ONE.

        The decorations got prettier and prettier over time as she got better at it, but the cake was always a really dry, dull-flavored vanilla. She was spending her time and efforts on the decorations, and the cake was just there to be decorated.

        I expect that when she got done with the class, she made better cakes, but he didn’t bring any of those in.

    3. Quinalla*

      Growing up, a lot of the family friends exchanged cookie plates at Christmas time. My Mom makes very tasty cookies, and while they look fine, she doesn’t put much time/effort into the decorating. So cookies look fine, but nothing special, but taste amazing. We always had at least one or two plates from others that would look gorgeous and would taste awful. Now folks we know who are successful bakers or caterers – they can make things look beautiful and taste good, but I’m honestly automatically suspicious of home cooking/baking that looks too good :P To the point when I ordered my wedding cake I said it has to taste good above all, looks are a distant second. It still looked good, but was pretty run-of-the-mill, but boy did it disappear quick once people tasted it :)

      1. Autumnheart*

        I have a friend who is just ridiculously talented at making food. He went to culinary school and became a professional chef for a while (and then went back to IT because it pays a lot better), but even before that, he just had the knack like you wouldn’t believe.

        He used to put on a Friendsgiving dinner where the rest of us would bring sides, and he’d make the turkey and a couple sides and one dessert. (This potluck would have 8 guests and enough food for 30.) He made a brown butter cake that looked straight out of a magazine. The food was good enough to bring tears to my eyes. Man, that dude can cook.

      2. Not A Raccoon Keeper*

        Yes, I have this belief too! In elementary school, we had ‘cupcake days’ to fundraise (lol, the 90s), and each grade would provide the cupcakes 1-2x per year. The ones we baked and brought in were never the prettiest ones, but once one or two people bought them, the word would get around and they’d sell out pretty quickly!

        Sour cream is the secret to a delicious chocolate cupcake. Not giving a crap about what they look like is the secret to producing ugly cupcakes.

      3. Bryce*

        I make some Passover cookies that are like that. Not much to look at, but there’s a whole orange and lime in there so they taste amazing.

        1. BeachMum*

          Please post the recipe. I’ll trade you for my utterly luscious flourless chocolate torte. (I have an April birthday as does my child and my father. Someone always gets stuck.)

          1. Bryce*

            Passover Existential Mandelbreit (“almond bread” without almonds or bread)
            Cream: 2 cups sugar + 1 cup butter
            Add:
            6 eggs
            Diced/grated rind and juice of a small lemon and orange (I’d suggest cutting off the rind and chopping it up by hand/processor, grating made a lot of mess last year and most of it didn’t get into the cookies. What did had a lot of flavor though.)
            1 cup raisins
            1/2 cup potato starch
            1 box (~3 cups) Passover cake flour (very finely ground matzah, matzo meal or grind-your-own should work with a bit different texture)

            Heat oven to 350
            Let dough stand about 10 minutes, then make into rolls on baking sheet.
            Bake ~40 minutes
            Cut diagonally into slices and turn on side (so you get oblong slices instead of a cylinder, mostly aesthetic so don’t worry about doing it perfectly)
            Turn oven down to 325, put back in for ~20 minutes until cooked through

            Similar to biscotti, if that’s a known reference, but mandelbreit uses a lot more eggs. Have water handy when you try them, they’re very dry and crumbly.

    4. Art3mis*

      They are probably being polite. I have a friend who makes salsa and everyone goes on about how great it is. Granted I’m the quintessential white person mayonnaise is hot enough for me type, but I’ve had tap water that was spicier.

  15. CreepyPaper*

    We had a bake off at an old job of mine and someone bought a chocolate Swiss roll from Marks and Spencers (posh supermarket here in the UK) and ‘jazzed it up’ with squirty cream from a can and chilli flakes on top because chocolate and chilli go really well together, apparently.

    He won.

    1. londonedit*

      Now I really want someone to just bring in a Colin the Caterpillar and deadpan claim to have made it.

      2. CreepyPaper*

        My friends had a Colin wedding cake and the baker made the body but cut the face off an actual Colin and stuck it on. That kind of counts as homemade, right?

        1. Raw Flour*

          As an American unfamiliar with this style of cake, that description sounds absolutely morbid! I can’t argue with Swiss roll-inspired wedding cake, though.

          1. CreepyPaper*

            The wedding cake was about three feet long, an average Colin is far shorter. So there was this magnificent chocolate covered log in the middle of the table with the little face at one end. It was a hit with all of our inner childs, really was.

          2. TechWorker*

            The face is just a bit of solid chocolate, and it’s like a cartoon caterpillar – very not morbid I promise :p

          3. Irish Teacher*

            Yeah, my thought was “I hope Creepypaper meant an actual Colin the Caterpillar cake and not an actual PERSON called Colin.”

        2. General von Klinkerhoffen*

          You can buy Colin faces separately in the food hall.

          You can also buy a full set of official Colin wedding cake with a bride and groom and mini attendants. It would be baffling for a guest not in on the joke.

        3. Princesss Sparklepony*

          I just did a mini dive into Colin the Caterpillar since I’m not familiar. Turns out you can buy a bag of Colin faces. So the baker may just have bought a bag of them.

        4. The Other Katie*

          For some reason this reads as incredibly savage to me. Like it was wearing the face of its enemy!

      3. debs514*

        Reposting as i posted this in the wrong section of the thread…apologies for seeming off topic earlier. As an Canadian Expat living in the UK the last 13 years, I can’t think of anything more terrifying than the caterpillar cake. I suppose that is why they are so popular here, as there is that old British tradition of thinking, “yeah its a bit shit, but thats why we love it” Don’t get me started on Mince pies and christmas pudding. Have there been no advances in Xmas desserts since Victorian times?

      1. MM*

        I think this has to be a case of the British dessert palate being wildly different from the US one (as I have observed many times from GBBO–they seem to think chocolate and lime is classic over there?), because yeah, chocolate and chili is classic in Mexican food and has been thoroughly mainstream here for at least 20 years. Though granted, plain old chili flakes shaken over the top is not the best way to go about it.

        1. I&I*

          Brit here: I think most of us are familiar with the combo. Just not with the idea that sticking some chilli flakes on a Colin the Caterpillar counts as combining flavours!

        2. londonedit*

          Chocolate and lime is seen as a classic here because there’s an old-fashioned sweet shop boiled sweet called a chocolate lime, which is a lime-flavoured boiled sweet (I’m not sure what the US word for boiled sweets is? Hard candy?) with a chocolate filling. We’re well aware of chocolate and chilli as a combo and it’s been doing the rounds for at least 20 years here as well, but yeah sticking some chilli flakes on a Colin the Caterpillar is not the general idea of chocolate and chilli.

          1. Miette*

            We have those kinds of candies here in the US–they are sometimes canned chocolate straws for some reason? They come in “flavors” other than lime (I use quotes because i’m not sure that the candy part is flavored or not LOL; they come in red, green, yellow, orange, etc.). They’re definitely a sweet that your grandma would enjoy–not very mainstream any more

    3. ggg*

      Something like this beat out a delicious, homemade, beautifully-hand-decorated cheesecake our intern made for a dessert contest. That intern is several years past a Ph.D. now, working somewhere else, and we still talk about how unfair it was.

      1. Artemesia*

        Can’t get too invested in contests. I made a gorgeously decorated mojito cake for a baking contest at a photo school I participated in and the winner was a simple drop cookie. There were so many better things there than that cookie.

    4. debs514*

      As an Canadian Expat living in the UK the last 13 years, I can’t think of anything more terrifying than the caterpillar cake. I suppose that is why they are so popular here, as there is that old British tradition of thinking, “yeah its a bit shit, but thats why we love it” Don’t get me started on Mince pies and christmas pudding. Have there been no advances in Xmas desserts since Victorian times?

  16. I should really pick a name*

    I want to know how the person with the cookie dough got caught. It sounds like the perfect crime.

    1. Shynosaur*

      I was wondering how that person managed to win! In my experience, store-bought dough is incredibly obvious. I mean, I’m envisioning a tube of Pillsbury sugar cookies that you just slice every quarter inch and bake and they aren’t even circular because the knife squishes them down lol. (Assuming you have the willpower to bake them. Me, I’m like Amy on Everybody Loves Raymond: I peel that sucker like a banana and just eat!)

      1. Well...*

        Have you tried microwaving raw cookie dough for 10-20 seconds in the microwave? It’s my snack that maximizes flavor + laziness

      2. Artemesia*

        Maybe they didn’t slice and bake but rolled the dough out and used specialized cutters or patterned rolling pins or something and so it looked ‘home made’?

      3. New Jack Karyn*

        You can get cookie dough in a bucket! Then you’re dropping blobs on the baking sheet, just like normal.

    2. Dumpster Fire*

      Reminds me of Phoebe’s grandmother’s cookies (from Friends) – the infamous “Tolouse” (tollhouse) cookie recipe!

  17. Resident Catholicville U.S.A.*

    At a non-profit I worked out, one of the employees had his 10 year anniversary, so management bought a sheet cake to celebrate. When the employee saw the cake (presumably with his name and “Happy Anniversary!” on it), he asked, “Oh, is this for me?” and when he was told yes, he closed the box and took it home with him for his family. The intention, of course, was for the employees to share, but that apparently had not occurred to him but we all had a good laugh about it. It was very on brand for that person.

    1. ZSD*

      That’s kind of awesome. It makes me want to start asking, “Oh, is this for me?” more often in my life.

    2. Sheworkshardforthemoney*

      If it was a Costco sheet cake, those things are huge and delicious because they’re not overly sweet. lol, Your office should have ordered another and said this one is only for people who work here.

    3. Cookies for Breakfast*

      I have a friend who did something similar.

      We used to be able to expense cakes for colleagues’ birthdays, and they’d be taken to the office common area for everyone to eat. Leftovers were fair game to take home at the end of the day, but there were rarely any. My friend couldn’t eat most of the cakes that were brought in because of a dietary restriction, but for her birthday, we made sure to get a cake that would suit her from an independent local bakery. She said thanks in front of the whole office, then proceeded to close the cake box and put it in the fridge to take home later.

      That’s not particularly on brand for her! I figured she wanted to make the most of the one thing she could enjoy, given 99% of the time she couldn’t participate. Which is fair enough. In her shoes, I wouldn’t put it past myself to do the same. Though at the time I was very curious to try the cake :D

      1. Slow Gin Lizz*

        These stories are so weird. Did these people never attend birthday parties as kids? (Or even adults, for that matter.) Do they not know the cake is supposed to be eaten AT the party? Sure, taking the leftovers home, especially if you are the person being celebrated, but share it first among the people who are there to celebrate with you!

        That said, this would make for a funny joke at a party. I honestly thought both of these stories were going to end with them saying, “Haha, just kidding! Let’s cut up this sucker and devour it!” So maybe I’ll do this at my next birthday party, which alas is almost a year away.

        1. MM*

          [the following is not actually political, it just requires political references] There’s an infamous tweet from some far right-winger or other trying to snark by saying that under socialism you’d have to give away 90% of your birthday cake. Endless replies to the effect of “that’s what normally happens.”

        2. Bridget the Elephant*

          I’ve been to a lot of kids’ birthday parties lately and for all of them the attendees were given a slice of cake to take home as part of the party bag. My daughter’s birthday was the exception because we gave everyone cake following the meal and it was eaten then and there.

      2. Anon but hungry*

        As someone with a thousand food allergies and issues who watches everyone eat all the foods around me at every event all year long for decades, I wouldn’t steal the whole cake for myself, but I gotta say, on the very rare occasion when someone goes out of their way to arrange a safe cake for me on my birthday, it’s REALLY hard to watch other people eat it.

        2. Cate*

          Especially as people would just be eating it from a place of almost morbid curiosity, and will definitely go on that their usual cakes are better! Let the person who actually will enjoy it, enjoy it!

          1. Bubo Bubo*

            Oh my god yes. I can’t digest wheat because of a chronic condition and whenever I bring my own gluten-free bread/dessert to a potluck or group dinner, people always ask me to try them out of curiosity. I used to say yes out of courtesy, only for the people in question to end up making faces and say how dry/crumbly/dense/definitely not “real bread” they were.

            Meanwhile the loaf costs 8$ tax not included… Now I make sure only to bring enough fo0r myself so no one asks.

      3. Retired Lady*

        I wonder if she knew the cake would taste weird to her coworkers who weren’t used to eating something with the necessary modifications, and she just didn’t know what their impression of the cake would be. (Or want to see them take one bite and throw out the rest). I have multiple food restrictions and a lot of the food I eat (especially treats) have weird tastes, textures, etc. that most people wouldn’t like. I’m used to them and am just glad food science has developed these things. I made my brother a sundae with “no added sugar” ice cream and sugar free topping that I thought tasted great, just like the real thing. He could barely choke it down.

    4. c_c*

      Ok, I did something like this once, but not quite as egregious.

      A coworker brought in two paneer rolls wrapped in foil (something she knew I liked because she’d made and shared them with me and my husband when we’d helped out walking her dog during a family crisis she was dealing with). She handed them to me and said she’d brought them in to share with me. I had brought a lunch, so I put them in my bag to take home and share with my husband after work. Later she came and asked where they were. I explained and she said she had meant for it to be a shared snack with her and my coworker. I was really embarrassed, but I still think I made a fairly reasonable assumption.

    5. Tired of Working*

      I’m reminded of the time that I worked at a very toxic company. A client came in to have a meeting with the very toxic owner. During a break in the meeting, the client came out of teh owner’s office and said that Fergus the owner had just told him that today was his birthday. As Fergus had told him that none of us had done anything about it, he gave my co-worker Wakeen some money and told him to buy Fergus a birthday cake.

      The company did not have birthday celebrations or holiday parties. There was one December when Fergus said, “Oh, we didn’t have a party, did we?” No, we didn’t, but then, we didn’t have a holiday party the previous year or the year before that, so no one was expecting a party. He said that we would have a party in January. In January, the party got postponed to February. In February, it was postponed to March. In March, it was postponed to April. In April, it was postponed to May. In May, the subject was never brought up. No party.

      Wakeen was furious about being told to go out and buy Fergus a birthday cake, because it wasn’t his job to run errands (it was Ralph’s job), and he just hated being asked to do something that he didn’t think was his job. But he couldn’t say, “I’ll have Ralph do it” because we were constantly told that our clients were our guests, and being rude to a guest was the very worst thing we could do. Being rude to a guest meant doing or saying something that might make the guest feel uncomfortable. As it might have made the client uncomfortable to learn that he should have given the money to Ralph instead of Wakeen, Wakeen took the money and stormed out. Then the client resumed his meeting with Fergus.

      The meeting ended an hour later. Wakeen still hadn’t returned with a cake. The client waited and waited, because (1) he wanted to give the cake to Fergus, and (2) he wanted Wakeen to give him his change. Finally the client left. After a short while, Fergus asked where Wakeen was. We had to tell him that he had gone out to buy a cake. Fergus screamed and screamed. Eventually Wakeen came back with a cake. Fergus took it home. I don’t think he called the client to thank him.

  18. JMR*

    Where I work, we do a Thanksgiving potluck – everyone brings desserts and sides, and the company provides the turkeys, which some employees used to deep-fry in the parking lot behind the building. I say “used to” because one year the combination of high winds and hot oil resulted in our accidentally lighting some shrubbery at a neighboring company on fire. They still provide the turkeys, but they are no longer deep-fried on-site.

      4. migrating coconuts*

        And make sure you place it slightly higher with a little path running down the middle! NI!

    2. Manders*

      Prior to Covid we also deep-fried a turkey for Thanksgiving and Christmas. But we are scientists, so it’s all very technical with proper safety protocols and PPE. I’m not a fan of turkey, but deep frying it is pretty good!

      1. Elitist Semicolon*

        In the 50s and 60s, the grad students in one of the science departments at my uni used to cook T’giving dinner in the autoclaves. This stopped when someone underestimated the speed and distance with which cooked cranberries can erupt from a pressurized container.

    3. Warrior Princess Xena*

      Pretty sure having something catch fire is the usual result of deepfrying a turkey anywhere.

      1. MarsJenkar*

        And this is a major reason to watch the Good Eats episode on turkey-frying–a good deal of it focuses on safety.

        The fact that Alton Brown’s famous DIY turkey derrick makes its debut here doesn’t hurt.

        (Still, I would say, if high winds or super dry conditions are in the cards for your area, forget it.)

      2. Cat Named Brian*

        It’s just a flesh wound!
        All the men in the family know how to deep fry a turkey. My Dad passed the secret recipe and skills to my son. This will be the first year that Dad won’t be here supervising. :(

    4. Roland*

      I listen to William Shatner’s “Eat, Fry, Love: A Cautionary Remix”, the greatest song ever created about turkey fryer fires, every November but this is the first story I’ve heard about an actual turkey fryer fire, so thank you for that :)

      1. Clisby*

        Maybe 10 or 12 years ago a guy in a neighboring town actually burned down his house with a turkey fryer. You know how they tell you that to use a fryer safely, it needs to be well away from your dwelling? Apparently he thought his attached garage was well away enough. He was misinformed.

        1. Amy Farrah Fowler*

          Oy vey… My dad deep-fried turkeys several years and never had any problems, but he has always been a safety oriented guy. I can see how without precautions it would be dangerous, but the precautions aren’t that hard to follow.

        2. JustaTech*

          I have fried not one but two turkeys in an attached garage.
          In my defense, it was *pouring* rain and therefore outside was not an option.

          The cars were moved outside, the electric fryer was put on a paving slab, the fire extinguisher was in easy reach (and in working order) and I had someone stand in the doorway to the house to watch, just in case something went wrong.

          It turned out fine, if you ignore than four people can’t possibly eat 2 fried turkeys, even if they were small turkeys. (And they still wouldn’t let me build Alton Brown’s turkey derrick.)

    5. GasketGirl*

      We made a deep-fried turkey one year at work and had a similar problem with the wind; luckily no shrubbery as it was behind a big warehouse. The shop guys ended up taking the screens outside that they used in the welding area to help shield the fryer. I will say that turkey was absolutely delicious; of course it helped that they had slathered under the skin with garlic butter and I think injected it with some melted butter. I ended up taking the carcass home and simmered it for several hours to make some of the best stock I’ve ever had.

    6. Firefighter (Metaphorical)*

      Okay I am not from the US, and also a vegetarian, and I am AGOG. Deep-fried turkey is a thing? Like… the whole turkey? Or like in pieces, like Kentucky Fried Chicken (but turkey)?

      (I have family in Scotland, so I am no stranger to deep frying, btw!)

      2. to varying degrees*

        It is AMAZING!! When my friend’s dad deep-fries a turkey we all just stand around it waiting for it to cool all enough (and sometimes not enough) so we can try to grab pieces of it before her mom yells at us.

      3. Amy Charles*

        The whole thing! Which is why it can be dangerous if there is any moisture in or on the turkey. Water and oil dont mix, but water and hot oil….. It’s an explosive relationship.

  19. els*

    One year for our holiday potluck, a person who’d been out for awhile came back on the day of said potluck, having forgotten that it was happening and thus forgetting to bring what they said they’d bring. It was no big deal, we had more than enough food for the forty people in our office, but they fretted aloud for hours in the morning before abruptly disappearing from the building… and returning to the office, beaming proudly, bearing a box of fried chicken from Royal Farms containing three (3) drumsticks. Bonus points, they carefully pushed a tray of mini-quiches to one side to give the box ample room on the table.

    3. Lizzie*

      This reminds me of something. Not an office potluck but a gathering of friends. When we were young and broke, we’d get together and everyone would bring something. One friend would bring frozen appetizers, which was fine, but there were usually 10-15 of us, and she’d bring 3 boxes, of 3 different things, each containing maybe 5-6 pieces. So maybe only 1/3 would even get to try or eat any of them! i never understood why she just didn’t bring 3 of the same thing!

    4. Artemesia*

      I used to bring KFC to the end of year potluck — but a bucket of the stuff. It was always a big hit.

  20. Tesuji*

    > Management did talk to him, but his answer was that he didn’t care

    As horrific as this person sounds to work with, there’s something hilarious to me about someone who is either (a) delusional about how safe their job is, or (b) accurately aware that they have built up enough capital in their job to get away with stuff like this, and this is how they want to spend that capital.

    I mean, I feel like it’s saying more about management than it is about him, that he could tell them to F off about something like this and they were like “Well, we tried basically nothing and that didn’t work; guess we’ll just have to live with it.”

    3. EPLawyer*

      Yeah. I mean this is one of those “You will not put your hands in the food. If you continue to do so, we will have to ban you from participating in food events.”

      Although, Alison, can they do that? It’s not like its a condition of his job.

      1. Ask a Manager* Post author

        Sure, there’s no law that you can only make requirements of people that are directly related to their job. They could ban him from food events, require him to deliver an apology to everyone offended in iambic pentameter, or even fire him for it if they wanted.

        1. EPLawyer*

          Okay now I want managers to require apologies in Iambic Pentameter (not really but it would be cool).

          1. paxfelis*

            Apologies! For circumstances caused
            By not regarding you well as I should,
            And doing what I felt had served me best
            Which meant that you were left pissed off and sad.
            I should have thought to share the cheap-assed rolls,
            And not have taken all of them at once.
            To make amends, and get you off my back,
            I offer you this cake, of things I know
            You can not eat and should not be around.
            Why won’t you take it? Do you even care
            About my feelings? I’ll take this to Jan,
            Our much-adored and nosy HR rep,
            And then we’ll see who says sorry to who!

            (The things that come out when you’re hiding from work for a few minutes…)

    4. Putting the Dys in Dysfunction*

      Sounds like a classic case of sociopathy. I wonder whether he suffered any social consequences.

    5. Ellis Bell*

      I actually would be both highly entertained and horrified by this person and would need to start testing just how bad his delayed gratification skills are when food is in sight. I’m thinking…. a box of stale doughnuts on top of a high and complicated assault course. While he’s busy with that, whip out the fresh doughnuts and enjoy the spectacle.

  21. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

    We had one sales guy who was really good at his job, but he was also an incredible moocher.

    Even though the company did a big fancy formal Christmas party, most of the individual departments of 20-80 people would do potlucks too. He was notorious for always being in the right place at the right time to hit up every departmental potluck.

    1. What She Said*

      I have a family member like this. He used the excuse of visiting his favorite aunt/uncle for the holidays and look, we just happen to be sitting down for dinner. Every holiday. And he has a lot of favorite aunt/uncles.

  22. Stephanie*

    I don’t remember all the details but the setup is that the company where I worked had the whole second floor of a building and there were several companies on the first. One of the companies on the first was having a BBQ in the shared outdoor space and somehow fire escaped the grill. Luckily my company had a couple of former firefighters who contained it in addition to contacting the actual fire department but that was a wild day!

    1. SunriseRuby*

      Oh, it’s definitely there! It’s the link that starts with “I feel insulted by the rolls at my new job..”

  24. MyySharona*

    I used to bring two versions of stuffed dates: both stuffed with goat cheese and almonds, half wrapped in prosciutto and the other half rolled in dried cranberries. Separate containers, clearly labeled with the ingredients listed.
    One woman consistently complained that they weren’t vegan. “I REALLY want to try them, but I CAAAAAANT.” And then she would complain to everyone that she couldn’t eat them. Though we always had a good mix of meat, vegetarian, and vegan dishes. She was really focused on this one. She even emailed me and other people “I can’t believe you would bring these knowing I can’t try them.” So weird.

      2. SunriseRuby*

        Not to mention they’re a great way to identify whiny, entitled PITA co-workers if you didn’t know who they were already!

      3. MyySharona*

        So I’ve definitely changed and perfected the recipe over the years and I’m happy to share.

        Dried, pitted medjool dates
        Goat cheese, optionally mixed with a little honey and black pepper
        Slivered blanched almonds OR chopped smoked almonds (good for the non-meat version)
        Prosciutto or bacon, cut into strips
        Chopped dried cranberries, tart cherries, or berberries

        Slice one side of each date, creating a pocket. Remove the pit if they’re not already pitted. Put some goat cheese and almonds inside. MEAT VERSION: Wrap with prosciutto or bacon and secure with a toothpick. Put on a baking sheet and broil, stirring/flipping frequently, until crisp (this isn’t necessary if using prosciutto).
        VEG VERSION: roll the exposed edge of goat cheese in the dried berries.

    2. SereneScientist*

      I’m sorry, your coworker acting like you’d brought that in *just* to tempt her with something she can’t eat (by her choice) is….something, lol.

      1. Minimal Pear*

        It does! I’ve had it, some is very good and some is AWFUL. (I’m allergic to dairy–totally got a screenshot of the recipe so I can try it next time I find some good vegan goat cheese.)

    4. Siege*

      One of my coworkers is vegan, and a) we make sure to include them in potlucks and lunches, and b) they don’t whine about not being able to eat the bacon or whatever.

      Actually, I’ve felt pretty fortunate to always have a vegan in my life since my early 20s (rarely two at a time, though, for some reason!) and that they’re generally not entitled. You made a choice, same as I’ve made choices about what I eat (I like crab, but crab does not like me; it’s not an allergy, but half the time I eat it I get violently ill). Sometimes those choices suck when something looks tasty!

      1. Marge*

        This reminds me, according to a woman who runs a sausage shop (The Sausage Queen on the clock app) pescatarians are the most annoying group to deal with, while vegans are just excited to have food they can eat, and lactose intolerant people are gluts for punishment.

        1. The Rural Juror*

          One of my coworkers is stocking up on Lactaid and taking the day after our Thanksgiving potluck to WFH just so they can enjoy all the food! I had offered to make something with no dairy and they shot me down and said, “BRING ON THE DAIRY!”

    5. Juicebox Hero*

      I was on a vacation earlier this year where the meals were served buffet style. For breakfast one of the items was a whole roast salmon with the head and tail still on. One woman had a total cow right in the middle of the room about how she was a vegetarian and she couldn’t handle seeing something like that on the breakfast buffet. Over and over and over again. There was plenty of other food available so it wasn’t like it was fish or nothing (I don’t eat fish and I find cooked fish with heads on repulsive but I just avoided looking right at it until I got through the line).

      I’m not sure what she was trying to accomplish, because the caterers certainly weren’t going to take the salmon off the buffet to appease her and that thing got picked right down to the bones so obviously no one felt bad about eating it.

    7. Ellis Bell*

      That is so odd. I’m limited in what I can eat but I’m happy if there’s one or two solid things I can have at a buffet. The things I can’t eat are practically invisible. Also, this would be an awesome thing to eat for a gluten dodger like myself!

    8. Artemesia*

      How is trying something made with goat cheese as its primary major ingredient, possible if you are vegan?

      1. Rebecca*

        I had to read the original comment several times to make sure, but it definitely sounds like both versions of the dates had goat cheese. The cranberry ones would be vegetarian, but not vegan

      2. Jeebs*

        It’s not. The point is that it’s rude and weird to insist that this particular dish (which relies on goat cheese) be made vegan just so that she could eat it, when there were plenty of other vegan dishes at the party that she COULD eat.

        1. Elitist Semicolon*

          This reminds me of a former co-worker who complained that she couldn’t try something w/dairy I’d made because it wasn’t vegan. I spent an entire day and a LOT of money trying to reduce soy milk enough to use in the recipe. It didn’t work. The next day I apologized and told her what happened and she shrugged and said, “whatever. I don’t like {thing} anyway.”

  25. Jealous of the Water*

    I’m a paralegal and worked for a year at a very toxic, small law firm that had a noticeable us v. them culture between attorneys and staff. The attorneys all went out for a holiday meal on the firm’s tab, but the staff had a potluck during office hours (and had to rotate who would cover the phone throughout). Anyway, we (except for the person covering the phone at that moment, lol) were all sitting in the conference room eating the food we brought in, and one of the attorneys swept in and said she wanted to come eat with us to make it clear that she values staff. But . . . she brought nothing to share. Instead, she ate a ton of what was there and then left after 10 minutes. That place was a mess.

    Oh, also, one of the paralegals would sometimes bring in crab dip. People raved about it. I never ate any because I saw her stick her hands in the bowl to mix it up without washing them first. Sigh.

      1. Dust Bunny*

        Both of those things: WHO DOES THAT?

        I don’t even mix cheater Chex Mix [made with commercial Chex Mix plus peanuts, cheese crackers, and Corn Nuts] with my (washed) hands and it’s dry!

        And I would absolutely have put that attorney on the potluck sign-up for the next year. If there wasn’t a sign-up I would have made one specifically so I could put her on it. What a jerk.

      2. Elenna*

        I fairly often hand-mix things *for myself* without washing my hands first, since they’re my own germs and I have a pretty strong immune system (and usually my hands have at least been rinsed recently, just not right before). But I would never do that for food that is being served outside my family!

        1. Van Wilder*

          Same but who mixes anything with their bare hands. Especially something wet. That’s so gross and weird.

          1. The Editor in Chief*

            Anything that’s going to be cooked is fair game, IMO. I’m not trying to mix meatloaf with a spoon.

          2. I cook*

            It’s not weird to mix something with your bare hands. It’s weird not to wash your hands right before handling food.

          3. I should be working*

            I’ll mix wet stuff with my hands, but only right before it goes in the oven! Cookie dough, meatloaf, etc. Oh, and I wash my hands thoroughly with soap and water before and after touching the food.

            Mixing it with one’s hands once it’s in the serving dish (or getting ready to be served)? I’m with Dust Bunny. Who would do such a thing?

          4. Siege*

            I don’t know what other people do, but I find it impossible to get meatloaf or anything hamburger-based mixed up well without using my hands. But I wash them! A lot! Lady MacBeth levels of washing! (Raw eggs are disgusting to touch, to me.)

          5. CommanderBanana*

            Ugh, nope – always with those food prep gloves on and they go right into the trash after. I have long nails and there is nothing more gross than getting anything under them.

          7. Asenath*

            I mix lots of stuff with my hands – bread dough, meat loaf (indeed, meat balls and similar items). Now, my hands are usually clean and the food in question is cooked thoroughly afterwards, so I’m one up on someone who mixes food that is not going to be cooked with their hands.

          8. Bagpuss*

            For some things it the best way – making pastry for instance where you start by rubbing the fat into the flour. But of course thorough hand washing before and after is essential.

            1. UKDancer*

              Yes I always make pastry or other forms of dough with my hands. I don’t think it works as well any other way, you have to rub it in. But I always wash my hands first and make sure the surface is clean.

          10. Curmudgeon in California*

            We tend to use gloves just for ease of cleanup. Classic example is meatloaf or tossed salad.

    2. Artemesia*

      There are some things that require getting your hands in. e.g.I make a really great smoked salmon cheeseball that really does require mixing by hand — so washing hands thoroughly first is critical and which is why I tend not to eat other people’s hand made cheese balls.

  26. Not a party planner*

    One job I had, most of the senior employees/bosses were men and there was one senior level woman (SW). The majority of junior employees were women. Every year, a few days before the winter holidays, we would have a “potluck” that was pretty much entirely planned by the SW and mostly catered by her and the junior female employees, while the male senior employees tended to bring things like a bottle of wine or paper plates. This seemed to work out for the first two years I was there. The third year, SW took a long vacation around Christmas and wouldn’t be there for the potluck time. In an unspoken game of chicken, no one else volunteered to plan the party or bring in the elaborate spread usually orchestrated by SW. Finally, a few days before, one of the male bosses suggested we go out for a meal on his dime instead. We all had a great time! When SW got back, she seemed kind of disappointed that no one had stepped up in her place.

      1. Texan In Exile*

        Me, too! That is my main advice to young women in the workplace: Unless you see senior-level men doing it, do not volunteer to help with any social events. Do not help plan. Do not help set up. Do not help clean up after. Do not do not do not.

        1. UKDancer*

          Yes, there is a reason I have cultivated a reputation of being unable to cook. I don’t want to get dropped into having to do this type of labour and I really don’t enjoy baking. So when we have a staff picnic I always make sure I get the plates, napkins and drinks and stay well away from anything more creative. Or I’m happy to stop at the supermarket for anything else we need, but I won’t spend time cooking it.

          1. Foley*

            OMG me too. Many people were surprised that I can cook (and do and rarely eat out) because I NEVER volunteered for these office duties. The male professionals surely never did.

      3. Robin*

        I totally understand SW being disappointed that this tradition she worked so hard on was dropped without her, but also very very glad none of the junior staff stepped up so that the Senior Men had to *do* something

    2. sometimeswhy*

      We had a similar thing but birthdays. We rotated and not all the contributors were women but most were and all of the organization and tracking was done by the women. One year WHILE I WAS ON VACATION my boss called me in a panic because nobody told him it was HIS boss’s birthday and nobody had done anything.

      Hilariously, this was long enough ago that I had no way of getting calls that weren’t to the hotel front desk in the lovely but extremely remote back end of nowhere which meant I didn’t get the voicemail until I got home. Several months later, my birthday and my turn to bring something in coincided and I just quietly did away with office birthday celebrations.

      1. Lady_Lessa*

        One of the places I worked, we were each responsible for bringing goodies for our own birthdays. Frequently, the men who participated did store bought, but one brought in bakery doughnuts that were so rich and so delicious.

        1. UKDancer*

          We do that most companies I’ve worked in. You bring something for your birthday if you want. Some people (like the lady with a Christmas Day birthday) usually bring something another day. Some people make something but an awful lot of people go for doughnuts which is always a popular choice.

            1. Boopnash*

              I really hope you’re referring to the story here about the employee with the Feb 29th birthday because that’s one of my favorites

        2. Bagpuss*

          That’s how it works where I work- you bring treats to share on your own birthday. Mostly shop bought but some people do bake.
          And it can be a few bags of Tesco doughnuts- so no pressure to spend a lot

  27. calvin blick*

    Not a potluck, but my brother worked a job and set up a little kitchen at his desk. As I recall, in addition to all his snacks, he had a wide variety of hot sauces and condiments, a blender, and a waffle maker.

    He was good at his job and well-liked, so no one said anything.

    2. Zombeyonce*

      I can’t imagine typing away at work and suddenly hearing a blender whirring a cube over. That sounds like a nightmare w/my sensory issues.

      1. PurplePartridge*

        Someone in a previous job had a soda stream at their desk and that occasional bubbly hiss noise was super distracting to me. I can’t imagine a full on blender.

    4. Lady Ann*

      For awhile the person in the office behind mine (that I shared a wall with) would make smoothies in her office for multiple people a few times a week. It sounded like a jet engine and was so loud that I had a hard time hearing if I was on a video call. It really baffled me why she chose to do it in her office and not the kitchen.

      1. SofiaDeo*

        Thank you! I don’t know how I missed the update! OMG what a nightmare person hahahahaha so sorry anyone ever has to work with idjits like this…..

      2. Not Your Admin Ass(t)*

        Cheap Ass Rolls is such an AAM legend that I’m always shocked to be reminded that the original post is from 2019, and not, like, ten years ago…and the follow-up isn’t even a year old at this time!

    2. Butterfly Counter*

      I think we got a comment from someone else who worked at that office. Some of the details were a little different, but the attitude was the same.

    3. Zephy*

      She was pretty thoroughly read for filth in the comments on that letter, so I doubt she’ll ever poke her head into any of these threads. I hope she’s in a better place now, though.

  29. RSVP: Burnt to a Crisp*

    This is my first time commenting though I am a long time reader. Currently employed at a very dysfunctional medical office (and seeking other employment), and this is just the cherry on top. The following is from an email about Thanksgiving potluck at the main office (which our satellite office is an afterthought).

    Greetings Staff,
    Can you believe Thanksgiving is literally around the corner? In the past 3 years [COMPANY] has weathered all kinds of storms and with two years and ongoing with COVID we are extremely thankful and grateful. Please join [COMPANY] in our Thanksgiving Celebration family style luncheon this year at the office on November 18, 2022, from 12p-2p.

    To be prepare for the luncheon, I need everyone to do the following:

    1. RSVP no later than Wednesday, 11/9 at 12 noon.

    2. Along with your RSVP, start thinking of a dish that you can prepare and share.

    3. If you are not a good cook OR have cats or dogs that shed, please opt out of food preparation. I recommend you bring drinks, napkins or a purchased dessert.

    4. Note on drinks- NO off brand sodas allowed. That is Food Lion, Walmart, store brand sodas, etc. We want the type you see in Soda Vending Machines.

    5. Note on desserts. If you are not baking yourself, then do us the favor of NOT purchasing store brand cookies or cakes. Please go to a bakery. This is meant to be a special event.

    6. Finally, I will have final say on if a dish is approved or not. Please don’t take offense, I just have a vision of the types of dishes I would prefer. Isn’t Thanksgiving all about good food and communion?

    7. Just to remind you, [COMPANY] will provide all the meats – Honey baked Ham, and Turkey. We will need the following categories of food contributed by you:

    We will have a limit on the number of dish categories so sign up fast with your favorite dish or contribution.

      1. SunriseRuby*

        It’s either Cheap Ass Rolls Lady, or the woman whose email dictating what every family member should bring to Thanksgiving dinner, right down to options for acceptable brands of wine, went viral about a decade ago. She definitely wouldn’t have put up with any cheap ass rolls!

      3. Not All Hares Are Quick*

        I had a Christmassy vision just reading that – wise men queing up at the manger, anxiously holding out their gifts in the hope that they’ll pass muster with the child’s mother:
        “Are you sure that myrrh is organic? Sorry, without documentation, we can’t accept it. Thanks for coming though, and maybe we’ll see you next time.’
        “Oh my, there’s a whiff of preservative coming off that frankincense, can you take it away please? I have a very sensitive child and we don’t want to spoil this special Family day.’
        “10 carat? Are you kidding me? Do you even understand the privilege you have being allowed in here?”
        “You over there by the door, does that sheep have a currently valid vaccination certificate?”
        etc etc…

      1. word nerd*

        I liked that too! I also enjoyed the decision to keep “baked” lowercase in Honey baked Ham and Turkey.

    6. Weekender*

      Woooooo!!! I think this wins, or rather loses. Unreal. It is like Bridezilla 2.0.
      I would be inclined to make a litter box cake or something equally grotesque and weird.
      Please let us know how this goes down if you get to go.

      1. Mekong River*

        Ironically, the commentor Poop Cake complained about someone bringing exactly that down stream. I think there’s a know-your-audience factor to something like that.

      2. MEH Squared*

        I would be inclined to bring one of everything they said not to bring, but then would decline to go because I don’t need that aggro.

    7. UKDancer*

      Wow that’s very stringent and somewhat controlling. I mean a sign up sheet is good but not everyone can afford bakery cakes or name brand soft drinks.

    8. Hound Dog*

      You need to get in contact with someone at the main office and find out how this goes, and then tell is!

      1. commonsensesometimesmakessense*

        oh darn, I have pets and have strong moral stances against name brand sodas, paper/plastic cups, napkins, cutlery, and catering to the “vision” of “communion” brought to us by an elitist narcissist (using that term in layman’s terms, not the mental health diagnosis).

      2. Lily Rowan*

        Yeah, I’m a good cook and baker and after receiving this note, I would happily show up with one (1) bottle of Diet Coke.

    10. Sheworkshardforthemoney*

      I would volunteer to make a homemade cake and bring in my famous Kitty Litter Cake. Google it, it’s a show stopper.

      1. Professional Cat Lady*

        I work in animal care and one of our former exec staff used to make these every halloween. when done well they’re absolutely horrendous/amazing.

        Nothing beats having a kitty litter cake on the table in the office while there are multiple of the real thing on the floor one room over.

      2. Mekong River*

        Ironically, the commentor Poop Cake complained about someone bringing exactly that down stream. I think there’s a know-your-audience factor to something like that.

        1. Jessica*

          There definitely is. I would not recommend bringing one (or any deliberate gross-out thing) to the workplace.

      2. commonsensesometimesmakessense*

        I’d roll in with store brand sodas, cookies, and cake, all covered in cat fur (and I don’t even have a cat)!

    13. The Prettiest Curse*

      Do all the food and drink items not up to this person’s standards get defenestrated with extreme prejudice, or something?

      1. commonsensesometimesmakessense*

        Yes, we will defenestrate all the store brand food items, followed by the host and planner of this event!

      2. Not All Hares Are Quick*

        No, there’s be a Table of Shame against one wall, where the offenders had to stand by their offerings, with hands clasped together and heads bowed. No communion for you this year.

    14. WellRed*

      Well it certainly misses the meaning of communion. Although having just attended a wedding with offbrand sodas, I sympathize with that one.

    15. Jeebs*

      Yikesaroonie! The way she spells out ‘the type of soda you find in vending machines’ like she thinks recipients might be too ignorant to know what a name-brand vs. off-brand soda is…

      If she ‘has a vision’ of what kind of dishes she would prefer, she should probably provide (and pay for!) them herself.

    18. Ask a Manager* Post author

      Oh my goodness what. This is a good time to say I would like to compile some of the best stories from this post into a holiday compilation next month — is it OK to include this? I’ll put a note at the top of this post too.

      1. RSVP: Burnt to a Crisp*

        Yes that’s fine with me! I’m also available for questions.

        I’d also like to say I really appreciate this site and your perspective and wisdom. It’s been really helpful in adjusting my view of what’s appropriate in a workplace and what my boundaries are. Definitely not something that is taught in schools, but it should be!

        1. TK*

          I have a question. Was the person who wrote that not a native English speaker? To me, that would explain some of the language choices used that are really bizarre. It doesn’t make the situation any better, though. How crazy.

    19. Shynosaur*

      “I have a vision” LOL!!! Oh, my, it’s an office potluck, not your wedding, girl!

      Between all the approval and the nix on cooking if you have a pet, I’m not sure how there will be any volunteer dishes brought in at all.

      2. LizB*

        That part killed me, omg. You don’t get to have a “vision” for any event you are not paying for yourself!!

      4. So they all cheap ass rolled over and one fell out*

        Regardless of whether it’s for a wedding or a royal welcome reception, when you make it potluck you cede control over the exact contents. If you want to have control provide all the food yourself.

    20. That'sNotMyName*

      I think I was in a cooking club with this lady. Once a month, a group of us got together and had a potluck around a specific country or other theme. There would be a google doc where you could sign up mostly to make sure the meal was balanced. If someone really wanted to bring something that had been signed up for, it was fine. Very low key. Or so I thought at first. One of the members apparently drove someone out by sending them an email scolding them for bringing salad too many times and she thought they should put more effort in. A few months later, I got an email scolding me that my dish wasn’t close enough to the theme (to which she had no particular connection or expertise) and I told her too bad. Apparently, she scolded other people for the same thing and that was the end of the club.

    21. Van Wilder*

      This is so icky because different cultures have different traditional foods and she is clearly only focusing on her version. She needs to go back and watch the Sesame Street about Thanksgiving.

      2. commonsensesometimesmakessense*

        What? Look at my calendar. I will be here in the office and ignoring this ridiculous nightmare of a “party.”

      3. So they all cheap ass rolled over and one fell out*

        I have a (kid who likes to pretend to be a) cat at home, sorry, gotta opt out!

      1. RSVP: Burnt to a Crisp*

        Yes! Hence why I am looking for other employment.

        As a side note, the office is closed for Christmas eve, Christmas day, new years day per holidays listed in employee manual. But it doesn’t list specific dates for 2022 (since those fall on a weekend). Despite repeated attempts, I cannot get an answer on when we will be observing those holidays. “Dr. So and so hasn’t decided yet” Too busy planning the potluck I guess!

    25. Dark Macadamia*

      “I will have final say on if a dish is approved or not. Please don’t take offense, I just have a vision of the types of dishes I would prefer.”

      I LOVE THIS! So unhinged. Sounds like someone needs to provide the whole meal so it meets her Luncheon Vision.

    26. CommanderBanana*

      Re: #5, I am not only a serious baker, but I used to work in a very fancy high end bakery, and I still think that Whole Foods and Wegman’s have some of the most delicious baked goods and cakes ever.

      I HAVE A VISIONNNNNNNN!

      1. OtherBecky*

        Agreed! I’ve only had a cake from Wegman’s once, and it was both beautiful and tasty. My wedding cake came from Whole Foods. Also both beautiful and tasty. (And chocolate, because screw tradition.)

      1. Curmudgeon in California*

        Yikes! I would bow out, even though I can be kinda picky about potluck only in that I and others in my orbit have food allergies. But I just request that stuff be labeled with ingredients and handled safely.

      2. SpringIsForPlanting!*

        Aha thank you for this! I had not seen it. I believe my favorite part is that the person with the extremely demanding vision lets everyone know she has provided the … Coors Light.

      1. anon in affordable housing*

        Where I live, a “bakery level” pumpkin pie is going to cost at least $25 for an 8″ pie. I might not bring the cheap-ass Grocery Outlet $5 pies, but Costco ought to be good enough for anyone.

    31. Hearts & Minds*

      Violations of pretty much all of these rules with the exception of #6 have been complained about by people on this site, not to mention this very post. Maybe the rule-maker has been reading AAM and took the comments to heart.

    33. Citra*

      As the owner of a dog who sheds AND a fanatic about food cleanliness who has never once found dog hair or any other kinds of hair in my food, or allowed my dog to come in contact with any food that is not his, I’m both amused and offended by the implication that shedding pet automatically = pet hair in food. Some of us are perfectly capable of cleaning and of keeping pet hair off our kitchen counters and out of our pots, pans, and food containers, thanks.

  30. PsychNurse*

    The stew thing– I feel like that is somewhat common!! I used to work in an elementary school, and one of the teachers was proud of his shrimp-and-grits. Like, really REALLY proud. When I started working there (months before the potluck) he started telling me how it’s a tradition and everyone loves his grits. Then leading up to it, he was talking about making his grits. Then during it he was making sure everyone tried his grits. He appeared to be convinced that his grits were the entire raison d’etre for the potluck. And there’s no polite way to say “Actually the grits are good but nobody cares that much,” so of course I ended up playing into it with “Mm-hmm, yes, very delicious!”

    1. UKDancer*

      I had grits forced on me when staying at a hotel in Baltimore because the very kind waitress insisted I have some with my breakfast and brought them anyway (despite my saying no). It was the first time I tried them and I think they must be an acquired taste which I have not acquired so I have managed to avoid having them again. I would have struggled to sound enthusiastic with someone imposing grits on me.

      1. Kimmy Schmidt*

        I like grits, but they’re definitely a vehicle for other flavors. Butter, jalapenos, salt and pepper, cayenne, cajun seasoning…

          3. Me (I think)*

            Heavy cream and butter. Seriously, the secret to great grits is heavy cream. Also, really good very sharp cheddar. Also, once the grits are cooked and the cheese melted, let them cool a bit, stir in a couple of beaten eggs, put in a buttered casserole, and bake at 425 until the top is nicely browned. Serve with eggs sunny side up and your choice of breakfast meat. (Andouille is good.)

          1. Curmudgeon in California*

            I prefer them with either a good sharp cheddar, or plain butter, or just brown sugar.

        3. Lady_Lessa*

          One of the best things to have with grits (breakfast) is runny egg yellow from a decently cooked fried egg

        5. CommanderBanana*

          The whole entire point of grits is to get whatever you put on the grits into your mouth. It’s like polenta or couscous. It’s a vehicle!

        6. run mad; don't faint*

          Grits are great with grillades, which is much like Swiss steak, only better in my opinion.

      2. PsychNurse*

        I am from the south, and the school was also in the south, so grits were not a novelty for anyone there! I do like them but I can see it being an acquired taste.

      3. higher ed*

        Grits are easy to do wrong and they are pretty tasteless alone. I avoided them for years because they would get cooked to the point of becoming cakes everywhere I went or all food places I worked. The daycare I went to when in middle school had only instant grits for breakfast, no salt pepper or butter, and it was awful. Avoided it for 25 years after that.

        Finally had some good ones at a hole in the wall diner in New Orleans. Now I make my husband cook them (I’m a transplant. I cook oatmeal) but only mix them up with my eggs(over easy). Sometimes I put cheese in them. Always lots of black pepper. They’re an acquired taste but done well with the right additions can be quite good. (I don’t like shrimp and grits. They never have enough water and it brings back traumatic memories of why I still rarely eat breakfast).

      4. carcarjabar*

        Yea grits in Baltimore should not be a thing. We recently moved from the deep south to the pacific northwest- I have my family ship me my favorite grits because they’re not available here. (Trader Joe’s Stone Ground White Grits, in case anyone cares)

        1. UKDancer*

          I think the waitress in question was from somewhere further south (judging from her accent). She was really sweet and lovely but the grits were sadly not and had no flavour so it reminded me of eating wallpaper paste. If I go back to the US at any point and I’m further south, I’ll try them again.

        2. Here we go again*

          PNW native. We had grits on rotation for elementary school breakfasts, but they were served like hot cereal with butter, milk & sugar. I grow & grind my own corn now. Incredibly tasty.

        3. KoiFeeder*

          Maryland native. Don’t eat the grits here. It’s like eating raw flour with little bits of gravel in it.

      5. Harried HR*

        Fellow Brit here…I have lived in the South for 20+ years and still have everyone and their brother tell me I just haven’t had properly prepared grits !! To me it’s a texture thing and reminds me of wallpaper paste !!!

        1. acmx*

          I agree that they sound improperly prepared – sounds like they’re too watery but not trying to talk you into grits. I dislike oatmeal myself due to texture.

          1. commonsensesometimesmakessense*

            Yeah, I am funny about texture. I don’t like regular couscous, though I do like the large Israeli kind. Not huge on oatmeal either. And I really don’t like very grainy things.

        2. commonsensesometimesmakessense*

          I’m in the US and in the South, and I wouldn’t eat them plain. With good cheese they are just like any other cheesy carb and tasty enough. But shrimp and grits are a low country dish with lots of spices, peppers, etc. It’s not really that dissimilar to having a spicy dish over rice, like with Indian food.

          It’s just a bland carb and like most bland carbs, really just needs to be a base with something more exciting. While it definitely is not my top choice of bland carbs, it works fine with shrimp and grits.

          1. PsychNurse*

            yes I always try to explain to northerners that grits are like potatoes! You don’t just boil them and eat them plain. They’re a vehicle for whatever you like to put on them— for me, I eat my potatoes and my grits the same: butter, salt, and cheese.

            1. MM*

              Sadly, plenty of northerners (speaking as a northerner) do just boil potatoes and eat them plain. I don’t claim to understand it, but they do. I’ve been confronted with this twice in the last few months.

              1. KoiFeeder*

                I have been known to wash a potato and eat it raw, but I wouldn’t serve it that way to a guest.

                Actually, my worst potato sin is one I picked up from high school bio class. Cut a raw potato into cubes, soak it in sugar water, eat.

      6. KJ*

        Grits in Baltimore – too far north. Now, scrapple or Taylor ham – that’s geographically legit.
        Also really depends on your food texture preferences – I love grits, but not the soupy kind. I need a firm grit!! (Which is why the baked cheese grit casseroles that used to be at a place called Wellspring in Chapel Hill NC were absolutely joyous to me.)

      7. Gracely*

        Oh no. Restaurant breakfast grits are often the *worst* kind of grits . I’m so sorry someone tried to make you eat them.

      8. commonsensesometimesmakessense*

        They are a lot better in shrimp and grits, which are a low country dish with lots of spices. It’s not dissimilar to having a nice spiced dish over rice really.

      9. EC*

        Grits are one of those very simple dishes that is wonderful when done properly, but is very easy to screw up. Grits can easily turn into tasteless glue when they aren’t cooked well.

    3. That'sNotMyName*

      I’ve never felt bothered or left out by my shellfish allergy and this whole thread (especially the shrimp dip below) is only reinforcing that.

      1. commonsensesometimesmakessense*

        I love shellfish, but bringing any seafood (especially that needs to be heated up or kept warm) to a potluck, especially in an office, is just not a great idea in my opinion. It will inevitably be overcooked and fishier, and we all know that the guy in the office who microwaves fish for his lunch is public enemy number 1!

        1. Artemesia*

          my first thought too. I love shrimp and I have had decent enough shrimp and grits though it is often too spicy for me. But no way I am eating a shrimp dish at a potluck that I cannot observe has been properly heat managed — e.g. maybe grilled shrimp, or a creole stew kept hot — but shrimp grits prepared at home and then sitting around. Shrimp is a great food poisoning vector.

  31. Poffertjies!*

    We had a chili cook off and the winner admitted she didn’t make the chili. She got it from Wendy’s. No drama ensued to my knowledge but it sure was funny.

    2. Zephy*

      How much chili will Wendy’s let you buy all at once? I’m picturing her going through the drive-thru, maybe multiple drive-thrus, buying up ten cups of chili and carefully pouring them all into a pot she brought from home…

      2. Lab Boss*

        So one of my friends makes his own alcohol, and decided on a whim to make “Kentucky fried mead” using only the “honey sauce” packets from KFC as the sugar for the recipe. He’d go through about once a week, and ask for his meal to include “as many honey packets as you’re allowed to give me.” He said that varied from 2-3 to a dozen or more. Tragically, the finished product was underwhelming.

        (before he started he did ask if he could just buy an entire case of the packets directly. The store manager said the only reason she couldn’t is because they have no mechanism for tracking direct-to-customer resale of supplies like that so it would mess up the books).

    4. Alliesaurus*

      This reminds me of the story where the chili cook-off winner just took scoops from everyone else’s crock pots and mixed them together.

    5. Art3mis*

      LOL my BFF did that once for a family potluck. She was supposed to make the chili and didn’t have time to really do it properly so she just bought a bunch from Wendy’s. Her whole family raved about how good it was and twenty some odd years later they still don’t know she got it from Wendy’s!

  33. DMC223*

    Years ago the floor manager banned crockpots from the work floor where teams would use an empty cubicle for team birthdays and celebrations due to ongoing issues. Fast-forward a few months; a team brings in a crockpot for an event. An outraged employee approached me yelling that it wasn’t fair the other team could have crockpots and hers couldn’t. She looked me in the eye and completely seriously told me, “This is crockpot discrimination!”

    Now over 10 years later, whenever something crazy happens in the office, my coworker and I look at each other and yell “Crockpot Discrimination!”

  34. Nowwhat465*

    Early on in my career, I was on a team with three assistants and 6-7 middle managers. My team would do pot-luck holiday parties where they would decide on a theme that would dictate the menu. Unfortunately, they would create the menu and sign-up sheet during the managers’ meeting. So the managers who made 50-90% more than the assistants would sign up for plates, napkins, sparkling cider, etc.

    The three assistants would be left to fill in the rest of the sheet which would include charcuterie boards, a gourmet hot chocolate bar, local pastries (from a specific store), and other more expensive options. Some of them really thought we all loved doing the more complicated stuff since one assistant liked cooking and I occasionally used Pinterest on my lunch breaks. It took some of those in middle management YEARS to realize how bad the optics were forcing the assistants to use their own money and personal time to make them charcuterie.

    1. ScruffyInternHerder*

      Thankfully it worked out at my first real job – there were a lot more in the assistant role than there were upper level senior or manager level in my department. All it took was for the director to take one glance at the sign up sheet and have a senior level/manager level meeting where there was discussion about how the lowest paid (assistant roles) were covering the bulk of the cost and the work on this potluck, and perhaps there should be a bit of a switch up and maybe those who earned more could perhaps do more than provide plates? Because now employer was providing all paper goods/disposables/main meat dish so surely they could cover something instead of the paper goods they’d signed up for. (Employer had always covered the meat main.)

      Honestly turned out to be the best potluck ever.

    2. Bex*

      Wow, that is not at ALL how potlucks are supposed to work! Not just the people with more authority and higher income claiming all the cheap/easy stuff, but the creation of a specific menu?? No no no. Theme, sure. Categories, yup that’s helpful. Detailed list of items that must be provided, just not by any of the people making the list? NOPE.

      1. Elenna*

        The clear abuse of power aside, half the reason I enjoy potlucks is the opportunity to see what kinds of things other people make that I never make! Which wouldn’t happen at all if I was telling people what to bring (not that I have any authority or desire to do that).

    3. commonsensesometimesmakessense*

      I would just bring in some store bought cookies and when they complain, I would tell them that they are free to spend the significant difference between their salaries and mine to get the stuff on their list that they chose to put on the list while only offering to bring in paper plates.

    4. Artemesia*

      How do you get that many insensitive yutzes in a management team? At my university a top professor always roasted a bunch of chickens for the pot luck, another got a spiral baked ham. etc etc i.e. the well paid people felt it their responsibility to provide the high cost items so AAs could bring a salad or a plate of brownies.

      And how come someone didn’t tell one of them.

      1. Tesuji*

        My immediate assumption was that the managers were all (or mostly) male, and the support staff wasn’t.

        If they’re used to only having to put in minimal effort to make events happen (because their mothers/wives/etc. take care of things), female support staff doing the heavy lifting would all seem normal to them. They did their usual part, what’s the problem!

  35. Marie*

    I worked in an office of about 20 people.. food was big there, there was always a celebration with food…. we had 2 food hoarders…. Gina and Jonde… before ANYONE even touched the food, some of it was taken by them and hidden in their offices to take home (they tried to be discreet, but everyone knew). Jonde would make repeated trips to the food tables and keep on taking… and if there were bagels, forget it… she would make off with at least 6. BTW… neither of these people EVER contributed, just just took. We had contribution for birthday cakes and one of them had the nerve to say “I don’t eat cake”… yeah right

    1. WS*

      I had a Jonde in my previous workplace, and then a new senior manager joined. She saw Jonde slice of a quarter of someone else’s birthday cake to take home, and then she made a rule that you can’t come to any potluck/birthday/etc. if you don’t contribute. None of us thought much of that, it had happened before and our Jonde didn’t care, but she damn well stood at the door and stopped her and the other (not as bad) freeloader coming in! Then locked the door!

    2. JustaTech*

      I used to have a coworker who was like this. If I or my officemate brought in a pan of brownies or the like Zinny would be the first one in our office to grab a piece. Fine, cool.

      Then he’d come back for his second “piece”, which was a quarter of the pan. Before anyone else had even arrived at work! After the third time it happened we told him flat-out that he wasn’t allowed to cut his own pieces and he couldn’t have seconds until after 1pm.

      (Apparently his wife had him on a low-sugar diet, but seriously, dude, you’re a full grown adult and there’s a bakery with really good cookies two blocks away. Buy your own!)

  36. New Senior Mgr*

    A retiring and much loved colleague put in their 2 months retirement resignation. Within 24 hours our manager had a pot luck retirement list listed in the break room. I signed up for a large lasagna (that I’d made many times before for precious potlucks and this was retiring colleagues favorite of my dishes). Beside my entry on the list, I asked for any vegetarian or veggie lasagna preferences to note their names.

    3 days before creating my shopping list, there were 4 names preferring veggie lasagna. The day of the potluck I had one large pan of meat lasagna and 4 individual serving containers for our 4 veggie lovers. I placed them in the fridge and emailed the 4 on where they were located.

    After the potluck luncheon began, I had 3 other colleague come and ask where the veggie lasagna was located. I told them they were individual servings and already given to those who signed up. 2 of those employees admitted they didn’t prefer veggie but was hoping to sample it anyway. They are the meat lasagna and never mentioned it again. The remaining colleague turned red as he shouted that his wife was vegetarian and he was hoping to take a veggie serving home for her.

    I apologized for any misunderstanding and said maybe one day in the future I’ll consider making an all veggie lasagna for everyone. That didn’t satisfy him. He went in 3 yr old temper tantrum mode, saying it wasn’t fair and was bordering on discrimination! Finally, I said hey, you’re spitting over my food, please leave my office. Last I heard he went around asking around for who had the single serving veggie lasagnas and if they could give him a little. They all declined. It’s been 5 months and to this day he avoids me when possible.

    1. ferrina*

      Wow, the audacity! And to complain not for himself, but because he was planning on bringing home leftovers?!

    2. Robert Riemersma*

      Haha, it sounds like your strategy worked! The most annoying person in the office now avoids you when possible. You win!

    3. Cyndi*

      You know what I absolutely love in a partner is when they bring me home a plate with a pile of little corners cut off separate lasagna slices. So thoughtful. So romantic.

  37. Jmac*

    In a previous life I was a radio DJ. Occasionally restaurants would make deals with our promo department to give us a sample of something (a new sub at Subway etc) and the DJs were supposed to talk on air about how great the food was. One day we got a delivery of some sandwiches and one of the salespeople promptly scooped up all 10 of them, said he was taking them home to his family for lunch, and walked out the door

  38. UK BA*

    Not wrong, but too right? In my former office one guy would occasionally bring in brownies he’d made. These are undoubtedly the best brownies ever and would disappear very quickly. One time, a woman from the other side of the department heard that the brownies were around. By the time she found where they were, they had all gone. She was so upset she actually cried a little bit!
    Massive shout-out for Noel’s brownies, which I miss terribly.

    1. ThatGirl*

      This reminds me of a coworker I had several jobs ago who made the best potstickers. They were always the first thing gone, at like 9 a.m.

    2. WellRed*

      I had a coworker who was famous for her brownies. I heard soooo much about these brownies. I finally had a chance to taste one of these magical treats. Meh.

  39. Elle Woods*

    At a former job, the division I worked in had an annual holiday potluck. One year a woman brought in shrimp dip for the potluck. Every single person who ate her dip wound up getting ill to some extent; one person got so sick he had to be hospitalized. We later learned she had taken the shrimp out the day before, left them in her sink all day and overnight to thaw, and mixed up the dip in the morning before she came to work. I still get nauseated even thinking about it.

    3. That'sNotMyName*

      I’m in grad school for food science and we’ve yet to have a potluck but I’m very curious on how it would go. Would everyone take into account all of our sanitation or safety training? Or will they be just as gross as the rest of the world. I already have no illusions about quality, however. You can be a good food scientist and a mediocre home cook.

      1. Owler*

        All of the reports from my food scientist family member are raves about their potlucks. She says they all love to showcase what they are working on, and at the same time, they all love to appreciate each other’s work.

        And they are particular about food safety. Ymmv!

    4. Aine*

      That reminds me of the time that my former coworker decided to treat everyone to her homemade pies. I declined because she never washed her hands at work (we work with food!), so I doubted her sanitation practices at home. Every single person who tried her pies was sick the next day.

      There was also the coworker who decided to eat the leftover fried chicken in the break room that had been sitting there for 9 hours. Unsurprisingly, she called out sick the next day.

      1. Curmudgeon in California*

        I won’t eat anything with mayo or miracle whip at a potluck, or even a catered picnic. So few people handle it right.

      1. Elle Woods*

        Exactly. What made it even worse was that the shrimp were the super small ones–ones that take hardly any time at all to defrost.

  40. Falling Diphthong*

    Management did talk to him, but his answer was that he didn’t care.

    I think this is emerging as a 2022 theme: Seize the power of being the person who doesn’t care.

      1. Falling Diphthong*

        As a moral thing, sure.

        But as a looking out for number one thing, encouraging those in power to make everyone else change to accommodate your whims works a discouraging amount of the time. “We can’t talk to Matt; he’s unreasonable. So it’s on you, his more reasonable teamamates…”

  41. Marna Nightingale*

    I don’t have any terrible potluck stories but having just reread the “insulted by rolls” letter again I have come to ask:

    So, she was looking for a more senior roll?

  42. Nook Nook*

    Ugh. I had two coworkers that made potlucks awful.

    First guy always picked his teeth or his nose with his fingers, and of course never washed them. Had to always to the sprint to the food table before he would bare hand things (think picking up a baguette and tearing off a piece instead of using a knife). One of those guys who would pick up a cookie, look at it, and put it down to pick up another identical one until he found the “perfect” one.

    The other was a woman who had multiple cats and would always insist on bringing food in. Her desk, chair, clothes, everything were always covered in cat hair. It was no surprise her food also came in like this. Baked goods, salads, entrees, it didn’t matter! If you didn’t know who made what and accidentally grabbed one of hers, you’d be plucking little hairs out of your teeth.

    So thankful the pandemic moved us to WFH.

    1. That'sNotMyName*

      How many cats did she *have*? I totally get having some stray hairs stick to your clothes here and there but how was it in the food? I have a dog who is constantly shedding her full weight in fur and grew up with multiple cats. We never had fur in our food.

      1. LizB*

        I have one single cat and sometimes end up with cat hair in food that I cook for myself… if I’m cooking for anyone else, I make sure I wipe out every piece of equipment and banish her from the kitchen just in case.

      2. Jeebs*

        My only thought is this has to be someone who isn’t regularly cleaning their house.

        We have three cats. Occasionally I have to use a lint roller on my clothes (usually because I left the clean clothes out too long and one of them slept in it) but there’s never cat hair in our food.

      3. Nook Nook*

        Last count we knew, 13 (because she referred to them as her “lucky kitties”). And agreed, many people have cats and don’t have their fur end up in their food but this coworker…it was always. I can’t speak to how the home probably looked, but if it was anything like her clothes/jacket, then yikes.

    2. Lily Rowan*

      When I was in college, I worked in a day-care center part time. (I’ll come back to this.) One semester I had an evening class where we were assigned in pairs to bring snacks for the class. I saw a classmate pick up a cookie one time and start to put it back to look for something else and I literally grabbed her hand and said “you touch it, you take it!” Inappropriate? Maybe, but if she didn’t learn this lesson when she was 4, she was going to learn it at 20!

      2. Artemesia*

        I sat by a buffet in Hong Kong where one guy literally felt up every one of the rolls (50+) in a large basket at the end of the buffet before selecting one of the identical rolls. Just handled them all. I hate buffets.

        Had to eat at one for two weeks in Kuwait one time at the hotel where I stayed while consulting. Beautiful beautiful salads; gorgeous giant cold gulf shrimp cocktails. And they were the same every night — they would be put away and I assume brought out again and again until gone? or reconstructed. I was really worried about getting sick while having heavy work demands. I ended up living on the hot side of the buffet –lovely lamb chops, grilled veggies, and a big copper kettle of bubbling rice pudding. I’m sure those salads were fabulous — but my buffet phobia got the better of me.

        1. PleaseNo*

          I hear you! If I have to use a water fountain I always pick the highest one because i’ve seen kids suck on the ones they can reach. If I can’t find a trusty water fountain I just go thirsty.

  43. Juicebox Hero*

    My junior year in college one of the clubs I belonged to had an end of year picnic and they asked me to bring a big fruit salad. So I made a big giant bowl of fruit salad with melons, berries, kiwis, all kinds of good stuff. (I was a commuter student so going to the store and bringing it to the school wasn’t a problem for me.) It was a bit of money for a college student, but I wanted folks to enjoy it.

    And some jerk went and put Everclear (90% pure ethanol) in it. I was furious. All that money and time spent and they ruined it. This was right after the start of the picnic, so people who wanted fruit without booze didn’t get to have any, and the ones who did eat the spiked fruit were bombed off their feet after a helping. Not to mention the party included minors, including kids of some of the professors, and the professors too. The school probably could have gotten into serious trouble if the wrong people had found out.

    Two seniors wound up so drunk the only way they could stay upright was to sit back to back in the grass propping each other up. One of them had an awards ceremony later that night that she ended up missing because she still couldn’t walk straight hours later.

    I couldn’t even take the leftovers home because I didn’t want to give my mother and myself alcohol poisoning.

    That same club did not have an end of year picnic the next year.

    2. Manders*

      A colleague of mine hosted a pool party one year. She spiked a watermelon, which a lot of the parents of young kids didn’t realize wasn’t just… watermelon. My friend’s son, after eating a bit of it, walked over to another kid, pointed at his junk, and declared “these are my tentacles”. We still laugh about that (but not about the idiot host who knowingly let kids eat spiked watermelon).

  44. Microdissections*

    Okay, so this isn’t technically about the potluck itself…

    For my last job’s Holiday Potluck, I planned on bringing my favourite brownies to work, but wanted to make them extra special. I decided to add chocolate ganache to the top for some razzle dazzle, but was a procrastinator and did it 45 minutes before I needed to leave for work. I’d never made ganache before and did not make it correctly. It was still hot as I loaded it into my car, then spilled about 90% of the hot chocolate ganache directly onto my car seat. It looked like someone had the worst diarrhea of their life in my back seat for weeks until I got it professionally detailed.

    Brownies were still delicious though.

    1. Tinkerbell*

      On the one hand I’m sorry about your upholstery but on the other I’m literally laughing out loud in public here :-D

  45. Two Cups Of Pepper*

    My coworker “Annie” was very bubbly and sweet but sometimes frustrating because she didn’t pay attention to details. At our holiday potluck she brought the main dish which was some kind of pasta. It was a weird color and smelled spicy as she heated it up. I love spicy food but from the smell I was like damn that’s going to be hot. Just opening the crockpot made your eyes water. Lunch time came around and we all dig in and within seconds people were spitting out the pasta (politely). Even Annie was perplexed and said “I only put two cups of pepper in it! I don’t understand how it’s so spicy! Here, look!” And she showed my coworker the recipe on her phone. Two teaspoons. The recipe called for two teaspoons.

    2. Juicebox Hero*

      Holy smokes. Two cups is 96 teaspoons!

      I can just picture her dumping jar after jar of pepper into a measuring cup and complaining about why don’t they make the jars bigger if you’re supposed to use that much.

    3. Butterfly Counter*

      Where do they sell pepper in sizes that you could even GET 2 cups of it? Did she go to a restaurant supply shop?

  46. Idunn*

    At a workplace cookie exchange, coworker hyped his chocolate chip cookies. Another coworker decided to share her haul with her elderly parents. He had failed to tell anyone that his special ingredient was very hot dried chili peppers and the elderly parents got sick. He laughed when when she told him to label his ingredients, but he said it was a funny prank. He was not aloud to participate again.

    2. JustaTech*

      We used to have a place that catered for us that would do anything you asked (because they were very creative but since their main business was as a soup shop they were limited in their creativity).
      One year they catered our Cinco de Mayo party and provided a lovely tray of chocolate cookies. Thankfully I looked closely at the cookies before I took one because they were actually jalapeño chocolate cookies, with all the seeds and everything. Even my spice-loving coworkers said they were pretty hot!
      I wouldn’t have minded if the cookies had been 1) labeled and 2) not the only dessert provided.

    1. What She Said*

      Love rereading the update/other side of the story!!

      Personally, not a fan of Hawaiian rolls. Would have picked up a cheap ass roll for my meal.

    2. SunriseRuby*

      Personally, I think Cheap-Ass Rolls Lady should be the face of KING’S HAWAIIAN®. If only the company could be tipped off about her appreciation for their rolls and her resentment toward other bread products stealing the spotlight from KING’S HAWAIIAN®. Imagine the marketing campaign they could build around her if they could just get in touch with her!

    4. Red Reader the Adulting Fairy*

      I confess, I truly don’t understand how this story has become a defining characteristic of this site the way it has. It was funny at first, but man, some of the ways in which people have contorted to bring it up and shoehorn it into completely unrelated posts because everything must relate to the cheap ass rolls have really hammered it into the ground.

      2. SofiaDeo*

        I think it’s our version of a “Karen”, before “Karens” became a thing. Entitled, whiny, “whatever-I-do-and-say-is-so-obviously-RIGHTEOUS-how-dare-anyone-do-this-to-ME”. Plus, it IS much funnier to say “Cheap Ass Rolls” :)

  48. Lauren*

    We had a chili cookoff. If you wanted to eat, you had to donate $10 to a chosen charity. Those that cooked could eat for free and get a gift card for supplies. On the day of, crock pots were on their way, and someone got cut off on the way to work and her crockpot went off the seat and onto the car floor. Chili everywhere.

    2. Zombeyonce*

      This is why my husband buckles up any food we’re taking somewhere. It’s hilarious to look in the backseat and see a cake container carefully buckled in like it’s a child.

      1. JustAnotherKate*

        Ha, I put a seatbelt (in the front seat, no less) on a box of tacos I was bringing to an event, and man did I feel silly…until some jerk stopped short and I had to stand on the brakes to avoid rear-ending him. Totally worth looking weird.

    3. What She Said*

      This is why we never put a crock pot on the seat. Always on the car floor. Wrapped in a thick towel to avoid sliding.

      She must have been so heartbroken.

      1. Lauren*

        We actually ate the remnants still in the pot. Lol, but I think we could have gotten her car detailed as a bare minimum.

      2. Hosta*

        If you get one of those grippy under the carpet pads and cut it to size, you have extra hold on car floor worthy items!

    4. Bronze Betty*

      When I was in college, a friend and I were carpooling together to another friend’s birthday party, and I was bringing a cake. It was just a homemade sheet cake, which I had decorated and written Happy Birthday on. Nothing fancy, but it looked nice. On my way to her house, someone cut me off, the cake slid off (or around–I can’t remember) the seat. The cake was intact, but the decoration was ruined. Once I was at my friend’s, we fixed it by smearing all the frosting and putting sprinkles all over the top. Yay! It looked fine–not as nice, but fine, and we didn’t tell anyone it had looked nicer before.

      Since then, I am diligent about securing all foods for transport.

      1. ggg*

        Our local bakery puts stickers on the cake box that say, “put this box on the floor of your car, not on the seat!”. And they tell you as you leave. Clearly There Was An Incident.

    5. Shan*

      I had that happen with a slow cooker full of barbecue sauce in my trunk… not sure what I was thinking. It honestly smelled like barbecue every time I’m opened my trunk for several years.

  49. Three Cats in a Trenchcoat*

    This is a cooking contest, not a potluck story, and it isn’t one that went wrong so much as one that went… too well.

    A club (I’ve honestly forgotten which one) sponsored a baking contest my second year of medical school. I thought, well everyone is too busy to make anything too elaborate, so I’ll whip out my best guinness chocolate cupcakes and it’ll be a slam dunk.

    Now, what I had forgotten, was that medical students tend to be a bit… intense. One might even say… competitive. It turned out that everyone who had entered had gone full-bore take-no-prisoners, to the point where there were too many entries and too much food for the judges to be physically capable of tasting everything. There was homemade baklava! French macarons! Elaborate multi layer cakes!

    Thankfully, the club entry fees were going to a local childrens’ charity so there were some small children on hand to taste the finalists and save the overwhelmed club organizers from a food induced coma.

    1. Warrior Princess Xena*

      This is 100% on-brand with the medical students & residents I know. They have no chill and take no prisoners.

  50. Molly Grue*

    Not really a pot luck, but years back, my department had successfully implemented new software. The process had been grueling and stressful, so to celebrate, our Director treated us to a pizza lunch.
    Except she ordered 3 small pizzas. For a department of about 30 people.
    When the pizzas showed up, she started berating the delivery person for bringing the wrong order, and kept saying she’d ordered 3 small pizzas, not 3 personal pizzas. I’m not sure how she’d gotten that far in life without understanding how pizza works, but we finally convinced her that the mistake was hers and she needed to re-order.
    Pizza Lunch was delayed about an hour.
    It seems like such a silly mistake, but it was the sort of thing that made a lot of us question her abilities on other things going forward.

    1. ferrina*

      Yeah… I recently ordered pizza for the pizza party. First thing I did was ask the person taking my order what they would recommend (their recommendations lined up with what I had been expecting). Then I added an extra pizza just to make sure.

      1. Elizabeth the Ginger*

        I did that for my five-year-old’s birthday party and the person at the pizza shop didn’t seem to understand that five-year-olds do not eat the same amount of pizza as, I don’t know, college athletes. I rounded down a pizza, then fifteen minutes later was still feeling skeptical and called them back and cut the order in half. We STILL had three and a half pizzas left over at the end of the party.

    2. EvilQueenRegina*

      Sounds like the chicken and fries place in London I went to once with my cousins and their spouses, we’d tried to order two and a half chickens but it somehow ended up being conveyed as two half chickens. I’m not sure now how we only realised what happened when we got the bill, we all thought there didn’t seem to be a lot but that everyone else had eaten it!

    3. Slow Gin Lizz*

      My last job, an office of about 12 people, did a pizza lunch once, ostensibly because we were running a lunch webinar that day and they wanted to provide lunch to the three or so people running the webinar. The person in charge of ordering ordered, IIRC, two small pizzas. By the time I got there I think there were maybe three pieces left and the webinar was still going. At least two of the people running the webinar did not get any pizza. I wonder that the person doing the ordering was thinking one slice for every person or something weird like that, but come on, you should at least think two slices of LARGE for everyone and I would even go so far as to order three slices/person and figure leftovers are nice. She was a recent college grad, so you’d think she’d know something of how pizza works but I guess not. Company did eventually order lunches for the two people who didn’t get any, but on top of feeling bad for those two I was annoyed because I hadn’t brought my own lunch that day and one piece of a small pizza barely does anything to combat my own hunger. Pizza fail.

      And no, the two small pizzas were not supposed to only be for the people running the webinar; they’d specifically emailed us earlier that week to say we were all getting pizza for lunch that day.

      1. Chris too*

        I am a taller woman who works at a job with a strong physical component. I can easily eat at least twice what the tiny women with the desk jobs at work can. If one of them has been in charge of ordering the food for a lunch event I just resign myself to being quite hungry that afternoon.

        I once went to a large dinner meeting with a group of people who do the same thing I do. A buffet dinner had been arranged based on our number but nobody had stopped to tell the hotel that we did something physical. You could see the serving staff quickly getting wild-eyed as they realized they didn’t have anywhere near enough food, and their quiet but frantic communication with the kitchen.

        People tend to judge serving sizes based on their own size and lifestyle. . My very petite MIL wanted to scallop 6 medium sized potatoes for a 16 person dinner – luckily we have a great relationship and she wasn’t upset when I told her that wasn’t enough.

        1. Bryce*

          I went scuba diving once as part of a college class in the cold Oregon coast water (had a wet suit, so it wasn’t gonna kill me). Didn’t realize how much energy I’d used that afternoon until dinner at an all you can eat BBQ place where I was just inhaling everything.

  51. SMH*

    One year for a company BBQ they grilled hotdogs and bratwurst. Not sure the logic but they set up the grills at least 200 yards from where the line was for everyone to fill their plates. The two runners selected to bring hotdogs and brats from grill to table were over two women over 50 and both 110 pounds max while the IT guys, many of which participated in multiple sports, grilled. The women must have walked/ran 10 miles that day going back and forth dozens of times to feed 300 plus people. I think enough people made a comment because the next year they were within 200 feet of the tables.

      1. SnootyGirl*

        Some of those grills really put out a lot of smoke so maybe they were trying to be mindful of that?
        One of our local markets decided to start offering BBQ; the first couple of weeks the grill was set up in front of the entrance and filled the store up with smoke and assaulted all the shoppers entering the store with a smoke-filled haze; the next few weeks they moved the grill off to the side of the entrance, same result. Then they moved it out and onto the handicapped parking spaces, NOPE; then they tried the first row of the parking lot but took up eight-ten prime parking spots so had complaints; then they tried the side of the building but I heard sales dropped dramatically so they were trying to come up with a new plan. Unfortunately, I moved at that time so, alas, I will never know the ending to Howl’s Moving BBQ!

  52. Beancounter Eric*

    Company I worked in the 00’s did a Turkey Fry each Thanksgiving – at the peak, they would have 7 or 8 fryers going – company would buy the turkey, french fries(!?!) and propane, and the team would bring in the side dishes, desserts, etc. Also, if one wanted to bring in a turkey to be fried for home, they’d fit it in.

    We’d wind up feeding people from the other companies in the building, the security officers….

    I’ve been gone from there nearly 12 years…..I do miss Thanksgiving there!!

  53. JustaTech*

    Three stories!
    Competition gone badly and malicious compliance: My company decided that we would hold a chili competition as a fundraiser for the charity we’re associated with. Great! Then I was told that, as a member of the social committee, I *had* to contribute a chili. Here’s the thing: I don’t do spicy food. I can’t eat it, so I don’t make it. And I know that the key to success in a chili competition is heat. So for two years I brought in my mild chili, watched it be devoured and then come in stone cold dead last. I like to think I’m a good cook, so this was a real blow to my ego. Just before the third round of this humiliation I was bemoaning it to a friend who is the king of malicious compliance. “Why not make a curry?” “Huh?” “It’s a heavily spiced stew of beans, that’s the definition of chili, right?” So I made a (mild) vegan curry that was a huge hit! It didn’t win (because it wasn’t chili) but I didn’t care because, again, it wasn’t a chili. And the organizers agreed that the next year we would do “soup and chili”.

    Competition gone well: As another part of the fund raising for our charity, someone decided we needed a bake sale, including a live auction. I contributed a pie, but the real winner was the guy for customer relations who did stand up as a hobby and had the best “auctioneer” character anyone had ever seen. He was so funny and so persuasive that he easily doubled the final price of everything (my pie is good, but it’s not $100 good, even for charity).

    The joys of cultural exchange: When I worked for an academic lab we decided to have a big multi-lab holiday potluck. The sign up sheet goes up and there are all the usual suspects (I brought two pies), and then there are the three no one really is sure about. One is “a plate of bacon”. One is “wife’s dumplings”. And one is “pork aspic”.
    The day arrives and just before lunch I hear someone in the kitchen, microwaving bacon. So the “plate of bacon” wasn’t a joke! And it got eaten very quickly. The pork aspic was exactly what it said (for those not familiar with aspic it’s basically savory jello), and while the spices were interesting it was mostly nibbled out of politeness’s sake (the guy who brought it had only just moved to the US and was still learning the food culture).
    And “Wife’s dumplings”? Far and away the most popular thing at the potluck. Easily the best steamed Chinese dumplings I’ve ever had, and thankfully the wife of the guy who brought them knew how much we would like them, because she must have sent a hundred. The guy who brought them wasn’t anyone’s favorite coworker, but he bought himself a lot of grace with those dumplings.

      1. Elenna*

        Could have been Chinese, too, I believe it’s also a thing in Chinese cuisine. (And I personally love aspic-type stuff, although I do know enough about Canadian food culture to not bring it to a potluck.)

        1. JustaTech*

          Yes, he was also Chinese (but from a different region than the dumpling guy).
          There were a few people who had been raised with Southern-style aspic who were super excited for it, and I tried it to be polite (you never know when you’ll find a new favorite food) but for most of the Americans the visual of wobbly bits of meat was a bridge too far.

          (This researcher once brought a combo pizza from Domino’s to a 9am lab meeting because someone once told him to bring pizza to meetings. It was not popular, and the tradition of “bring food when you present” ended shortly after.)

      2. Robin*

        I was definitely thinking Eastern European; my parents love it, I hate it. I have a friend who spent time in Ukraine, could not get on board with aspic, but was forced to eat it every time they met someone new. The conversations always went something like:

        New Ukrainian: have you tried holodetz (aspic)? It is a local specialty!

        Friend: I have, but it is not my cup of tea; very cool dish though!

        NU: Oh, you just have not had mine/my mother’s/a proper version. Next time we hang out, I will bring you some.

  54. Poop cake*

    We had a holiday potluck at work. A co-worker who loves cats made a cake that looked like kitty litter, with all the details, gross. This was a grown woman who worked in a professional setting. How she thought that this was appropriate for a holiday party is beyond me. I’m still grossed out 10+ years ago.

    1. Corrigan*

      I kind of love this. Not something I would bring to a work party, but if a friend made it I’d be into it.

    2. Mekong River*

      Ironically, two people upstream appear to consider that cake one of their specialities. I think there’s a know-your-audience factor to something like that.

      1. Robin*

        I heard about this cake first in relation to a psych lab where researchers were looking into how the visual appeal of something influences opinions. Head of the lab made kitty litter cake, made sure to bring it in a (clean, new!) litter box and everything. The team knew it was tasty treats but none of them could bring themselves to try it.

    3. WellRed*

      Probably also plans baby showers with the party game where they smush candy bars into diapers and you have to guess what kind it is.

    4. SnootyGirl*

      HAH! We used to have a coworker that did this – and it ABSOLUTELY looked like a litter box full of used cat litter. I LOVE cats, I adored the woman that made it, and I knew she was a great cook/baker. I managed to try a bit (and it was delicious) but I just couldn’t bring myself to eat something that looked like what I cleaned up twice a day in my home.

    5. Professional Cat Lady*

      We had a coworker who used to make these all the time, but we work in animal sheltering so it’s on theme!

    6. Art3mis*

      I love cats, I even run a locally based Facebook group for cat owners. And I love me some baked goods. But… no. Just. No.

    8. Francie Foxglove*

      Was there a smashed Tootsie Roll draped over the rim of the box? That’s the little touch I added when I made that cake for a Halloween party!

    9. kimberly*

      I used to work with a spay/neuter group and we’d get together about 4x/year and have a mass spay/neuter event. This cake was mandatory — someone was assigned to make it every event.

  55. Irish Teacher.*

    One school I worked in had a tradition that each Friday, a teacher would make treats for the staff (though they were pretty laid back about whether you made them yourself or bought them). Anyway, the deputy principal didn’t bake, so when his turn came around, he decided to bring in a chocolate fountain and lay out marshmallows and strawberries to dip in it.

    Ye can probably guess what happened next. He turned it on to test it and chocolate went EVERYWHERE – all over his shirt and tie and down on the carpet of the staffroom.

    I’d left the room to do some planning after helping to lay out the marshmallows and strawberries and came back to chocolate stains on the floor and a “do not turn on” notice under the fountain.

  56. Well That's Fantastic*

    Not a potluck, but a co-worker once brought in brownies and left them on the break room table for anyone to enjoy. It was common for people not to say who brought treats, so that didn’t seem ominous until I saw a post-it on my chair that said, “Don’t eat the brownies.”

    Turns out, someone thought it was hilarious to make jalapeño surprise brownies without warning. The mystery baker left me the note because they knew I have an allergy and could’ve ended up seriously ill if I’d had any.

    1. Corrigan*

      Ugh, that kind of thing is not funny. I know someone who has seriously problems with anything spicy (stomach issues, not just taste preference) and this would have been really bad for them. Just from a taste standpoint that’s pretty mean too.

  57. Stacy*

    I’ve shared this one before in the comments awhile back.

    I used to be a teacher for a small special education department. It was customary for our supervisor to host an end of year luncheon that they catered. Nothing fancy, maybe Chipotle or party subs. We had a new supervisor who was all around disliked by everyone for very justified reasons.

    She announced that the end of the year luncheon was being changed to a breakfast potluck, before school, so we had to come in early. It was mandatory. So not only did we have to wake up early, we had to provide the food for our own party. The kicker was she put herself in charge of bringing the cutlery, but she only brought knives. We had to try to eat breakfast casseroles and other dishes only with knives. Good times.

      1. Stacy*

        I’m pretty sure she didn’t buy them and just grabbed what was leftover in the lunchroom from previous parties.

    2. Annie*

      This has me giggling and wondering if, out in this vast wide world of ours, there are people who think “cutlery” means only knives – aka, the one for cutting.

      1. Monday*

        There is a set of dish towels I saw on the internet once with art of a knife, fork, and spoon, labeled underneath with “cutlery, stablery, scooplery” which I found delightful.

    3. knitcrazybooknut*

      I recently took over administration of a large academic department. Over the summer, I decided to combine all the little stashes of tea/coffee supplies the frugal academics had stolen/hoarded over the years into one large stash. This included silverware that had clearly been purchased as sets – 50 spoons, 50 forks, 50 knives.

      There were three spoons, six forks, and about 200 knives.

      We’ve since purchased spoons and forks (compostable, yay!), but I will probably retire before the knives are gone, and I’m at least 15 years away.

      1. JustaTech*

        One time when I was a teen I was hanging around my dad’s office late (waiting for him to finish up so we could go home) and I decided that, since I couldn’t do any more homework, I would organize their kitchen. Nothing major, just get everything grouped together.

        I must have found 60 pairs of disposable chopsticks. No forks or spoons, but chopsticks until next year. And about as many soy sauce packets.

  58. Me ... Just Me*

    I love this site. Seriously, reading about “cheap ass rolls” brings me the warm fuzzies each year, now. It’s like watching a favorite holiday movie.

  59. My Cabbages!*

    Not exactly a pot luck story, but I did part of my doctoral research at a large institute (think several buildings and dozens of labs). As you might imagine, various catered events (and potlucks!) were common. Every time one finished but before the food was cleared away, a quiet word was sent out thru the grad student mailing list and groups of underpaid and overworked grad students would descend like a cloud of locusts. Especially if there was leftover beer.

    2. AcademiaCat*

      As someone who works as staff for a STEM department at a university, we plan our faculty meeting lunch order to accommodate this. When I was the office admin (now I’m a dept. manager) I would sit in my office waiting for one of the faculty to come by after the meeting so that I could send out the “leftovers” email. And by leftovers I mean most of the food hasn’t been touched because the faculty all know what’s up and why we order three times as much food as we “need” for the monthly faculty meeting.

    3. OtterB*

      Yep, I’ve been associated with various meetings and workshops in higher ed settings, and “feed the grad students” is a real thing.

      1. The Prettiest Curse*

        Yup, we were asking one of our grad students what would make him attend our monthly seminars and he said “Honestly? Food.”

        1. JustaTech*

          The funny thing is that this mode of thinking holds on for years and years – scientists who have been out of academia and making actual money for more than a decade can be enticed to a meeting or seminar with the promise of the most basic snacks.
          Eventually it wears off (proportional to how long one was in academia), but if you really need Doctor Professor Much More Important Than You to show up for something, promise the “good” cookies.

    4. Asenath*

      Yeah. Anytime you organize food in an academic setting, there are two rules. The first one might only be for us, because we often set up the tables of food in the corridors, which also acted as a break area for nearby meeting rooms (don’t ask me why the place was designed like that). First rule, put a guard on the food until the people for whom it is intended arrive from their meetings. And the second rule – any leftovers go to the students. Students can eat an incredible amount of food, and honestly, I don’t think any employees (who, of course, had actual incomes) grudged the students the perk of food left over from a meeting they didn’t attend.

  60. Jessica*

    So many of these anecdotes illustrate the related problems of (a) managers who are unwilling to manage; (b) managers who think anything not directly related to work duties is somehow outside their scope of concern. I’d like to think that if I had an employee who did some of the more egregious things here, I’d do something about it.

    1. She of Many Hats*

      The “swarming locusts” was why my office has a designated meeting food location and an “or else” policy about eating from that area if you were not involved in the meeting. As soon as the food was moved to the common area, the programming team pirahnas would swarm the food. They were civilized but fast.

      1. ICodeForFood*

        I worked for a very short time on a team of outsourced I.T. consultants located in a small room at a major corporation. When food was places at a common area, one or another of the consultants would come running into the room, yelling “Food alert!” And then there would be a mad scramble as the guys (it was always the guys) in the group practically ran over each other in a mad dash to wherever the food was… It was pretty amazing…

  62. urguncle*

    I made mashed potatoes with redskinned potatoes for a work potluck. Someone asked if the “red stuff” was bacon. I said it was not (we had a few vegetarians/people who didn’t eat pork) and she gagged and threw the serving spoon back in the crockpot. Thanks for the feedback, I guess.

    1. ferrina*

      I love potato skins in my mashed potatoes. My kids think I’m weird. Too bad I’m the one cooking (mwahahaha!)

      1. Anonymouse*

        Next time, let your kids make the mashed potatoes.
        Then have them make the green beans, then carrots, then peas.
        Then they can make the meat course.
        You will have a fully trained kitchen staff in no time.

        1. ferrina*

          Lol! My youngest is in preschool, and I’m trying to teach her not to mess with the oven and/or grab the sharp knives! They actually love cooking, and my oldest does cooking camp in the summer.

          We actually stumbled on a way for making Covid tests bearable- whenever someone needs to take a test, they get to choose a cookie recipe from our amazing cookie cookbook. We make the cookies at the next opportunity. They discovered whoopie pies this way, and it’s been an experience. My older now doesn’t even flinch at testing- he’s already thinking of what cookie he wants to try.

    2. Kimmy Schmidt*

      You can bring them all to me! This is my favorite type of mashed potatoes. Give me skin on, chunky, buttered up deliciousness. Mmm.

    3. WellRed*

      So she doesn’t mind potato but the skins were a bridge too far? I probably wouldn’t have stopped myself from saying WTF is wrong with you?

  63. Tinkerbell*

    I know I’ve told this story in the comments here before, but here goes:

    I worked for a small branch of a largish public library system. The main branch did a Thanksgiving week meal each year where the library paid for the turkey and everything else was potluck. They then had us all stand in line for food… while the board members and various “community leaders” they invited got to go to the front. We all suffered through a pointed long-winded prayer by a local pastor (public library but Bible Belt) and then the bigwigs ate all the good stuff and left the staff who had actually contributed to the potluck to get whatever was left.

    Great morale-boosting exercise, there.

    1. Artemesia*

      After that happened once people should have gone to see the director about the library ordering enough food to feed guests instead of punishing low wage employees by making them caterers and then not feeding them. I am sure the guests were not aware they were abusing the staff.

  64. Reality Check*

    Our boss was allergic to carrots but didn’t tell anyone. Someone brought in a dish that had carrots in it, and he ate it. He spent the remainder of the evening locked in a restroom because his face swelled so badly, as he put it, he “looked like something from Star Wars.” This was in the days before food allergies were as widespread as they are now. Lesson learned: ask around when contemplating what dish you’ll bring to the pot luck.

        1. Seashell*

          “Didn’t tell anyone” sounds like he knew he had this allergy, but didn’t mention it to anyone at the workplace.

          1. Reality Check*

            Correct. He knew, but didn’t tell anyone. The carrots were blended in to a dip or something, so weren’t obvious.

        2. kendall^2*

          I thought that the “…but didn’t tell anyone” meant that he knew, but … didn’t tell anyone. Not that he himself didn’t know. If he didn’t know, then the wording would’ve been of the “The boss hadn’t discovered he was allergic to carrots until….” variety.

      2. Juicebox Hero*

        I used to have a boss who was allergic to strawberries. We were at a coworker’s baby shower and she was gobbling up a whole plate full of strawberries. I said, “Cheryl, what the hell are you doing? I thought you were allergic!” Her response was it was ok, she’d only get a rash and her throat wouldn’t swell. And the strawberries were soooo goooood.

        She got such a bad rash that it took months to heal and it left scars on her legs.

        She was also deathly allergic to even minute amounts of shellfish (eating a burger from a grill lobsters had been cooked on earlier was enough to send her to the ER) and her favorite restaurant was Red Lobster so common sense wasn’t her strongest quality.

        1. ScruffyInternHerder*

          Someone want to find my eyebrows please? They’ve left my hairline and possibly the building.

          I can’t even walk into Red Lobster because it smells like vomit to me (also very allergic to shellfish in miniscule amounts). Cross contact hazards all over the place there.

          1. Juicebox Hero*

            Here, they were on the roof.

            Yep. She’d eat chicken or pasta when they went there, but had to pull out the epi-pen in the ladies room more than once because cross-contamination is almost inevitable in a freaking SEAFOOD restaurant.

        2. CommanderBanana*

          This is like the commenter on an earlier column from a letter writer with celiac who has a relative who is very allergic to oysters, but will have a once-a-year oyster splurge and call head to the ER to let them know to expect her.

          I love oysters, but dang.

          1. Juicebox Hero*

            Holy smokes. That’s just insane. All it takes a delay getting to the ER, or getting the medication, or the dose not being effective, and you’re dead meat just for the sake of oysters.

            I’m allergic to tomatoes, which make me break out in hives and itch like I’ve got fire ants crawling on me. So as much as I love ’em I just don’t eat ’em because an itchy rash isn’t worth it. I can’t imagine playing Russian Roulette with my LIFE that way!

          2. Not Your Admin Ass(t)*

            Woooooooow. Way to waste the ER’s limited resources and manpower while people who are literally dying NOT of their own stupidity and hubris might not get the help they need in time.

        3. Chauncy Gardener*

          What the actual heck??? No common sense and not a lot of the little grey cells either maybe?

        4. JustaTech*

          I had a coworker with a “mild” (his words) nut allergy. I discovered this when he came over to get some of the brownies my officemate had made and she warned him that there were walnuts in the brownies. “That’s fine, it’s not a lot, it’ll just make me cough.”

          My response was shock and horror and a pointed remark that we work in immunology (allergies are part of immunology) and maybe that’s not a great idea?
          “No, no, it’s fine!”

          After that I started very clearly labeling everything I made with all the ingredients *and* the top-ten allergens (not everyone realized that Nutella has nuts in it), because if someone was going to have an allergic reaction to something I’d made it had darned well better be because they chose to eat it anyway.

    2. Artemesia*

      That was on the boss. It isn’t like it is some weird ingredient you might not expect. I just served fabulous creamed spinach at a dinner party and learned that one of the guests is very allergic to spinach. Won’t serve it when he is a guest again. What did he do? Well sensibly said ‘that looks great but I can’t eat it’ and ate the rest of the meal. I was glad that I at least had a plate of tomatoes and basil on the table too.

      And if someone is that allergic then he needs to ask about carrots in things like soups where it might not be obvious in time.

    3. Curmudgeon in California*

      My solution to that is simple: Label potluck dishes with the ingredients so everyone can be aware of their own food intolerances and allergies.

      1. ScruffyInternHerder*

        Here’s how you know that food allergies and Celiac have been a thing in my family for FOUR generations (so dating back to at least the early 1950s that I’m aware of):

        Everything at family reunions has an ingredient label.
        There are blank papers for folks who need to do this at the reunion park.
        There are flag picks to denote the most common offenders. Obviously the flags just get us to pay WAY more attention.
        Certain family-trending allergens are segregated to a separate table away from the rest of the food in order to reduce the chances of someone using a utensil in two dishes.

  65. old curmudgeon*

    Before he retired, my spouse worked in a unit that LOOOOVED their potlucks. They’d happily leverage any excuse – or no excuse at all – to have a full-on potluck for the entire division to enjoy, and the bragging rights for whose dish got consumed fastest were hotly contested.

    For one potluck, “Trudy” announced to everyone that she would be bringing in home-made sushi as her contribution. Sushi is a very popular item in our part of the country, and Trudy was happily and confidently expecting to take top honors as having brought the most popular potluck item.

    The day of the potluck arrived, and everyone crowded around Trudy as she proudly revealed her carefully prepared delicacy. Because sushi!!

    Well. There is sushi, and then there is “sushi.”

    Trudy’s potluck contribution was string cheese and raw hotdogs wrapped in sushi rice and Nori (the dried seaweed used for sushi), and sliced into pretty little rolls.

    Trudy was both baffled and deeply offended that her contribution went largely untouched throughout the potluck. She just could not understand why everyone preferred pulled pork sandwiches to her wonderful homemade “sushi.” And she never forgave my spouse for taking top honors for his pulled pork, the most popular item at that potluck.

      1. Elizabeth the Ginger*

        Hot dogs are pre-cooked, not actually raw – but it’s still a bad idea to eat them straight from the package because they can wind up re-contaminated with Listeria during the packing process. (Listeria can also, more rarely, wind up in deli meat, which is why it’s recommended that pregnant people and others with weakened immune systems avoid eating deli meat unless it’s been heated until steaming.)

        2. Jammin'*

          “Listeria can also, more rarely, wind up in deli meat, which is why it’s recommended that pregnant people and others with weakened immune systems avoid eating deli meat unless it’s been heated until steaming”
          This is timely given the recent listeria outbreak attributable to deli meat (and cheese, too, I think).

    4. Bamfer*

      I expected warm sushi, I expected everyone getting sick sushi, I expected six pieces of sushi sushi, but I did not expect this sushi.

      Wow.

    5. Little Bobby Tables*

      If you’re going to combine sushi rolls and cheap ass rolls – fill them with cucumber slices. Would have been cheaper than hot dogs and is a well known recipe.

    6. Kara*

      My understanding is that “sushi” actually refers to the rice; not any of the other ingredients. That’s certainly not the commonly-understood meaning though!

  66. Faintofheart*

    I’ve written the story here before, but in the “before” times my office used to host a huge Octoberfest party for all of our clients and while they catered the actual food, dessert was a chance for the employees to bring a dish if they wanted. One of my coworkers took off two full days to bake cakes… multiple, three layer cakes… putting our small department under-staffed. She would always make a big deal about the cakes and how delicious everyone thought they were. They were not. Inevitably, there was one or twice slices taken from each cake but 90% of the cakes were left uneaten, and I was (and clearly still am!) salty that I was left to cover her desk while she baked these *so delicious* cakes.

    1. Chocolate Teapot*

      Are you the person who got stuck with “Amy’s” work, which was supposed to be nearly complete, but ended up taking a long time as various documents for each file were missing? Amy had taken the day off to bake her cakes.

  67. Taura*

    I startled my coworker with my chocolate mice once! They’re not super realistic or anything (you can google “chocolate mice” and they’re the kind made with cherries and kisses) but I do use the shimmery icing for their faces and I guess she just wasn’t expecting a trayful of little chocolate mice looking up at her at 8am.

  68. Proposal Manager*

    We had an older guy in the office at a prior job who would steal all the food as well. He would even go into meetings for other departments (which he wasn’t invited to) that ordered food, get the food, and then leave the conference room. He would also pressure our clients to buy him lunch, then pocket the per diem he would get for lunch when out of the office. When we was politely asked to retire post-70 because he refused to learn to use a computer, he plopped his computer on my desk, full of year of emails, and asked to sift through all of them to find all his project files from the last 5 years. He had a bunch of personal emails in there as well, and it turns out he was a multi-millionaire with three homes (including one in Rome) and entire units of condos as investment properties. I’ve personally went hungry because of this guy. No one was sad to see him go.

    1. ScruffyInternHerder*

      I’d say I used to work with you, BUT I’ve seen this go down in 2-3 different employers’ offices so its likely a more widespread issue than believable!

      The audacity was bought in bulk from Costco with that one!

    1. never mind who I am*

      All right–here’s another one. My organization hasn’t had a pot-luck event since the advent of The Pestilence. When I was having my annual review with my boss and grandboss (very informal, actually kind of enjoyable) they mentioned that my department might have a pot-luck event sometime soon. I immediately said that I would bring the cheap-ass rolls. My grandboss was unfamiliar with the term and I had to explain the reference. And I thought ALL management folks were familiar with AAM! So disillusioning. (Note, just in case: she wasn’t offended–I’ve seen her say worse. And if you want to see what I’m hoping to take, google “school cafeteria rolls.”)

      1. SunriseRuby*

        You’ll be the office hero. I grew up in the midwest, and when I was in elementary school in the 1970s, those were the best part of any school lunch when they were offered. Who didn’t love them (keeping in mind that this was decades before wide awareness about issues with gluten)?

  70. MyySharona*

    Oh oh oh I can’t believe I forgot about the most notorious holiday party. We had historically had a party where the meats/mains were provided and all the sides and desserts were potluck. Great time every year, you could also sign up for a cookie swap, people would contribute recipes to our company cookbook, etc.
    A longtime employee, who notoriously hated all “ethnic” food or spice, became the party planner and then also the office manager, making her in charge of the holiday party. She canceled the potluck and got a baked potato bar. Not a fancy one, just some baked potatoes with butter, sour cream, and cheese. Maybe there were some bacon bits. And she stuck to her guns despite suggestions, offers to help…
    A ROGUE potluck was organized behind her back. So her potatoes arrive, and then everyone also shows up with more dishes than ever out of spite. I’ve never been to such s great office party and I’ve also never seen any one person so pissed off.

      1. MyySharona*

        She was SO MAD. And took a crazy amount of potatoes home, but she always did that. One of the “feed the family at home” people before some staff had a chance to eat. She was something special. I don’t miss working with her in the slightest.

    3. Lily Rowan*

      That is amazing.

      My office “holiday” party traditionally includes a mashed potato bar that people are OBSESSED with. Like, all of the new staff since 2020 are sure to be disappointed, because it’s really not that exciting.

    4. IT Manager*

      Ok so, I’m not a potluck person (work food should be paid for by work budgets!) and I *love* a baked potato bar….

      …. But this is awesome. I would definitely have contributed to a passive-aggressive-potluck for such a good cause ;-)

  71. DayGloEyes*

    So I work in a medical office and one of our visiting locums shared a horrifying story. He was an OBGYN and was invited to attend the hospitals maternity department party/potluck. One nurse went around offering her platter of cookies to people (instead of leaving it on the table). Now she was known to be a little out there but had just come back from her own mat leave so people were asking about the baby and such. It was only at the end of the event did she start telling people that the cookies had her breastmilk in them! She subbed cows milk for her own personal breast milk that she had pumped for her baby…just a small health hazard! The dr said he was so thankful he hadn’t eaten one but a lot of people got sick and started throwing up (because of the ick factor.) HR got involved post event and she got suspended and had to do remedial ethics training before she could return to her job. Anyone who had ingested the cookies was offered free medical testing to make sure they were okay. Yikes.

    1. ZSD*

      That is super bizarre. I don’t understand about the health hazard, though. Is breast milk not safe for adult humans to drink? Is it because it wasn’t pasteurized?

      1. Warrior Princess Xena*

        Not a medical professional, but while the milk itself would probably fine, I believe at least some diseases can travel through milk just like any other bodily fluid.

      2. Mekong River*

        Yeah, it’s not pasteurized, and also not regulated for consumption in non-babies. I mean, milk straight from the cow is probably ok, but there’s a reason we don’t sell it that way in grocery stores.

        1. Here we go again*

          I used to have a milk cow and quality really depends on how well you clean up the cow before milking, how clean milking gear is, and how fast the milk makes it into the fridge after straining for floaties.
          I miss making cheese and all the other tasty dairy, but not shuffling out to the stable at 4:30 am with milk bucket on one arm & cleaning bucket/gear on the other, while my cow yelled at me for her milking treats and her baby yelled at me for stealing his breakfast.

          1. Mekong River*

            All those quality qualifiers are true for human milk, as well. Probably fine, but depends on cleanliness of all elements and whether it’s refrigerated quickly.

      3. Aine*

        Breast milk is still a bodily fluid and it’s still not completely known what all can and cannot be transmitted through it.

      5. Ann Perkins*

        It’s generally safe as long as it’s stored properly, but there are a few diseases that can be transmitted via breast milk. I’m a milk donor and had to conduct a blood test before I could donate pumped milk to be used in hospitals.

      6. not a doctor but...*

        I mean… it maybe is safe, but there are so many issues, including pasteurization. It’s true that some people are unnecessarily squicked out by human milk when it’s being provided to a human baby. But it’s just very personal and I think people are just uncomfortable consuming a substance that came out of a coworker’s body!

        And the pasteurization thing is no small thing! How do they know she didn’t leave it out before using it? And disease can be spread through human milk, not sure if that still applies if it’s been baked into cookies… but really, does anyone want to find out?

        1. Mekong River*

          Pasteurization relies on holding the food at a high temperature for a long time. Cookies don’t take that long to bake. Cookies probably reach a high enough temperature, but they are not held there long enough to pasteurize them.

      7. Artemesia*

        Baked in cookies it was probably not a health issue; it would of course be if in a smoothy or something as a bodily fluid not pasteurized could harbor hepatitis or HIV or various other viruses some of which are infectious if ingested. I actually thought we were heading for placenta as an ingredient. The milk would have annoyed me because it is a nasty thing to do to people but I would not have been worried about it since they were baked.

        1. Mekong River*

          I wouldn’t count on baking as doing a good job at pasteurizing. Even though you bake something at 400 F or whatever, the baked goods are not 400 F. Think about baking a roast—the temperature rises slowly, and you take it out when it reaches it’s done temperature, which is 165-195 F. It’s the same for breads and cakes and such. Cookies aren’t even baked very long, maybe 8-12 min. So even if the baked goods reach a high enough temperature to kill germs, they don’t stay at that temperature long enough to kill very many.

    2. WillowSunstar*

      Stories like this are why I generally stick to the obviously store-bought food at potlucks, including my own (generally bring a fruit or veggie tray so there is at least one healthy thing).

      2. Kiwi*

        Stories like these make me grateful for having a ton of food allergies and an excuse to avoid potluck foods

    3. WillowSunstar*

      Stories like this are why I stick to the obviously store-bought food at potlucks, including my own (generally bring a fruit or veggie tray so there is at least one healthy thing).

    4. FrogEngineer*

      WHAT IN THE ACTUAL

      I am truly speechless. What on earth was she thinking. Actually maybe I don’t want to know…

  72. Lemon Zinger*

    My last workplace did an annual chili cook-off. One year everyone who partook got sick. The organizer does not wash her hands after using the bathroom. I’m not saying the two are linked, but I also wouldn’t recommend eating Jackie’s chili.

  73. merida*

    Our office had a chili cookoff once. The morning of the potluck, it was announced that due to inclement winter weather and some people not being able to make it into the office, the potluck was canceled. Most people took this news with a normal level of disappointment. A colleague of mine, “Barb,” had a crockpot of chili cooking at the office. Chaos erupted when Barb read the cancellation email. Yelling, punching things at her desk, crying, screaming, etc. She called HR (who had decided to cancel the potluck, the perpetrator in Barb’s mind) and chewed them out abusively over the phone, and then called her husband to blow off steam, and a handful of others. She yelled and cried at the office for 3 or 4 hours. (It was awful and I complained to her boss.) She ended up demanding that HR reimburse her for the chili ingredients, and they did. At future potlucks, Barb proudly announced to anyone nearby on potluck day that she didn’t bring anything to the potluck. According to her, she had special permission from HR to attend potlucks without contributing to food (as was the office etiquette) as retribution for how they “screwed her over.” We never had a chili cookoff again.

      1. Generic Name*

        Right? Typically, people who have OTT emotional responses like this are rarely all that good at their jobs

    4. Artemesia*

      why didn’t she just put the crock in the break room and announce there was chili for those who got to the office today?

  74. Bethannie*

    Ok, I got one. My last job (for which I should write a book. I’ll title it “Trolls and FBI raids”) I was one of two women that worked in a large open office area with a bunch of middle aged men. Like it was just an open area with half cubicles and the owners stuff randomly stuck wherever. Anyway, I kept getting sick. Like every couple of weeks I’d have norovirus like symptoms that I just chalked up to having kids in public school. Until one day, the owner of the business next door followed the Troll back into the office from the communal building bathroom just yelling at him about how he took a massive stinking dump in the bathroom AND DIDN’T WASH HIS HANDS!!!

    After the other guy left, the Troll looked around the office where we were all just staring at him and said, “why would I wash, I used toilet paper.”

    THEN A BUNCH OF THE OTHER GUYS CLAIMED THEY DIDN’T WASH THEIR HANDS EITHER! Loudly!

    Me and the other woman just stared at each other in a dawning horror about the daily communal donut boxes.

    I wish I could say I put in my notice that moment, but it took several more weeks of insanity to push me over the edge.

    1. H.Regalis*

      I worked at a bar that had a bathroom attendant only for the men’s bathroom, and a major reason for it was reminding/forcing men to wash their hands.

    2. Siege*

      I have taken great, malicious pleasure in sharing the story of the high-ranking businesswoman in my state (seriously, she’s involved with the state government, she was head of the chamber of commerce, etc) who doesn’t wash her hands in the bathroom.

  75. ICodeForFood*

    Not really a potluck story, but still pertinent, I think.
    In the 1990s I worked in a department of 19 people, and as thank you, we were told that our vice president would be ordering breakfast for us all. There were probably a few emails that went out, hyping this ‘thank you’; event, and reminding us that breakfast would be provided on whatever day they had chosen.
    On the day of the event, the V.P.’s secretary ordered 19 assorted donuts from Dunkin’ Donuts. Not even 2 dozen… 19! One donut per person, and whoever was last got whatever kind happened to be left.
    Certainly made me feel appreciated…. not!

    1. ferrina*

      Wow. I used to work with a team that would bring in donuts if one of them had a good commute and arrived early. They were just happy to be there and ply us all with sugar (their requests were always prioritized)

    2. Lacey*

      lol that’s not the worst thank-you I’ve heard of, but it’s pretty bad!

      Most places I’ve worked have had donuts pretty regularly. One did it for specific meetings, another did it for our deadline days. One did every Friday – but for a special event they’d buy the GOOD donuts from a specific bakery.

      1. JustaTech*

        I have a VP who keeps trying to buy our love with food (to make up for insisting we all work from the office all the time). So he’s always bringing in donuts from a popular local chain. These are (from what I’ve been told) good donuts, but they’re cake donuts, and I don’t like cake donuts.
        Inevitably every couple of weeks we have this conversation “You didn’t come up for a donut!” “Thanks for bringing them in, I just don’t like that style of donut.” “But they’re donuts!” “Yes, but I’m not hungry and I don’t like them.”

        Why should I hike up two flights of stairs to eat food I don’t like when I’m not hungry from a guy who has been Not Great about basic disease prevention?

    3. Irish Teacher*

      Oh, that reminds me of a story. I correct the state exams and beforehand, we have a marking conference for training and so on. For the first few years I corrected, we used to get the most delicious bakery goods along with tea or coffee for our break. And then, the recession hit. So the government made a lot of cuts, including our expenses and…our bakery goods. At the next conference, along with the tea and coffee, there were literally two or three saucers with penguin bars on them (about 100 people attend the conference; I doubt there were more than 30 bars). It would probably have been better if they provided nothing. I honestly heard more complaints about the cutting of the bakery goods than I did about their cutting our travel expenses or others.

      Not really an issue like yours, as it was reasonable really. The country was genuinely bankrupt (and THAT is a WHOLE other story, but it involved the IMF bailing the country out) so it was reasonable not to spend money on presumably thousands of baked goods (I assume the teachers of all other subjects were getting the same). And they were good stuff, bakery goods rather than from the local supermarket. And they hadn’t promised us a thank you or anything; they had been quite clear that all things that weren’t necessary were being reduced and I think we were even given a heads up to bring a mid-morning snack as it was no longer being provided. But it still caused a fair share of complaint.

  76. WillowSunstar*

    Had a coworker who just did not understand that you were supposed to contribute something to the potluck in order to take food from the potluck. Management let him get away with it repeatedly. The rest of us would not have been allowed to.

      1. ggg*

        I can see how it is annoying to have repeat non-contributors. However, in general I think it is better to allow everyone to participate regardless of contributions.

        We always have a few people who didn’t bring something for whatever reason, and visitors from different areas who stop by not knowing that there’s a potluck on, and we feed everyone. We have never run out of food.

        1. Lily Rowan*

          Yeah, not at work potluck where each individual brings a dish! It’s not like a church (or other community) potluck where each family brings a dish.

          1. ggg*

            I guess it depends on scale. If you have 6 people and each one brings a dish that serves 6, there isn’t much wiggle room. But if you have 50 people and everyone brings a dish that serves 10, there is usually plenty of extra food.

            1. My Cabbages!*

              If you have six people, and each brings a dish that serves 6, that’s 36 servings of food. I think that counts as wiggle room!

              1. ggg*

                I was thinking, in the worst case, each person gets exactly one portion each of appetizer, protein, starch, vegetable, drink and dessert and there is zero left over.

                In reality, though, you’re right, there probably would be plenty.

  77. SelinaKyle*

    I think I’ve been lucky, whenever one of the organisations I’ve worked for have had a potluck, everything was store bought, apart from some baked goods by the resident team baker. Nobody had to worry about hygiene or weird ingredients.

  78. KareninHR*

    My coworker used to bring her “famous salsa” to every potluck. It was just three different brands of store-bought salsa mixed together. She even made a (completely serious) production of preparing it in the kitchen, like she was Julia Child. Pro tip: The trick was to “fold” the salsa to get the best flavor.

      1. SunriseRuby*

        I do, too, but it’s just not one that you play up as “homemade”. It’s the kind of thing where you take no real credit for it, and when other people compliment it or ask for the recipe, you just modestly say something like “You would not believe how fast and easy this is.”

      2. KareninHR*

        I don’t remember which three, but it might have been different each time. Also agree with SunriseRuby – it’s not that it was bad salsa for sure, just that it didn’t exactly rise to “famous” levels. Same coworker also liked to be critical of other peoples’ cooking. I made sausage balls one time and she complained every following potluck about how she “wanted to like them, but they were too dry.”

        1. Slow Gin Lizz*

          That’s like my favorite line in Friends where someone invites Phoebe to something and she says, “Oh, I really wish I could but I don’t want to.” Classic.

  79. ferrina*

    My friend used to bring home food after company meals. One day, he decided to bring home a few extra cans of whipped cream. The company party was at 12-2. He waits until it’s over, helps clean up, and grabbs the whipped cream and brought it back to his desk. Leaves work at 5, home by 6 and puts the whipped cream in his fridge. Has pie and whipped cream (a LOT of whipped cream).

    The next day feels sick to his stomach. He can’t eat anything. Finally by evening he’s feeling well enough to eat, so he goes right back to the pie and whipped cream. Feels even worse the next day and can’t figure out why. Calls me to complain, and only then learns that you can’t leave whipped cream out of the fridge for 6 hours. He assumed that because it was in a can, the refrigeration was optional. Lesson learned.

  80. Mitford*

    At a previous employer, many years ago, there was a potluck celebration for two employees who were getting married (one wanted a lingerie shower, the other a kitchen shower; I went to Macy’s and bought a teddy and a serving platter).

    Anyway, because it was wedding shower, the organizers decided to class things up by having lighted taper candles on the buffet table.

    I was the person who accidentally set her hair on fire reaching across the table for some food.

    After that, there was a rule about no open flames in the workplace.

    3. Mitford*

      OK, so with regard to the lingerie shower, yeah, I thought it was inappropriate for work but part of this organization’s (a Jewish women’s membership organization) culture. The stories I can tell about that place…. once, the executive director took off her shoes and put her feet on the conference room table to show us all her special pedicure that celebrated the location of the annual meeting that year, and I still had mad props for the salon that painted the Golden Gate Bridge on her big toes.

      One of the brides-to-be was a recent college graduate who was still setting up her first apartment with her fiance, so she wanted and needed stuff for her house. The other bride-to-be was in her late 30s, had been on her own for years and had everything she needed for the house, and she wanted lingerie.

  81. LuckyClover*

    I used to work at a small nonprofit that had potlucks all the time. The director of finance had a george foreman grill and would prep chicken in the building’s shared kitchen. She would place RAW chicken directly on the countertops while she was cooking it. Everyone in the building knew to steer clear or sanitize the counters because of her… I also never ate at this company’s potlucks after that…

    I also noticed she never washed her hands when she went to the bathroom.

  83. MaraJade*

    At my last job whenever there was a potluck or event where treats were present one of my coworkers would never bring anything himself but he would pick a popular dish that someone else brought and would walk around telling everyone he made it along with some elaborate story about how hard it was to make or how it was an old family recipe. Eventually people started to catch on but no one ever called him out on it, just smile and nodded along

    1. Putting the Dys in Dysfunction*

      That’s sad, in a way.

      Actually, a lot of these stories feature folks who don’t know how to navigate through life.

  84. sc.wi*

    A few years back, one of the admin assistants was leaving my organization after a long tenure. One of the reasons she left was because two of the executive assistants were absolutely awful to this woman… I mean, it had to be personal. They publicly hated her. Like, they would storm through the hallways announcing LOUDLY that they were going to HR because [admin assistant] didn’t do blah blah blah.

    Well, another admin planned a small lunch offsite for the departing admin, and did not invite any of the exec assistants, to avoid inviting the cruel two. The two cruel exec assistants caught wind, and cried to HR that they had been excluded. HR went back and forth with them, until finally decreeing that everyone should be invited to future lunches *if they are onsite.* The cruel exec assistants then began to worry that people would hold lunches offsite *just* to exclude them, so they started *casually* asking the frequent lunch-planners about their weekly plans, and talking endlessly about how much they enjoy company lunches, in a hilariously obvious attempt to learn about any future plans. They tried so hard to become buddy-buddy with all the admins. They made *casual* comments about how much they enjoyed spending time with coworkers outside of the office. It became a company-wide joke to alert people when the “Secret Lunch Spies” were on the prowl.

  85. Teekanne aus Schokolade*

    My brother, the only American in a particular German town, walked into to his German class, pulled an air fryer out of his backpack and proceeded to fry chicken nuggets and fries for his classmates during the break.
    He’s kind of a local star.

    1. Gumby*

      I’d be his friend too.

      At my college graduation a couple of people were cooking hot dogs on a small charcoal grill and handing them out to whoever wanted one. They were popular. (Yes, this was during the actual ceremony, at least the marching in part. The undergraduates did not do an organized set of lines to enter the stadium; the grad students did. So there was a good 30 minutes available for chaos such as this on half of the field.)

  86. La Triviata*

    I think the days of office potlucks may be gone, what with wfh and fears of contagion. But we still have our memories. At a previous job, our holiday party would be a sort of potluck. Most people would fix something that they were especially proud of – something they knew would be enjoyed. One man, however, once brought in a package of crackers and a block of store brand cheese. When he decided it was time to go home, he packed it up and took it home.

    For catered meals, we had one women who would grab the most and best of whatever was left over; for meals she ordered, she’d deliberately over order so that she could take home a lot for herself and her daughter. When she did order, she always insisted on having something hot – one memorable Friday she ordered some kind of fish which sat in the un-air conditioned office until Monday. ick

    1. WillowSunstar*

      Yeah, any time I have been to a food event for a group since COVID, it has been a requirement to only bring store-bought food.

  87. M&C*

    My school growing up used to do a Thanksgiving Potluck every year- every grade was assigned something to bring: 3rd grade might bring veggie platters, 6th grade pies, 8th grade potatoes, whatever. It was a well oiled machine, and always one of the most popular activities, beloved by students and alums and faculty.
    Then we got new administration, and they decided that the Thanksgiving Potluck generated “too much waste” and was “too much work” (to be fair, it totally may have, I have no specific memories to confirm or deny this), so they just had the cafeteria staff make something instead.
    Now, we were not expecting the cafeteria staff to whip up a full Thanksgiving meal for 300 students after years of them only have to cook the turkeys while families and classes did the rest of the work. However, we all sort of assumed it would be something akin to what we’d come to know and love.
    Nope. Their solution to the waste was to combine all of a Thanksgiving meal into… an enchilada. And I mean every. single. Thanksgiving. ingredient. And fully baked with enchilada sauce and all just served on giant trays. They were absolutely awful. The path to “no waste” was met with…. far more waste than the original potluck ever could have dreamed of.
    The potluck never returned in its full glory, and I’m sure there was plenty of good reason for this. But at least they never tried to serve Thanksgiving enchiladas again.

    1. Mekong River*

      That doesn’t actually sound like a bad idea, but possibly just a bad execution. After all, people combine Thanksgiving foods into sandwiches, and putting them in an enchilada is not so different. I recommend a mole negro for the sauce.

    2. Damn it, Hardison!*

      Now I’m contemplating making “Thanksgiving enchiladas” with my leftovers and turkey gravy as the “enchilada” sauce. I think I could make it work…

    3. M&C*

      Their are totally good ways to execute this (and I’m a big fan of Thanksgiving sandwiches, and of enchiladas!)- this one was just not, and a very odd thing to serve to 4-18 year olds. Especially because anyone who was picky was then trying to pick stuff out from it, but it was all mashed and baked together, so it just became a big ol gross mess.

    4. WillowSunstar*

      Ew. I would not eat that. I’ve heard of making a Thanksgiving leftover hotdish, Thanksgiving pizza, etc. to use up food. But not with enchilada sauce on it.

        1. AMT*

          With turkey, sure, but I assume that “every single Thanksgiving ingredient” includes stuff like sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and other stuff with flavors and spices that would clash with enchilada sauce.

    6. PhyllisB*

      This reminds me of a story from when my oldest granddaughter was in kindergarten. They were having a class party and I was requested to send homemade cookies. I found a recipe in Taste of Home magazine for some adorable peanut butter mouse cookies. (I made sure there was no one with peanut allergies first.)
      Well, made the cookies and they looked so cute on the baking sheet!! They were supposed to look like mice, so not flat like regular cookies. Well, when those mice came out of the oven, they looked like they had been flattened with a steam roller. Granddaughter was thrilled with them, and all the kids loved them, so no harm done, but I learned not to experiment with new recipes when I’m on a deadline!!

  88. theothermadeline*

    Not really a potluck, more a really charming food event. I once worked for an arts festival that primarily focused on classical music. In the town we were in there was an entire chili cook-off day for all the businesses in a downtown strip we were part of. The year I was there for it we decided to make composer-themed chilis. I completely forget all of them except for my favorite two: A super-loaded, over the top chili with American flags sticking out of the top of the crock pot was the John Philip Sousa Chili; the Philip Glass chili was a single plain bean on an empty plate.

        2. Artemesia*

          Me too — 8 white beans one black bean 8 white beans one black bean 6 white beans one pinto bean 8 white beans

    4. OtherBecky*

      Did anybody make two completely different chilis, simultaneously pour them into opposite ends of the same tureen, and call it Charles Ives chili?

  89. Poppy*

    I have two stories from two different jobs:

    1) Large hospital in a major city. We had a massive problem with sexual harassment that the immediate manager refused to notice or deal with. A couple of us brought the issue to HR who suggested a DIVERSITY POTLUCK to bring us together because we came from at least half a dozen different countries. Yes, that will definitely help with my coworker remarking on my breast size during a department meeting.

    2) Small business holiday potluck at the office manager’s home. It had already gone sideways because said OM was going though a bitter divorce and she was serving his $300 wines for revenge. One of the assistants brought in a cute fruit platter made up into little characters by had. She proudly told a few of us that her daughter, who was home with the FLU, had helped her assemble them. Word quickly and quietly spread about the contaminated fruit and no one would touch it. Assistant was furious.

    1. Artemesia*

      anything ‘handled’ is just out for potlucks– my grandchild loves to make little lady bugs out of cherry tomatoes and olives and they are very cute — but you don’t want to serve things handled so much and by kids even if they don’t have the flu (and usually ‘flu’ means norovirus as the term is used — so a kid recovering from that will be quite contagious hand/mouth for a couple of weeks)

    2. TheraputicSarcasm*

      Diversity? POTLUCK? How is that supposed to work? People can’t say horrible things with their mouths full?

  90. Anon this time*

    The holidays were the best time at a former employer, because my coworkers would bring in the best eats and it was constant. A solid month of delicious food.

    But one coworker had a special cracker dip that was, as far as I can tell… mayonnaise.
    Just mayo in a bowl. Sometimes with a little shredded parm on top.

    I never found out who brought it, but there were multiple bowls of it every holiday season.

  91. Bernice Clifton*

    Food thief coworkers:

    – Two different companies, had someone take home all leftovers from a catered lunch that had been paid for *by employees*, not the company, without asking anyone. And not one slice of pizza and a can of pop, we are talking about pan after pan of Italian food at one and pan after pan of taco bar fixings at another. Like multiple trips to your car leftovers.

    Taco Bar Guy managed to outdo himself after that when one of directors treated everyone to pizza one day, and he asked the director’s assistant to order him a whole pizza to take home to his family. Per the assistant, he knew the director was paying and he was serious.

    – I was working at a company that was located downtown and didn’t pay for employee parking, so a lot people took public transit to work including me. One of the departments started a rotation where they took turns bringing in treats. I knew about it, but wasn’t invited and would have declined if I had been invited because I was not interested in trying to bring that much food in on the bus.

    One day I was in a common area and a coworker walked by with a paper plate with donuts on it. I said, “Oh, that looks good!” and she said, “You can’t have any; it’s only for people on the treat schedule”. Um, okay, I didn’t ask?

    1. Not Your Admin Ass(t)*

      One day I was in a common area and a coworker walked by with a paper plate with donuts on it. I said, “Oh, that looks good!” and she said, “You can’t have any; it’s only for people on the treat schedule”. Um, okay, I didn’t ask?

      Ugh, I hate these jerks. I once worked a conference–I wasn’t staff or anything, but the conference was short-staffed, and some staff friends begged me to help the day of since I already there as an attendee. Then my flight home got delayed due to weather overnight afterward, so I was invited to the staff afterparty as consolation and to get a meal because everything downtown was closed for the storm. (I had my own lodging for the night, thankfully.) Because I wasn’t wearing a staff badge, I got sooooo much looking-down-nose from some staffers at the party. Who didn’t know I had pulled my own weight in work, but who also knew I was stranded overnight, and assumed I was there only because someone took pity on me. They took great delight in telling me I wasn’t allowed to eat anything there because it was for “staff only.” I took great delight in telling them which ends of the baby/dog their catered food looked like it came from, hope they enjoy! :)

      (When one of my staff friends found out what was going on, he lit into the ones denying me food, and I finally got to eat. I also saw that these people were not asked to return to staff in following years.)

    2. anon in affordable housing*

      My apartment building had a budget for catered holiday meals for residents to “help build community.” The staff member in charge of this would take home several unopened catering trays of food after telling *tenants* they arrived too late and we were out of food. (And also telling tenants that if they had family visiting, only the tenant was allowed to eat. Their family could play bingo with the group, but they’d have to watch everyone else eat because the company isn’t paying for food for anyone who isn’t renting here.)

  92. PhyllisB*

    I’ve shared this before, seems fitting for this thread. When I went to the Episcopal church our ladies’ group had a yearly potluck at Christmas.
    One year I decided to make a green bean casserole because I had never made one before. Got to the potluck and… eight other people had the same idea. So, we had green bean casserole for dinner. Luckily, there were plenty of desserts and a lot of wine to even things out :-) I suggested that next year we have a sign-up sheet to prevent this and was told that would spoil the spontaneity. I don’t know if it happened again because we changed churches during the year.

    1. Bex*

      I attended a Catholic youth group where the potluck policy was explicitly no-sign-up-list and the reasoning was, “if we get 20 tubs of Jello, we’ll eat 20 tubs of Jello.” That is either a genius policy or we just got lucky, because all the potlucks I remember from that group had a lovely variety of tasty food. I think the policy made people think, “hmm, what is either so delicious or so well balanced that I would be happy if it were the only thing to eat at the potluck?” But, again – could’ve been luck.

    2. The OG Sleepless*

      I had a Christmas party for my group of 5 couples one year and told everybody to bring appetizers. Every single person brought meatballs. Delightfully, though, everybody brought a different type. Marinara meatballs, sweet and sour meatballs, the kind you make with chili sauce and grape jelly, you name it. It was a lovely party, and the Meatball Christmas is writ large in our collective memory.

    3. Bronze Betty*

      Not an office potluck, but one for a social group I belong to. For our January meeting, we have a potluck (so the host might not be stuck with a whole lot of food in case of a snowstorm); everyone brings either an appetizer or a dessert. One year, nearly everyone brought dessert. Sounds nice, right? No. We all love dessert, but oh, boy, oh, boy, the sugar overload was intense.

      Since then, we sign up with what category of food we are bringing, with detail in advance, if we know (sometimes someone will just say something like “a chocolate dessert). Much better.

    4. K*

      Reminds me of the family Thanksgiving where everyone was asked to bring a side, we ended up with four or five variations on sweet potatoes. My aunt now assigns dishes, haha.

  93. Rachel*

    I have a good potluck offering – shocker!

    Homemade dumplings that could have been sold at a high-end restaurant they were so delicious. We had a Fall Semester Intern who asked her mother to make them for the potluck. She made over 100 HOMEMADE dumplings with different fillings and different dough with 5 dipping sauces. I was a glutton and ate a lot of them. Still remember them from 10+ years ago, I don’t think I have had as good since.

    1. The OG Sleepless*

      I’m drawing a complete blank on the name, but there is a national company that started from somebody’s mom making egg rolls for a PTA bake sale at their majority white school.

    2. On Fire*

      I have a Russian coworker, and one year she brought in these amazing Russian cookies that she and her mother had made. Sort of a shell filled with caramel. I don’t know what they were called, but she said they were very time- and labor-intensive, and they were AMAZING.

      1. Miss Curmudgeonly*

        Oreshki? They look like a walnut and have a caramel-looking filling, but it’s actually condensed milk that’s been cooked down.

  94. Alice D*

    In my first month at my first nonprofit job (where I did the equivalent of three full-time jobs for $29k in 2006), I was asked to manage the annual United Way fundraiser. Part of that involved planning a spaghetti lunch benefit for our ~50 employees with a budget of $40. My boss took me to Sam’s Club and watched as I desperately tried to stretch $40 for enough spaghetti, sauce, ground beef, Parmesan, salad, salad dressing, and garlic bread. She also just stood there at the register as I kicked in the additional $25 or so needed to actually buy everything. The day of the lunch, the staff member who had insisted on cooking didn’t show, leaving me to prepare almost everything unassisted. The worst part was overhearing my colleagues snickering about the lunch being overpriced. It cost $7.

    1. Robert Riemersma*

      Why did you pay the extra? Boss was standing right there; why not “we need $25 more for all this?”

      1. ferrina*

        Sounds like OP might have been pretty young at the time. I’ve had bosses that would guilt me claiming that I “just wasn’t smart enough to stretch the budget”.

        Later I learned that if the budget didn’t stretch, I’d cut the Technically Unnecessary But Wonderful Thing, and tell the boss that we needed $X if we wanted Wonderful Thing (in this case, the meat and the cheese)

    3. Raida*

      to be fair, if it’s a crappy meal then I think it’s alright to joke that seven bucks was too much to pay.
      After all, seven dollars a head could buy a shit-tonne of pizzas

  95. Lynnerd*

    This woman made sumptuous beer bread. Just divine. I would pounce on it whenever it was offered at a potluck. She moved on but we kept in touch since she was a family acquaintance.

    One day I ended up going to her apartment to “help out with cleaning” after she’d broken her elbow. She was a Top-Tier Hoarder: oven full of molding pots and pans, dog feces embedded in the floor, clogged kitchen sink, tiny little walkways among ceiling-high piles of trash hoarder. The stench was incredible and you could smell it from outside the door.

    I did what I could–washed a few dishes after running to the nearest store to buy the largest bottle of Ajax available because there was none to be found in the apartment. It was very eye-opening and I truly hope she found the help she needed, but I can never shake the thought that I repeatedly gorged myself on beer bread prepared in that nightmare kitchen, and am deeply distrustful of potlucks to this day.

    1. Kristobel*

      One of my coworkers would always bring food to our potlucks, but never eat anything because, “you don’t know how other people live.” Between this and the stories with questionable hand-washing practices, she wasn’t wrong.

    2. Going anon for this one, folks*

      I went through an almost identical scenario, except the person in my story needed help to clean/pack because she was getting evicted for “the upstairs neighbor flooding my apartment with his sink, and I got blamed.”

      Trust me, while her neighbor DID flood the second floor so badly it started collapsing into the first floor, that is NOT why she was getting evicted instead of relocated to another unit. I think about how she always showed up in public perfectly dressed, pressed, and styled. I compare it with the horror image of her apartment so buried in pet waste and trash that I still have no idea what color the floors were supposed to be, and the reek that made me throw up. And then I nearly throw up again, almost twenty years later. :(

  96. ArtK*

    My sons’ school would hold a grade-level potluck early in each year. No food issues that I recall, just one moocher. One of the arts teachers, who went to all of the potlucks because they covered all grades, would show up with some Tupperware and load up on everything. Not enough that there was a shortage, but I imagine they were able to eat for a week based on what they collected across all of the potlucks.

    1. ferrina*

      Not gonna judge much on that- art teachers in particular are notorious for having to spend their own money on supplies.

  97. Contracts Killer*

    My boss wasn’t in the room when they made the announcement that they may have just enough fried chicken for everyone (in addition to lots of sides and desserts) and to please only take one piece until everyone was through the line. I told him when he came in and he said, “Ooh, thanks for the heads up, buddy. I need to make sure I get enough before they run out!” He then proceeded to take FOUR pieces. It definitely reflected his work persona. I was so glad when he left.

  98. Wair Blaldorf*

    Our department used to hold monthly themed potlucks which were a lot of fun. And after everyone in our department had had their fill, someone would send out an email to the rest of the company to offer up our leftovers. Well, one particularly unpleasant, difficult, and negative coworker of ours would always try to convince us not to share with the rest of the company because they weren’t paying for it. We’d always just ignore her and continue to offer up the leftovers, and then she’d loudly complain about it for the rest of the day.

    But one potluck day, after most but not all of us in the department had eaten, Unpleasant Coworker began to take all of the leftover food and scrape it into the trash. We realized what she was doing and tried to stop her but it was too late to save most of it. She said she was trashing it so that nobody else could “mooch off of us” but meanwhile, some of our own department peers had been in a meeting and hadn’t even had their first serving yet.

    After that, instead of dealing with Unpleasant Coworker’s behavior directly, our manager just outlawed all future potlucks.

      1. anon in affordable housing*

        The whole “don’t let other people mooch off us” reminds me of the folks who responded to textbanking messages about “healthcare for everyone” that they don’t want anyone to have healthcare unless they WORK for it.

  99. CR*

    Not a potluck, but an office party – I’ll never forget how at a former job they spontaneously called us all downstairs to the conference room for an impromptu party. When I tried to go back upstairs, I was stopped by my boss and told to stay. When the party was over, we found out that one of our colleagues had been fired and they had created the party as a diversion for the rest of us while my fired coworker was escorted out.

  100. Brain the Brian*

    Pre-pandemic, there was always drama about how many we would have: HR didn’t want to “spend the money” on too many potlucks — yes, potlucks, where everyone bring their own dish and the company contributes nothing but 60 or so disposable plates and silverware sets from our stock of hundreds. We were allowed one each year, and we had to vote via email in January whether we wanted it in the spring or fall. Absolutely bonkers.

    Now that we’re a hybrid office with staggered in-office days, we have no potlucks or other staff gatherings at all. Womp womp.

  101. Bowling for Soup*

    We have a yearly “Souper Bowl” competition in the wintertime. Low-key, friendly, but sponsored by the org. The winners have their soup recipe emailed out and get a personalized chef coat. Most previous winners are happy to win, brag a day, and then it’s back to normal. Last year’s winner was very excited to win. They wore the chef coat for a week once they received it, changed their email signature to include “Souper Bowl Champ” ahead of their title, announced it to every guest who passed their desk for three months, and screamed so loudly when they got the winner announcement email that multiple people ran out of their offices thinking someone was seriously injured.

    1. SnootyGirl*

      Stories like this make me feel sad for the person (rightly or wrongly) that their life is so lacking in affirmation that something like this has so much meaning for them.

  102. Gigi*

    Not a potluck story, but every now and then, external vendors would buy the office lunch as a show of appreciation. It was Common Office Knowledge that everyone would wait until “Debby”, the high-level senior analyst, got her share first. Unfortunately I was new, and while I was told to help myself, I was not told to let Debby go first.

    So as I was serving myself, Debby comes up behind me. I though she was waiting her turn, until two seconds later, when she SHOVES me out of the way. “Sorry dear, but you’re just too slow!” She loaded up her plate with machine-level speed and leaves. At the time, I just kind of went with it because I was new and frankly, stunned (and covered with sandwich bits from the shoving).

    She was nice otherwise, but had no patience at all, and high level enough to get away with it. I remember one memorable luncheon when she barreled her way past a bunch of interns yelling “You damn brats are taking too long!”

    2. TheraputicSarcasm*

      She should have been fired. I can understand managers not having the spine to stand up to moochers, but committing battery in a potluck line is a cut-and-dried NO.

      1. Curmudgeon in California*

        I might not have been able to stop my reflexive counter to people who shove me. Then again, maybe I wouldn’t want to.

  103. Catherine*

    Not a potluck, but I remember working as a temp at a call center. The center ordered this beautiful catered taco bar, which sat right where everyone would walk past it and see it. We found out that temps were not included in this. Instead, the temp agency bought us thin crust pizza, and they requested we only take two slices each. We had to walk past the taco bar to get our tiny little pizza slices. My trainer found out and sent a scathing email to HR about excluding temps for no reason.

    Five minutes later, an email came through saying “oh, yeah, the temps are also able to partake in the taco bar”. I felt guilty at the time because I was the one that mentioned the pizza to my trainer when she asked if I had gotten any tacos, but in hindsight I agree that arbitrarily dividing food up wasn’t the best way to make new temp workers feel welcome at the job.

    1. Splendid Colors*

      I used to temp and that attitude is so familiar!

      I’ve vended at corporate pop-ups where they wouldn’t let the vendors eat at the taco bar, or even have a cup of coffee when the attendees get refreshments. And for some reason, they accepted a catering vendor to exhibit at at the taco bar popup and didn’t tell her they were serving free lunch so she brought box lunches to sell. There was also the popup where a caterer brought a mountain of box lunches for the employees who were all at an off-site celebration that someone scheduled the same day as the popup. But the vendors couldn’t take any of the lunches because “what if someone wanted theirs when they got back from the party?” I would’ve been disappointed to get a last-minute cancellation, but that would’ve been better than shlepping all my stuff through the rain to set up in a building where everyone was offsite but the receptionist and the janitor. And a free lunch (and maybe some spares) would’ve compensated me for the gas to drive up there.

  104. Catabodua*

    I have no idea the name of the cheese, but someone brought what we understood to be VERY VERY expensive fancy cheese to a potluck. The cheese smelled so bad that people were complaining at their desks about what the foul odor was. As people were heading to the lunchroom at the designated time there were many “what the hell is that SMELL!?” conversations happening.

    The woman who brought it said it was a fancy cheese that her family enjoyed when they lived in Switzerland. I felt bad, I think she believed she was bringing this wonderful, exotic treat, but almost no one touched it. A few of the guys tried it (the same kind of folks who would challenge each other to a spicy pepper eating contest) but each of them ate one bite and then left it alone, so I’m assuming it tasted as bad as it smelled.

    The building smelled like that cheese for a week.

    1. Jam Today*

      That sounds like heaven to me, I probably would have seen that nobody was eating it and eaten the entire wheel myself.

      2. Firefighter (Metaphorical)*

        I once had to take some Stinking Bishop across London on a bus on a hot day. Beautiful cheese but aptly named, and we haven’t taken it in public transport since!

  105. LuckyClover*

    Oh another one – not work but my “professional sorority” had a really nice potluck for Thanksgiving each year. Always very nice, with lots of food. But for some reason when it was my first year, someone had a genius idea that the new recruits should be in charge of the turkeys for the meal. As mainly freshman, we had no money, no cars, and lived in the DORMS with communal fridges and one shared oven.

    I didn’t know any better and bought a frozen turkey, like, the day before the event – left it out all night trying to defrost it and then put it in my bike basket and took it TO CLASS where someone came and grabbed it from me to take it to their friends’ house to cook it for the dinner that night. Luckily no food poisoning seemed to occur – but needless to say, we advocated for the newbies to never have to be in charge of the turkeys again.

  106. Sugar Coma*

    I used to work at an organization of about 50 people that was big into potlucks. They were pretty informal, but we would try to have a theme around holidays. For Valentine’s Day one year, we decided to have a sweets/dessert themed one. There was a sign-up sheet, but nobody thought that in addition to the massive amount of sugar laden food, we should probably have something else for lunch.

    The day of the potluck, the office smelled like a bakery and you could just smell the sugar in the air when you walked in the door. Everyone ate like a kid in a candy store which lead to the entire organization getting a sugar crash, a few people went home sick with headaches, and the rest of the afternoon was pretty much shot. After that, we made sure to have a variety of items whenever there was a themed potluck.

  107. Itsmetime*

    I worked with someone whose spouse was vegetarian and who didn’t want meat cooked or stored at their house. Over the weekend when she was out of the house he would cook all his meat for the work week. He would then bring it in one large Tupperware container to store in the staff refrigerator. Each day he would microwave the entire container but only eat that day’s portion and then return the still warm container to the staff refrigerator after. By Friday the last chicken breast had been microwaved five times! What’s amazing is that he never got sick.

    Important points
    1) Extra large container took up so much room that others couldn’t get their own lunch in there.
    2) The extra large container took a long time to microwave so others were forced to wait.
    3) He only ate meat at lunch each day. There were no sides or sauces. Just one desiccated portion of meat was the entire meal.

  109. Really?*

    Tackiest thing ever: I worked at a small indie movie studio in LA in the 80’s. Low class person (LCP) was always so snotty to those of us who were just starting out. She let everyone know that she was having a holiday party and handed out invitations at work… But only to certain people. (Not me – and she made sure to hand out the invitations right in front of me and a few others who were not invited.) It turns out that our office holiday party, paid for by the company, was the day before her party. You probably see this coming, but yep, she loaded up all the not-quite leftovers BEFORE the end of the office party and let everyone know that she’d be serving them at her party the next night. So glad I missed it this botulism-fest!

  110. Temperance*

    One of my former coworkers was famous for not washing her hands after she pooped. She also once put a stool sample in the freezer and told us. She was super gross.

    We had a potluck party around Halloween, and every single time someone came in, they needed to know what Julie made. It was super awkward when someone ate one of the brownies she made and THEN asked me.

  111. Jam Today*

    At what point to items 2 and 4 become performance issues that get handled by a PIP? Establish clear expectations, inform everyone of those expectations, when they get violated deal with it as a management issue. Neither of those people are capable of functioning in a group setting, which is what an office is pretty much by definition; assume that basic interpersonal skills are foundational for continued employment, and deal with it that way.

    1. ferrina*

      If it’s only a couple times a year, it can be easy to overlook it. Especially if the person has high level skills or firing them would decrease morale (you have to be really sure that the other people in the office think it’s a bad enough issue to fire somone; otherwise it can accidentally send a message that you could get fired for taking leftovers beyond an arbitrary threshold)

  112. Longtime anon*

    Right out of college I was part of a group of temporary employees hired for a group project at a large company. We worked really hard to roll out the deliverable for a holiday deadline and several times as motivation management mentioned that they would do something nice for the team as a reward/thanks for all the hard work.

    The reward turned out be a holiday party that we the temporary staff had to entirely self-cater as a potluck during our unpaid lunch break. Also, some of our non-temporary colleagues who unlike us got paid PTO and benefits attended and did not contribute anything. Most demoralizing reward ever. At least no one got food poisoning?

  113. NeopolitanDynamite*

    I once worked at a small nonprofit with a lot of team spirit — people truly seemed to love staff gatherings, staff outings, etc. We voluntarily did all-staff potlucks 2 or 3 times per year, people often brought in treats for each other’s birthdays, etc. Except for a coworker who I will refer to ask Magic Mike. Magic Mike was an enthusiastic participant in all of these gatherings but insisted he didn’t know how to cook or bake at all. Instead of doing the logical thing and just bringing store-bought treats or beverages, on multiple occasions he brought…magic. To the potluck. As in, after everyone had their plates and was enjoying the food and socializing, he would call for everyone’s attention and perform magic tricks as his contribution. So all of us who had taken the time to buy groceries, cook something special, and shlep it into the office had to stop enjoying the party to watch Magic Mike perform.

    4. The Prettiest Curse*

      Was he any good at the magic tricks? Because I imagine it would have been super awkward either way, but way worse if he was bad at it.

      1. NeopolitanDynamite*

        They weren’t the most impressive tricks, but he did them well. I think he performed for children’s parties as a side hustle. It was more the audacity of pausing the party to make everyone pay attention to him and his unasked-for show, and thinking that was a great way to contribute. Once he also “brought” puns as his potluck contribution — as in, everyone stop what you’re doing and give the full attention of the room to Magic Mike reciting a list of food-related puns he’d written down in advance.

  114. Kristobel*

    My company’s potlucks were typically pretty normal – everyone was good about bringing something, and it was all very tasty food – but one year, one of my coworkers tried her hand at collard greens, and overdid it on the spice. Apparently it was so spicy it was inedible, so no one touched it but her, and she was clearly struggling. Red face, runny nose, coughing: the whole thing.

    I will brag on myself now and say my mac and cheese won the ‘best side’ three years in a row (we always had a competition, likely why there was so much participation); I also had the chief executive of our division find me and tell me my apple pie was the best he ever had!

  115. Cookies for Breakfast*

    A former workplace had two bake-offs in the time I spent there.

    The first time, the person who won brought one of the most amazing cheesecakes I ever tasted. There were very loud rumours, from people who knew him well, that he hadn’t lifted a finger to make it: it was all his girlfriend, who, among other things, was a food blogger. I used to follow her, and eventually, that cake even made it on her Twitter feed.

    I brought a pie made according to a heirloom recipe and came third, which I was pretty pleased about. The second year, riding the wave of the good result, I tried something fancier: a cake topped with berries and rosewater glaze that I had made for a dinner with friends before, getting compliments as high as “you should open your own cafe”. Only that something went wrong this time, and all the berries sank to the bottom, leaving the cake looking like a small prototype of a satellite with craters. I seriously thought about pretending I got the date wrong and forgot to make my cake.

    The next day, I found out most of the other bakers had dropped out. It was just me, and a guy who had made a simple and very pretty sponge cake. I had nowhere to hide. Then, in walks a colleague no one ever knew had a passion for baking, carrying a beautiful 4-tier rainbow layer cake covered in fluffy white buttercream. She said it had taken seven hours to make, and of course, she was the winner.

    I usually don’t care that my presentation skills are close to zero, because taste matters way more to me – but that time, I felt as if I was a child drawing stickmen in an advanced art class.

    1. J*

      We had a baking contest at our holiday party at a previous job. Except one of the women was an actual professional baker with a pretty robust side gig making custom cakes. She obviously blew everyone else out of the water and won every year. Which, to be fair, was worth it because then we got to eat her amazing cake.

      1. PhyllisB*

        The church I now attend used to host a homemade ice cream competition. After winning it three years in a row (no prize, just bragging rights.) I was asked not to compete the fourth year. But to please bring my ice cream anyway!! :-)

      2. Lactobacillus*

        Funny, I was a professional chef prior to my current job and I brought food, but took myself out for f the running for prizes. It just seemed unfair

    2. Artemesia*

      I had a grape cake do that. The trick is to half bake it and then put the heavy berries or grapes in and they then stay on the top and look good.

    3. Raida*

      We had one guy at work say he couldn’t cook, but we kept suggesting he make even just a few sandwiches cut into triangles next time there was a morning tea.

      Turns out he had no experience cooking, like not knowing why to use the temperature in the recipe, or to pre-heat, or use the size/shape baking dish/tray described.

      His first (and most amazing) attempt which he did bring in to work and we all tried: A Strawberry-Topped Baked Vanilla Cheesecake, so burnt everyone assumed it was Chocolate. Terrible. Laughably terrible. He learnt about temperatures!
      Then some undercooked doughy things, he learnt about not opening the oven repeatedly!
      Then some little cheesemite scrolls – bang-on. Tasty as hell, lots of compliments.

      We LOVED that first cheesecake because DAMN that’s memorable. I wish I’d seen your Crater Cake, I’ll bet it tasted great and could content with the only-half-of-it-collapsed souffle, the I-just-replaced-the-sugar-with-more-flour-because-sugar-is-unhealthy chocolate pudding, and of course the gosh-it’s-hot-today cake where the icing half-melted, shifted sideways on the cake and re-solidified like some kind of dali themed cake decorating..

  116. 123456*

    My first ever office job, I made cranberry sauce for office potluck Thanksgiving. I was studying for the GRE, and got home from my prep class late at night so made the cranberry sauce in a rush.

    As people were eating Thanksgiving lunch, there started to be chatter about the turkey/ham/potatoes being very salty. I tried my cranberry sauce and realized that I had made it with Kosher salt instead of sugar. I had to make an announcement for everyone to scrape it off their food and it was my contribution that was salty, not the turkey/ham/potatoes.

  117. Veryanon*

    Cheap ass rolls still is my favorite.

    When I was in college, there was a professor in our department who loved to bake homemade goodies and bring them in. However, I noticed when she was in the ladies’ room that she NEVER WASHED HER HANDS after taking care of business. I could never eat her goodies after that.

  118. marymoocow*

    I work in higher ed. One time we had a breakfast potluck, and most people brought things like pastries, granola bar stuff, cinnamon rolls, etc. One grad student worker, who was all about fitness, wanted to make these high protein waffles. He brought in mixing bowls and measuring cups and made the batter at his desk, and carefully monitored it all morning because it needed frequent stirring or something. He spent the whole party hanging out with his waffle batter instead of making conversation, and his waffle maker tripped the breaker. The waffles tasted fine, but not worth missing a whole party for.

  119. fish*

    My good pal ran out of flour when cooking for her fellow med students, and decided to substitute powdered sugar instead because they look similar.

    She is, actually, a really good doctor!

    2. Emotional support capybara (he/him)*

      My stepdad once made the same mistake whilst frying mass quantities of catfish for a family feed and only realized his error when my mom, horrified, came running out into the yard with the flour canister.

      The candied catfish was surprisingly good.

      1. Artemesia*

        my mother an excellent cook made fried chicken this way to go into my boxed lunch for a boxed lunch social when I was in 8th grade. I was humiliated when my date bit into the sugary chicken. Still suspect she sabotaged me.

      2. Kiwi*

        My husband did this once with corn chowder. Kept adding more and more powdered sugar, thinking it was flour, and couldnt figure out why it wouldnt thicken. It came out fantastic, people were bringing it home from the party – and then when we realized the error the next day we had to text eveyone the next day saying “hey if you have diabetes or anything, maybe throw that out”.

        1. My Cabbages!*

          I once tried to thicken chili verde with cornstarch…except I accidentally used baking soda. It was…not good.

  120. NeverALabRatAgain*

    The worst job I ever had was working in a laboratory at a prestigious university. The pay was so dismal that in lieu of standard potlucks, we had “single ingredient” potlucks. Usually gringo tacos – one person would bring a can of beans, etc. They were pretty depressing affairs.

    Of course, the PIs would swan in and help themselves, oblivious.

  121. MJBUtah*

    We have done pizza parties for employees in the past where employees took whole pizzas, we used to have one of the staff ‘monitor’ the pizza tables to make sure no one took more than two slices until everyone had got some. Then they could have seconds.

  122. SpicySpice*

    I recently saw one of those “there are two types of people” posts somewhere, and it was just so spot-on. I don’t recall word for word but the gist was: Some people will only grab one slice of pizza at the potluck because there might not be enough for everyone, and some people will grab three slices of pizza at the potluck because there might not be enough for everyone.
    Be the first group, folks!

    1. ScruffyInternHerder*

      Reminds me of a not-a-potluck but definitely a living example of second group.

      Youth sports end of season party. There’s pizza. Given the setup, there’s only X amount of boxes that can be out at a time. There is PLENTY of pizza though – we’re 4X boxes deep in the next room. There’s plenty. There was an ask for $10 per family and the team covered the pizza costs for the players themselves. Oh, and we’re dealing with approximately 1st and 2nd grade sports.

      So we ask if we can please have all the teammates get pizza first. A charming example of group two decides that there isn’t enough pizza for everyone, and screw these kids, he’s paid his $10 and therefore line jumps and grab five slices of pizza – well, til a couple of the moms pull him aside and chastise the daylights out of him.

      He’s still a d!psh!t to this day, for the record. It was just our first introduction to who he really was, and it was eye opening. You’d line jump a bunch of 7 & 8 year olds and take five big slices of pizza because you decided that there’s not enough?

      1. ScruffyInternHerder*

        (Oh, and three full pizzas were sent home by the team manager with a family that he knew was struggling. He figured it was the best location for the extra instead of announcing that there were leftovers.)

  123. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

    I really only have only been present for two fails.

    #1 – Company-provided strombolis arrived during our lunch rush. I didn’t make it to the break room for 2 hours, at which point one of the three boxes was in the trash and most of my peers had socialized and worked their way back to their desks. One box was labeled pepperoni, the other mushroom. I took a piece from the pepperoni box, only to be told by the Company Owner afterwards “Yea, we put the mushroom and pepperoni strombolis in the same box since they were both half-eaten and put the barely-touched cheese stromboli in the mushroom box since it was holding up better.”

    I’m allergic to mushrooms.

    #2 – A coworker went to the trouble of getting ~40 McDonald’s dollar-menu hamburgers, unwrapping them all, and trying to pass them off as freshly homemade sliders.

        1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

          I never asked, but we suspected that was ultimately the source of the idea.

    2. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

      Actually, I guess there was a 3rd now that I think about it. Guess how we found out that the owner of the company and I are the only two people in the company who like pumpernickel bagels, something even the two of us didn’t realize? That’s right; I stole his artisan bagel from the assortment, and there was only the one because apparently no one else would touch them!

  125. Cake Patrol*

    Reading the comments has brought back fond children memories. My dad has a story about a guy who would wondering through the massive office all day, looking for cake. His name was “Cake Patrol”. People would see him and hide their team’s cake. He got fired because he didn’t do any work because he spent his whole time wondering around on Cake Patrol. It’s a fond memory because it made my brother and I cry with laughter. Years later we still shout “Cake Patrol!” at appropriate times.

  126. Jenthar*

    I worked at a company where the office manager took potlucks VERY SERIOUSLY. She had a system of releasing the items required for the potluck by email at 10 am a week before. You would reply as fast as possible “claiming” one item. Available items would be, like, 2 bottles of white wine, 2 bottles of red wine, buns, 2 salads, 3 meat items, 3 desserts, etc. The idea was that we would have a “balanced” pot luck with just the right amounts of each kind of food. And she was pretty adamant that we not bring store bought items. Well, there were a good many young people, and many busy people, who had no interest in cooking/baking and wanted to bring buns or alcohol. And often we’d be the last to reply to the email and end up with a meat dish, which is more difficult. Eventually complaints about the strictness of the system led to her having a temper tantrum and refusing to coordinate any longer. So the next potluck was a “free for all” (or true) potluck. That potluck, she pouted and would not come out of her office and we FEASTED on cheeseburgers, fries, pizza, a rotisserie chicken, SO MANY BUNS and SO MUCH ALCOHOL. It was great. Everyone but the office manager found it highly entertaining (and literally intoxicating). After that, someone else took over organizing, and had a similar but far more lenient system – if someone was passionate about bringing buns, but already 2 people had signed up, then they said, yeah, let’s have lots of buns. And there were plenty of people who were willing to cook entrees or bake desserts and still someone would bring a bag of cheeseburgers and we all enjoyed it. I have fond memories of those potlucks. It was a terribly dysfunctional company filled with wonderful people.

    1. ferrina*

      Please tell me the office manager demanded no store-bought wines (all pressing must be done yourself!)

      1. Little Bobby Tables*

        I was wondering that too. I can do ok at beer, but the only time I tried making wine was a disaster.

    2. The OG Sleepless*

      I can’t stand people who get overly controlling with potlucks. The original idea of a potluck was just that: you get what you get.

      1. Bj*

        You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit. I thought that was for the toddler / preschool crowd, but seems pretty applicable to lots of these posts as well.

    3. Artemesia*

      Decades ago I needed to go to a potluck and was sooo slammed at work that the idea of coming home, feeding the kids and putting them to. bed and making a potluck dish was just depressing. My husband (whose schedule was even worse than mine and who did the kids’ baths) said ‘well duh, buy something.’ I come from a line of women who would never consider such a thing so it had not occurred to me.

      I went to the deli with my casserole dish and had them fill it with German potato salad; before the potluck I microwaved it so it would be hot (it is the vinegary bacony savory type of potato salad). The head of the institute raved about and pressed me continuously for the recipe because it was the greatest thing ever. I finally told him the deli that makes it. And never again felt obligated to home make for potlucks.

      In my friend circle we all cook something if having a potluck and we coordinate it and everyone makes something wonderful. But for large work events, I started bringing a bucket of KFC as we were likely to be like on main courses and never felt guilty about it again.

  128. TeamPottyMouth*

    A few years back, my employer held a Thanksgiving potluck. It was my first year there, and my first potluck w this company. A coworker (an older lady nearing retirement) mentioned several times to several people that she’s be bringing her “famous” deviled eggs, claiming they’re always in high demand. Seemed legit, right? Potluck day arrived and she made a point to tell me to grab a deviled egg before they ran out. I didn’t notice them at first because they did not look like traditional deviled eggs—they were… bright yellow? And flat on top?? I was very confused, but her enthusiasm sold me. I added one to my plate, and thankfully she left the room before I took a bite because as it turns out, her “famous deviled eggs” were just hard boiled eggs cut in half with mustard on top.

    1. The OG Sleepless*

      Why, WHY is it always people who do that kind of thing who get so excited about sharing their “famous” dish? My MIL was always eager to make “her” chicken casserole for people. Canned chicken, water chestnuts, mayo, and cream of mushroom soup. It wasn’t terrible, the kind of thing you might get in a school lunchroom, but not exactly something to brag about.

    2. Artemesia*

      I love deviled eggs and have brought them to many a funeral feast or event (note: instapots make fabulous hardboiled eggs that the shells just fall off of which makes the whole thing easy to do). BUT I am always very reluctant to eat them at potlucks because they are such a perfect bacterial medium — I want to know when they were made and how they were stored. At a friend’s home — sure. At some mass potluck, yeah, no.

    3. Veryanon*

      My mom actually makes great deviled eggs, but I’ve never enjoyed them because I don’t like mayonnaise. Who puts mustard on a hard boiled egg and tries to pass it off as a deviled egg?

  129. cmcinnyc*

    I can’t even read these today, amusing as I’m sure they are, because my grandboss just announced a holiday potluck! Wheee! I will be sure to be absent from the office that day.

  130. irene adler*

    Our universally hated lab tech was mulling -out loud- what he should bring to a company-wide winter holiday potluck. He did not know how to cook, so we offered up many ‘safe’ suggestions (sodas, crackers and cheese, chips, etc.), all of which he nixed. He figured it wouldn’t be too hard to make a tossed salad.

    He proceeds to ask everyone in the lab what ingredients everyone would like in this salad he would make for us. Suggestions are made for things like romaine lettuce, iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, red onions, mushrooms, croutons, avocados…wait. Avocados? Well, all right, he’ll get an avocado for the salad. Just for us.

    Next day is the potluck. Lab tech comes in with a huge metal bowl, filled to the brim. He removes many of the refrigerated potluck items from the lunchroom refrigerator to accommodate this bowl. Someone discovers this and manages to return everything to the refrigerator, wedging dishes in around this bowl.

    Then lab tech starts the day by complaining about this salad.

    First, it’s, “Okay everyone, I brought a bunch of salad and I expect everyone to eat it. All right? I got most everything you wanted.”

    Then he starts grousing about the cost of the ingredients. The mushrooms were omitted because of cost. He almost used CANNED tomatoes instead of fresh because canned was cheaper. Who even thinks of using canned tomatoes in a tossed salad?

    Finally, he says he’s very tired having stayed up “all night” to cut up the salad components. “Especially that avocado,” he griped. “That skin was murder to cut up. Almost lost a finger!”

    A voice from the next bench asks, “You do know that the skin is inedible-right?”

    “Oh, of course, everyone knows that!”

    Later that morning someone rushes into the lab to alert everyone to come to the lunchroom.

    “You gotta see this!”

    Our lab tech has dumped the entire contents of his salad bowl all over the lunchroom table. Yes, the table from one end to the other is covered in greens. He’s fingering every piece, searching for the avocado, which had been cut into odd-shaped bits smaller than an orange seed. Then trimming off any hint of skin from each itty-bitty piece and returning it to the bowl. He’s so intent on this he doesn’t see the half-dozen faces watching this from the doorway.

    We pass the word: Do NOT eat the tossed salad.

    So potluck time comes, and no one is touching the salad. A few reach for the tongs, but are stopped and ushered along to the next food items. Later we explain why.

    Next day, lab tech chews us out for the expense incurred on this salad. Says we should all reimburse him for what he spent on ‘your salad’.

    3. coffee*

      One of the seasons on the Australian version of the Bachelorette had a date with her and two of the men – one cooked the main meal for dinner and ate dessert with her, then they swapped, with the other eating the main meal and then cooking dessert. The show set up the menu and gave the recipe to the men, and set them up in an open plan kitchen/dining room for ~*maximum drama~*.

      So one of the guys has the chatting part of the date, and then heads over to the kitchen to make dessert. It’s chocolate mousse… made with avocados. He gets the whole avocado and puts it in the blender, WHOLE. Skin, pip, the whole shebang. The blender is whirring its heart out as it tries its hardest; the Bachelorette and date are shouting their conversation so they can hear each other over the noise; the guy in the kitchen just presses on with things. Eventually he serves the mousse, complete with chunks of diced pip throughout.

    1. Not A Girl Boss*

      I mean… I did once have a potluck that was supposed to be a BBQ theme. It was 2 guys who brought meat, and about 7 bags of Cheap Ass Rolls. I wasn’t even mad, I took a bag home and had Cheap Ass Roll breakfast sandwiches for dinner the rest of the week.

  132. Rae of Sunshine*

    Had a potluck and one person brought a plate of meatballs pre-skewered onto toothpicks. One guy who was known to be a bit absent-minded apparently ate the toothpick, which lacerated his esophagus and he was in a literal puddle of blood on the ground while EMTs were called. He spent several months in the ICU and in the hospital, but about 6 months later he was back at work. Potlucks were banned after that, catered food only.

    1. The OG Sleepless*

      I had to unexpectedly fill in a shift for a coworker after she accidentally ate a toothpick in a sandwich. She ended up having to go for a CT scan and have it removed.

  133. Coverage Associate*

    Please don’t put this in the round up.

    At my church, where I volunteer a ton and also have professional responsibilities as pro bono counsel (so work adjacent) the lady who put herself in charge of potlucks, etc., has put in a request for 3 or 4 particular colors of paper placemats. At first, I thought this was like when I was planning my wedding, and a lot of the modern advice was that people really can like having decisions taken off their plates. E.g., some people will prefer to have a bridesmaid dress chosen for them, rather than having to shop for themselves.

    So perhaps the lady was just removing the burden of choice from the couple who does the shopping. But then I decided, no, one volunteer doesn’t get to make other volunteers care about the color of paper placemats, especially to the point of tracking down particular colors.

  134. I am just here for the free pizza*

    I was once working at a temp job and arrived in the cafeteria right as a pizza lunch for members of another department was winding down. There were still a few slices left. I went over to grab one and one of the folks from that department ran over, told me the pizza was only for his department, grabbed the remaining few slices, and threw them in the trash. So glad when my temp assignment was over.

    1. ferrina*

      That’s awful!

      I worked for an office manager who was the exact opposite of that. As soon as an event was winding down, she quietly went to the temps and lowest paid workers and told them to grab left-overs. Sometimes she would actively shoo away VPs saying “I don’t think everyone’s eaten yet”, then 5 minutes later would hand the temp a tupperware. She was an inspiration in so many wonderful ways.

    2. Scredly*

      I work at a university and any time there’s leftover food from events, the first people we let know are the students and the facilities staff. It’s just common courtesy.

  135. Robert Riemersma*

    For the folks who complain about losing to store-bought cookie dough: step up your game! Your cookies lost to store-bought dough; that’s on you!

    2. Artemesia*

      Gotta agree with Robert here. I am lazy and would happily use store bought dough and have tried it; it is genuinely terrible.

  136. Lucy P*

    First 2 years of work were great. No potlucks. Holiday parties were catered events at local hotels. 3rd year of work, company had a downturn. Fewer employees, really just a handful of us. Instead of a catered event, we had a buffet-style get together in the office. The main dish was sandwiches that you had to put together yourself. The cold cuts were furnished by the company owner. When I was setting everything up, I noticed that the cold cuts were already open. Turns out the owner had used them to feed their kids. When the kids didn’t want them anymore, the cold cuts were frozen, and then eventually brought to the office for the party.

        1. Artemesia*

          used to make school lunches for a week then, over the hill, so freeze them and then thaw them for the lunch — yeah no.

          1. Reticular Giraffe*

            If they were just taken out of the fridge, had a few slices removed, and then placed right back in the fridge, they are fine.
            The freezing itself of course is not a problem. Meat can be frozen. It’s fine.

  137. Beth*

    I think I’ve shared these in prior years, but it may have been on a different site.

    Two potluck tales from non-profit volunteer land:

    1. Volunteer Group #1 always had a potluck at the monthly gathering. The potluck rarely had anything other than grocery store potato salad, fast-food fried chicken tubs, and store-bought cheap cookies. I got tired of the lousy zero-effort food, so one month I bought a beef roast at Costco and brought in lovely roast beef.

    I got quite a few compliments, including from the group’s (older, white, entitled, male) leader. Then I watched him take some of the lovely home-cooked roast beef and feed it to his dogs. That was the last time I put in any effort on the food I brought.

    2. A different volunteer group, mostly doing rather woo-woo community-building women-empowering-women events. The events were fun, but the potlucks, omg . . . I mentally dubbed them the “politically correct potlucks” or “white guilt potlucks”. Most of the dishes were various kinds of vegan mush with neither texture nor flavour, seasoned with nothing but the earnest good intentions of the cook. Usually, it was a white woman’s vague attempt at an ethnic dish from a cuisine she didn’t actually know well.

    After a few of these, I took to stopping on the way to the event and getting a fast-food burger so I wouldn’t starve.

    1. Lady Ann*

      At my old office I made a homemade from scratch blueberry pie a potluck. When folks were cleaning up the leftovers for some reason someone decided that instead of using the hard pie plate cover the pie plate came with they’d cover it with plastic wrap, and then stacked a bunch of stuff on top of it so it was totally smooshed. That was the last time I made anything for a pot luck there that took any effort, after that it was store bought all the way.

    3. Doesn't bring her potato salad to your potluck*

      #2 reminds me of the SNL Black Jeopardy sketch with Chadwick Boseman.

  138. Not A Girl Boss*

    This is like the exact opposite story from yesterday’s food restrictions story.

    I am a very specific eater with complex and varied food restrictions. So, I try really hard to avoid participating in pot lucks. I keep my name off the sign up sheet (or bring something I know I can eat and then just eat that) and then day-of bring my own food to eat so I can still sit around and be social. If anyone asks what they can bring that I can enjoy, I reply with a cheerful and kind version of “seriously, please PLEASE just don’t.” Basically I work very hard at making my entire vibe an emphatic “I’m perfectly happy to eat my own food, I don’t feel left out, please don’t force me to politeness-eat something that will probably make me sick.”

    Anyway. Last year, without prompting from me, some well-meaning coworkers figured out that there was no food on the menu I could eat. But instead of talking to me about it, they sent out a teams message on the whole-building chat with a 2 paragraph rant about the importance of ensuring everyone is included in our events, and how its a shame not one person stepped up to the plate to make ‘someone with specific restrictions’ feel welcome.
    Then, at the potluck event itself, they paid to have GrubHub deliver a meal specifically for me (again, without asking) (its even worse because there’s a large pay gap between us, so I felt really icky about having them spend this money on us). Well… lets just say I never in a million years would have chosen this meal for myself. But technically it did meet my restrictions, so I had to gag it down. After the pot luck I pulled them aside and gave them the “no, really” speech, but I could tell they didn’t believe me. Luckily, I quit that job before the next potluck.

    1. allathian*

      Yeah, I sometimes wonder how people can be so wilfully stubborn. Sometimes bringing your own food really is the only reasonable solution.

      When my main friend group and I were all in college and had limited means, we’d have potlucks to share the cost. When we were all working and making a fairly decent living, we switched to the host providing all edibles. Now we mostly go to restaurants because we have the means and it’s less effort.

      But it seems that potlucks aren’t a part of working in an office here, I’ve never participated in one organized by an employer. I expect that it has something to do with workers’ comp, because if an employee gets sick by eating food that was provided by other employees at an even organized by the employer on the employer’s premises, the employer’s liable. Before the pandemic, some people brought baked goods to share. If someone had got sick by eating that, it wouldn’t have been a workers’ comp issue, because it would get consumed off the clock, even if on site.

    2. Veryanon*

      I love lemon meringue pie, especially homemade. One time, my then-husband’s grandmother decided to make her “famous” lemon meringue pie and bring it as a treat for me to the next family get-together. You guessed it, it was wretched – the meringue was just this flat, soggy mass and the lemon part looked radioactive. The crust was like concrete. But I choked down a small piece because the poor lady had tried really hard to do a nice thing.
      The things we do to try to be polite.

  139. I was the Brownie Fairy (Brownie?)*

    There is a very famous deli/bakery in my town. Their goods are highly prized and it’s always special when an employer orders from them for staff.

    Pre-pandemic, my larger division moved to new office space and the building management ordered trays of brownies from there to welcome us. My physical office was near the kitchen and I witnessed someone from another group walk buy with the entire tray that had been put out for the whole floor and carry it back to his desk. There were probably at least 75 brownies on it. Soon I heard everyone being very confused that we were promised brownies and there were none to be had. This lead to people from our floor going to other floors to find brownies, which caused its own drama.

    Finally, when I saw the same guy walk past my office again on his way to a meeting, I ran to his cube, grabbed the tray, and placed it back in the kitchen for everyone to enjoy as intended.

  140. nozenfordaddy*

    I have two:

    #1 We have an annual holiday potluck, the company provides a seasonal protein and sides and the rest of us bring in other dishes. For years I made hot mulled cider in a crockpot in the office break room. Made the whole place smell like cinnamon and apples and citrus all morning. Plus it was easy to do.

    People drank it but I never got the sense it was a favorite it was just one of many offerings at the potluck. Imagine my surprise when I made hot cocoa one year instead and people acted like I’d ruined Christmas. Now when potluck season is upon us I am guaranteed to get asked at least a half dozen times if I’m making cider for the potluck.

    #2 During our first annual Pi Day Pie Contest people were asked to bring in a pie to share and the best would win a prize (an elaborately decorated pie tin that is still lurking in our office and gets passed around each year).

    That was it. That was all the info and all the rules provided. Being an office full of apparently chaos loving maniacs we had multiple normal pies, some homemade and some store bought masquerading as homemade, at least one pizza and a tray of meat pies (pasties).

    The event organizers were not amused as store bought pies, pizza and non dessert pies were OBVIOUSLY disqualified as not being in the spirit of the contest. Except at no point had the ‘rules’ said anything about pies being dessert and homemade only. And so started a showdown of truly epic proportions.

    Eventually it was agreed for this, the first year, all pies would be considered. But detailed rules as to what constituted a pie were negotiated for all subsequent years culminating in them having to be dessert and in a pie tin. Store bought were still allowed – for reasons – but had to be labelled as such.

    In year two we had at least one cheesecake as some people insisted on pushing the boundaries of what constitutes pie.

    1. Elle Woods*

      I have to LOL about your cider story. When I was in grad school, the grad students hosted a Halloween potluck for faculty & staff. I usually brought homemade artichoke dip. The one year I didn’t bring it, two department secretaries and one faculty member asked where it was. The following year, all three asked ahead of time if I was bringing the dip.

  141. JustAnotherKate*

    At ExJob we had a dessert party in the office for someone’s retirement. I made “magic” bars — super sweet bars (made with sweetened condensed milk) with chocolate, coconut, nuts and other fun stuff. And no one ate them. Like, every other thing was 100% finished and all the bars just sat there. I thought it was weird, but whatever. Until a coworker came up to me and screamed, “What is WRONG with you? You could have put me in the HOSPITAL!” I had no clue what she was talking about, but finally got it out of her that my (abusive, evil) boss had “confided” in her and a few others that I’d made the bars with salt instead of sugar as a prank, and not to eat them. This was 8 years ago and Jesus, I still hate that woman.

    1. The OG Sleepless*

      My God. Of every possible personality trait a person can have, my least favorite is people who stir up trouble between other people. That’s just terrible.

    2. Irish Teacher*

      Yikes, I thought this was going to end with her revealing she had a nut allergy or something that you hadn’t known about and she thought you did know and did it deliberately. But that your boss just LIED. That is crazy.

  142. AccountingIsFun*

    I worked at a company that once decided it would be a great morale booster to have a soup/chili potluck. The announcement discussed how we would have a cook-off for everything that belonged in a crock-pot…. except the announcement and notices on the whiteboard all missed the letter “r” in crock-pot. Oops!

    2. Not A Girl Boss*

      I gotta tell you, a c*ock pot could definitely boost morale too… although would have been quite the mixer if half the team showed up with soup and the other half showed up with an outfit and a boombox playing Pony…

  143. Mrs. Hawiggins*

    Mr. Hawiggins’ office had a chili cook off last year, and although he makes the best chili, I told him to sit it out because, potlucks. I did send him a picture of Kevin however. He went out for lunch that day, after making a polite appearance to wish everyone well. Four people went home ill a couple hours later. They decided to end the tradition after that.

  144. Warrior Princess Xena*

    Right as I was reading this our office sent out an email that there will be a Winter Party in a few weeks with…a potluck. What timing.

  145. Jen*

    I work in a public high school, which means super-early hours and strict laws that prevent our bosses using public money to pay for any treats for staff. So, the way we “treat” staff to breakfast at morning meetings is that staff take turns by providing breakfast. This means that one or two mornings a year, I’m making an oatmeal bar for everybody or prepping breakfast casserole at night to bake crazy-early in the morning. Not a super-big deal, and it’s nice to have breakfast together.

    Except, I never realized that there are more teams than morning meetings, and that some teams NEVER volunteered. When my colleague moved from an all-female team (where she helped us make breakfast bar) to an all-male team, her all-male team expressed surprise when she asked which week they’d like to take. I guess they thought elves were bringing the breakfast?

    This year, folks are getting Safeway doughnuts if I have to take a turn.

  146. H.Regalis*

    My last day at an old job, I brought two huge boxes of my favorite pastries from my favorite bakery. It was a small business and not a lot of people were aware of it, but the bakers were amazing and I wanted to share how awesome the food was with everybody.

  147. Alianne*

    I may have told this story before, but…

    My supervisor at my first job, a lovely, slightly distracted older man, always made his popular jalepeno cornbread for the office potluck. He’d bake it the morning of, and bring it in piping hot. One year, he came in with the pan, got everything arranged on the table in the office, and then looked at the department head.

    Supervisor: Um, yeah, I need to run back home.
    Head: You just got here.
    Supervisor: Yeah, but…okay, so I got the cornbread out of the oven, and I was using a dishtowel, and it was old and frayed so I burned my hand, and I threw the dishtowel onto the stove, and now I can’t remember if I turned the stove off or not…
    Head: …please go home before you burn down your neighborhood.
    Supervisor: I’ll be right back!
    Head, to his retreating back: You have a fire extinguisher, right?…

    He HAD turned the oven off, the dishtowel WAS still smoldering, and he did come back in time for us to tease him and compliment the cornbread. He passed a few years ago, and apparently a coworker told this story at the wake.

  148. The OG Sleepless*

    This doesn’t really count as a potluck, but we have occasional student externs spend a few weeks’ rotation with us. We usually get a cake or something for everybody on their last day and everybody signs a card.

    One student gushed, “Oh, wow, you guys! Thank you so much!” and picked up the entire cake and walked out with it. We all just stood there with our mouths hanging open.

    I mean…it’s not like we spelled out that this was a going-away party and these were refreshments to share with everybody, but really. Years later, the only thing anybody remembered about this student was that she was the one that walked out with the cake.

    2. ferrina*

      Oh man, I can only how mortified she was when she realizes what was supposed to happen. Maybe we’ll get the other side on Mortification Week.

    4. WellRed*

      Many years later, per way above comment, they marked their 10th work anniversary by once again taking home the celebratory cake.

  149. AcademiaCat*

    My old work did a potluck a total of once. It seemed like a good idea because there was a culture of people randomly bringing in treats for everyone and leaving them in the break room. Out of a staff of 30, I think three of us brought something that day. And somehow trying to organize the random treats into a potluck meant that the regular contributors to break room deliciousness stopped bringing things afterwards.

    1. EvilQueenRegina*

      One year we were trying to organise one for Christmas. We had a date all picked out, but that week it snowed, lots of people ended up working remotely, and it was decided to cancel. Except someone then decided to resurrect it for the next day. While it was improving, there was still some snow on the ground, still a lot of people not there, and it was very cobbled together with not a lot of food.

  150. Emotional support capybara (he/him)*

    Same boss who frequently “forgot” to get back to the office in time to do payroll on Fridays once brought homemade strawberry bread (sweet, with glazed top) to an office party and got vehemently, LOUDLY offended when someone called it cake.

    1. Lady_Lessa*

      I once had a fancy Jello salad, with cream cheese icing on it was placed with the desserts. The dish transported well, but unless you had tried it, it was not popular. (Where I got the recipe, and permission to make it, both large dishes of it disappeared)

  151. S@mAx3*

    We have a self-appointed food policewoman who feels free to determine 1 – if food allergies are ‘real’ 2 – if the office diabetic (me) should eat that kind of food 3 – what punishment should be enacted on anyone who takes a cookie when getting their food rather than waiting until finishing the meal before approaching the dessert table.
    At our last potluck, in less than 10 minutes she explained to the woman who suffers from celiac that ‘it’s not like anyone sprinkled gluten all over the food – you should just relax, told me not to go to the dessert table because I’d be too tempted, scolded another person for taking dessert while others were still eating their lunch and started putting food away when there was still a line of people waiting to get lunch. (They were late because of a meeting that ran long, and she felt that if they wanted lunch, they really should have made an effort to be there on time.)

    1. irene adler*

      !!

      Holy cow! Punishments?

      When I bake cookies for potlucks, I bring a huge amount. And folks are free to graze prior to the meal. Everyone knows this-I tell them. And guess what? We’ve never run out of cookies prior to the potluck.

      Nonetheless, we have one person who scolds co-workers when they take cookies prior to the potluck. I’ve confronted this woman – to no avail. She believes she’s being funny.

  152. Eeyore is my spirit animal*

    One year a coworker brought homemade rum balls to the holiday potluck. They were so strong, the entire office smelled like rum for a few days. The manager doled them out personally. If you had field work that afternoon, you got one. If you were in the office, you got two. If you were underage, you weren’t allowed any. The non-drinkers were warned away.

    1. old curmudgeon*

      Oh, whiskey-based treats are great fun at work!

      Many years ago, I worked at the corporate office of a regional retailer. I worked closely with the Senior VP, and while he could be a pill at times, I genuinely liked the guy.

      One year, I found a recipe for Bourbon Balls that I decided to make up for the holidays. Knowing that the SVP had a giant sweet tooth and also that he was very fond of bourbon, I brought him a container of several dozen bourbon balls, thinking (foolishly) that he’d enjoy them over the course of several days.

      He did not spread them out over several days. He chomped through the entire container in a single afternoon, ingesting a significant amount of bourbon and a whole lot of chocolate in the process.

      As it happened, that day turned out to be the day the boss was going through the list of employees to decide how much each of us would get for a year-end bonus. And everyone was quite astounded that year at his unaccustomed generosity in deciding the bonus amounts.

      For some reason, every year after that, multiple co-workers would pull me aside in early December to urge me to make up another batch of bourbon balls for the SVP the week before Christmas…

      1. GasketGirl*

        It’s like the #janetfromsales sketch that pops up on FB and TT who, in the spirit of Christmas, brought a box of chocolate liqueur balls to work with her, ate the entire box, and was plastered by 10:30am…oh to be that oblivious sometime.

  153. 40 Years In the Hole*

    Not quite potluck but a large group food offering: TL;dr:
    I was posted overseas in a HQ shared with many other nationalities. Every year our communities would hold a huge Christmas market…all sorts of wonderful artisanal gifts, crafts, food, drink etc, representing the various member nations. Partial proceeds from these sales would go to support local charities. Everyone on/off the base welcome to shop. So…hundreds/thousands of visitors.

    A community member offered up a regional dish that is well-known/specific to a particular region of our country.They brought their family members over to cook mass amounts of this dish. Dozens of pans made/sold.

    Not just 1 or 2, but dozens of people…sick with food poisoning. Had to reach out to all the other communities, tell everyone to discard the food, and offer to refund all the money. Awkward! Folks understood & most declined a refund (so at least the local charities didn’t completely lose out). Was it cooked in less than hygienic surroundings? Left too long unrefrigerated? Undercooked? Maybe the local butchers sold meat that went off? No idea. Not intentional …but somewhat embarrassing.

    1. Artemesia*

      These things are almost a storage issue. The ingredients or more likely the food is prepared and then not held at appropriate temperatures and then reheated hot enough. Happens all the time with newly unprepared caterers. More than one amateurish hopeful new business has killed its future on its first event for this reason.

  154. Hot artichoke dip*

    Event where there was hot artichoke Parmesan dish with crackers. The crackers had run out (there were more crackers on the table) & exec dipped 3 fingers into the dip & into her mouth! I had just been introducing her to my spouse & she stuck out her hand for a handshake..with her spitty dippy hand. My spouse didn’t miss a beat & just handed her a napkin.

  155. NeonFireworks*

    About half of my unit is vegetarian, including both me and my boss. All of our potlucks have been completely uneventful, but one time my boss and several of us went out for dinner at a local nicer-than-average pub near our building. I ordered their veggie burger and the first bite I took did not taste like a veggie burger. It’s hard to know these days – imitation meats are getting pretty good – but I quietly asked a waiter, who did a double check, then a double take. He apologized, took away the not-a-veggie-burger, brought me a real veggie burger for free. I shrugged it off – it was an accident – but my boss was so angry that they’d served me meat that I thought she was going to have us all walk out!

  157. Bubo Bubo*

    I’m not a particularly good cook or baker but I do give it the ol’ college try when there’s a potluck. One year, I made chocolate ginger truffles using a recipe I found online and people just LOVED them. A bit too much, even. The potluck was supposed to be just for our small, 10-person team, but word got around. All day, people from other departments came by to try them. It was fascinating to see the different approaches people would take: from the genial front desk people pretending they were dropping by for a chat to the surly building manager who snuck in and out using his master key, I saw it all. I felt like a wildlife reporter.

    The weirdest thing is honestly, they weren’t that good. I think it was all hype.

  158. FunInFundraising*

    The number of times that a potluck is poorly planed and we end up with 10+ boxes of mixed Timbits (doughnut holes) is staggering. And of course all the chocolate ones go first and it’s just the old fashioned plain rolling around in the box for the rest of the day

  159. Miette*

    It was our office’s inaugural bakeoff, so everyone was excited to show off. I made a traditional family recipe we only trot out for Christmas (my mother was Austrian, so it was very involved and used lots of pricey ingredients). A Ukrainian co-worker did these amazing, individually-molded, walnut-shaped creations with a creamy/nutty filling. Someone. Made. Macarons. And what won? The frickin’ chocolate chip cookies.

    Never again!

    2. Mitford*

      I made Moravian cookies once and lost to peanut butter blossoms. You know, the peanut butter cookie with a Hershey kiss on top.

    3. I Wrote This in the Bathroom*

      I have a mold for the walnut-shaped creations! Bought one as a college student in the 80s, then failed to pack it as we left for the US because we were going to the land of plenty and weren’t going to need a mold for homemade pastries. Realized my mistake soon and, on a 2005 trip to Ukraine to visit the inlaws, searched all the stores in their small town until I found one. I’ve got to say though, I rarely use it, because those things are a royal pain to make and now that we’re older, everyone in the family can only eat one or two. That said, they are a ROYAL pain to make* and are delicious, so my mind is blown that the chocolate chip cookies won.

      *Just realized I have a potluck story about them! In college, the director of the math camp where I’d worked in the summer invited us all to her place for a potluck party in the fall. I wanted to impress a guy I’d worked with at camp, so decided to make the walnut cookies. In a communal kitchen in our dorm. On an electric stove. Some of the dough and the butter that I used to oil the mold, leaked out on the burner and unbeknownst to me, filled the entire hallway with smoke. The campus authorities showed up. I had my campus ID confiscated for some odd reason, and was told to pack up and leave the kitchen, even though I’d only used up half of my dough.

      1. Miette*

        Oh no!

        Happy to report that the local Ukrainian grocery store sells the walnut-shaped creations! Not as good as my co-worker’s, but nice all the same :)

  160. Chilipepper Attitude*

    I suspect this is not the kind of disaster you are looking for but I’ll bare my embarrassment and share.

    A few years ago I worked for a private school that had an annual meeting for all staff, some parents, and others, for 2 full days. They always had a parent provide lovely catered lunches. I was following a very specific whole foods diet at the time so I always brought my own food to events.

    As the post lunch session started, I approached the food table to grab a napkin. I had my homemade lunch container in my hand. Someone I did not know gestured to my food and asked, “oh, you did not know there was food provided?” I was trying to be brief and quiet as the session had started, and it was always hard to explain my diet. And I lost my filter and my mind and said, “I only eat real food.”

    Of course, I learned later it was the lunch host I was talking to! I was mortified.

  161. StressedButOkay*

    Oh man, at my last job, it was vulture city with certain people. For meetings that were catered – and weren’t for the entire staff – we used to stage the food outside the meeting room. Well, we had to stop that the day we came out to discover someone(s) had helped themselves to several items while the meeting was taking place. Thankfully, it was one of those where we had ordered a few extras in case folks were hungry…

    Except someone had made off with the only vegan meals that had been purchased for our one vegan attendee. They were very kind about it but our CEO was livid – we quickly had someone order up something for them and an very angry CEO email was sent out the following day. From then on, anything that wasn’t for all staff was staged in the room itself AND the catering fridge was kept locked after someone tried their luck that way…

  162. Persimmon*

    I attended a potluck once where one (1) of the other attendees had a peanut allergy. I really wanted to bring a peanut noodle dish I’d just learned how to make, so I talked to her before and asked if it would be safe to have it in the room, would she rather I bring something she could eat, etc. She told me it was fine, her allergy was mild and she’d only have a reaction if she actually ate some, and there were enough people bringing food that she didn’t care if there was one thing she couldn’t eat. She just asked me to label the dish so she wouldn’t take any on accident.

    So… I brought the noodles and I taped a piece of paper to the container /and/ the lid that said “WARNING – CONTAINS PEANUTS.” I also put them at the very end of the table so there’d be less risk of cross contamination and I went and tracked down the person before the event to tell her how it was labeled and where it was.

    Later, during dinner, she came up and said “Hey, is this your peanut thing?” and showed me her plate. It was. Someone (I still have no idea who) had removed the labels – and there wasn’t a way they could have fallen off, they were really taped down – and moved the container, and she had ended up eating some. She was fine, luckily, just had a small rash, but I was furious and terrified. Furious at whoever removed the labels (why??) and terrified that I made her sick even with my precautions just because I wanted to show off a recipe. I have never brought a known allergen to an event again!

    1. Apt Nickname*

      I made peanut noodles for a potluck and labeled them “Peanut noodles*” and then underneath “*contains peanuts”, partially because I thought it was funny and partially to be very very thorough.

  163. nora*

    My office can’t seem to comprehend the rules of food contests. We’ve had many variations over the years (chili, cookies, cakes, pie), and there is never any established judging panel or rules. Everyone just eats what looks good to them vs. trying each of the entries, and casts their vote…or they don’t vote at all and go back for seconds of what they like and we run out of that thing before everyone gets a shot at it.

  164. SnootyGirl*

    Lots of these stories reinforce why my fellow managers and I finally started to host all the events and hired outside caterers. We also did all the serving so the hoarders couldn’t take all the food and come back through the lines two or three times before everyone else had even been through once. After it was done we would quietly approach those we knew were struggling [we paid well but there were a few who were dealing with seriously sick children, unemployed spouses, single parents, etc. who could always use a helping hand) to see if they wanted to take home any leftovers and then we would place the food in a LOCKED refrigerator bought specially for that purpose. If there was anything left after that we, the managers, took it home (although there was rarely much left at that point). It cut down on the number of potlucks but it also eliminated (for the most part) all the drama. I got so tired of having to be the police/mediator/Solomon for potlucks.

  165. Goldenrod*

    Alison, bless your heart for this topic and for all your “when things go wrong at work” topics in general. I looooooove reading these!

    The potluck disaster that springs to my mind was an ill-advised “build your own taco” event that I got roped into helping coordinate, much to my displeasure. I didn’t want anything to do with it (I hate coordinating work events, especially ones involving food), but I was a good sport and purchased the food items that I’d signed up to bring. I also offered to bring in my Crock-Pot to help keep the taco fillings warm.

    This one guy on the team – he was actually supposed to be the leader – failed spectacularly on his item. He was supposed to bring beef filling but instead of cooking it at home like a normal person, he brought in RAW HAMBURGER MEAT.

    I dropped off my food and went back to work, but later that morning, someone else from the team stopped by my office and asked if I could drop by the kitchen and help out by COOKING THE HAMBURGER MEAT slowly using my Crock-Pot.

    This sounded weird, difficult and time-consuming – not to mention, I felt that this job should really be given to the weirdo who brought in the raw meat – so I responded the only way I felt I could. “Sure! I’ll be right there!” I proceeded to continue doing my work with no intention of getting anywhere near the kitchen. (My office was very toxic, so the only way to get out of stuff like this was to be passive-aggressively cheerful and then just…not do it.)

    Some other poor slob ended up cooking the hamburger using someone else’s Crock-Pot. I avoided eating that hamburger meat like the plague, and found out later that the VP (a horrible person) had gotten very bad indigestion from eating it. After that, I forever thought of the guy who brought in the beef as “Lord Graybeef” (secretly, of course!).

  166. RLC*

    Colleague brought big pan of homemade cinnamon buns to potluck with the admonition to “leave half of them untouched because I have to take them home so my wife can take them to our church potluck”. Uhhh, why did you bring the whole pan to the office if we aren’t supposed to eat them all???
    Another office, colleague brought a cake his 8 year old son had “sampled”. At least the slice was neatly removed so we laughed and ate the rest of the cake.

    1. Lily Rowan*

      Ahhh, that first piece reminds me of a department holiday potluck the boss had at her house. I was used to packing up my leftovers after a party like that (which I now realize is its own oddity, but whatever) and my boss stopped me cold because she wanted to serve my now half-eaten spread at another party she was hosting the next night!

      1. Mekong River*

        “which I now realize is its own oddity, but whatever”

        I also have this idea that you leave what you brought for the host, but I don’t really know why I think that! It can be a burden on the host, if you think about it.

        1. Curmudgeon in California*

          My spouse and I often leave parties early, especially if there are too many loud people there. So, if it’s a potluck, it leaves us with a quandry: A) Should we take our dish and leftovers home, even though the later people hadn’t arrived and had some, or B) Hope that the host gives us our dishes back. We finally settled on C) Whatever we cook it in, we transfer it to disposable trays and provide a disposable serving spoon. Some hosts have actually washed the spoon and returned it to us, but not often.

          1. Foley*

            My son’s elementary school had a weekly potluck. There were HUNDREDS of dishes left in the kitchen to claim at the end of every school year.

            I remember SO many hard-feelings-Tupperware issues from adults during my childhood that I’ve only ever used disposable serving trays.

  167. Brian*

    At the school I work at, parents often bring food for the teachers at parent teacher conferences, as we have to be at work until late. One year someone make homemade guacamole. The next day, half the staff was gone with food poisoning.

    1. Hosta*

      My experience with Mexican and Tex Mex food is tragically limited, but… isn’t guacamole avocados, salt, lime juice, cilantro, maybe some onion, tomato abs/ or garlic mashed up? What in that could spoil so quickly?

      Okay, yeah, avocado goes brown really fast, but most people wouldn’t eat brown guac.

      1. Mekong River*

        It’s possible to have contaminated vegetables. I’m not aware of guacamole being more prone to contamination than, say, a mixed salad, but I also don’t see any reason why guacamole would be less prone to contamination.

      2. run mad; don't faint*

        There was a fad for putting mayo in guacamole many years ago. Thankfully it’s no longer popular that way. But maybe the guac maker added some.

    2. Artemesia*

      I have twice been in situations where I had out of politeness to eat food I worried bout.

      Once doing some speaking in Mexico I was super careful about what I was eating and drinking because getting travel tummy while working is tough. So get to the final day and students have brought in home made local lunch which looks about as dicey as you would expect. I feel that I must and so have some and hope for the best, then I notice my host is not eating any of it. ‘oh I had a big lunch with my family’ — so I have been pushed into the shark tank and my fellow swimmer is not coming in.

      The second time it was foods prepared by parents of kids in a Chinese school I was visiting —

      In spite of my relatively sensitive stomach and paranoia about food contamination I survived both experiences. And am glad I didn’t embarrass the people generously providing the food.

  168. Clefairy*

    At my old job, myself and the rest of the leadership team liked to throw fun themed food days- it wasn’t much, but it was what we had the power ourselves to do for morale, as pay and benefits were completely out of our hands. One month, we were having a donut day, and I went to Voodoo Donuts and got a literal casket full of donuts- it was like a 3 foots tall coffin full of like 30 or so donuts? I think it was one of every flavor or something like that. So I hauled that thing in, people loved it…and then it started a war for weeks because EVERYONE wanted to take the casket home. We all ended up going home for “2 weeks” for covid, and never opened back up- no idea what ended up happening, but it probably got thrown out when the location was gutted. So in the end, nobody took it home lol

  169. Chilipepper Attitude*

    A funny potluck story.
    My office had a family potluck, lots and lots of people there. As my husband and I arrived, we heard a mom steer her kids away from the dessert table. In a loud and stern mom voice she said, “no dessert until after dinner!”

    So we add our dish, enjoy our meal. And I see my husband eyeing the dessert table. It’s important to know he is not from the US and there are cultural differences in play here. So he keeps eyeing the dessert table. And I tell him, why don’t you go get dessert. And he said, no, I heard someone say, no dessert until after dinner.

    He had no context for grasping that it was a parent to child tone!

  170. Sticker Shock*

    It wasn’t potluck, but the company cafeteria catered lunches a few times a year to show appreciation but only for certain groups. And contractors/temps were never allowed to come even though they were the hardest working people I knew in my department. It got out of hand with people crashing the lunches because there was no way to tell who was from which department (thousands of people on campus) and it was published on a SharePoint calendar!
    To remediate this, they handed out stickers we had to wear on our badge year-round. If you had a sticker you got the free lunch. There were certain people that were keepers of the sticker packs and when those people would leave the company (or thought the system was dumb)
    they would just give them to whoever. It quickly grew out of control since an excess number of stickers were printed. I think I had a pack of 30 or so from people leaving the company or not caring who got stickers.

  171. Chilipepper Attitude*

    Is anyone familiar with the TikTok song, you can’t eat at ev’ry body house?

    I’ve been humming it as I read this thread!

  172. just a thought*

    One year, I was a government contractor in an office with several people working on a large project. The social committee decided that our holiday potluck would take place during the normal all-staff meeting time so that most people would already have the time reserved.

    Well, I show up with my contribution, only to find out this wasn’t just a party but we were still having the meeting before eating. The project manager said “don’t worry, it will be a 10 minute meeting”. The meeting took over 50 minutes while everyone just sat there looking at the food waiting to eat.

    Then the committee planned some party activities. The first one was a quiz, so they handed out worksheets for the individual quiz and everyone sat silently filling out their quiz and not talking to each other (well expect me, because I didn’t think to bring a pen to a holiday potluck).

    It was a very sad party.

  173. On My Way*

    The stew guy just dredged up a memory from the late 90s and since I had to remember it, now you will, too!

    My first real job was at a small factory that made plane parts. It was basically a machine shop, and I worked in the office area. There were also engineers there, execs, stock folks for the plane parts, janitors, etc. A well-rounded group of humans and all were pretty nice to awesome.

    This group got to doing weekly potlucks and they were something else! All the food was good, except for one guy. You always had to keep an eye out for which crock pot he brought in with whatever stew and make sure to stay far away from it. Why, you ask?

    BECAUSE HE MADE IT WITH LITERAL ROADKILL. That’s right, if he passed roadkill, he’d pick it up and cook it if it “didn’t look or smell too bad.” He didn’t just do this for the potlucks, this was his life. He ate squirrel he shot, possum, raccoon, rodents of an even lesser sort (rats, voles, etc), whatever. It was not a joke, it was real, and his kids who worked there with him confirmed it.

    You might say well if you’re way out in the country, sure. Makes sense. Plenty of people hunt and eat what they get, and that’s fine. No. This guy lived in a very well populated, planned city on the east coast. Appalachia was nearby but he didn’t live there. Just in the ‘burbs, really close to a major city, killin’ and eatin’ whatever he came across. Including roadkill. And then feeding it to his coworkers without telling them.

    2. Free Meerkats*

      You can take the hillbilly out of the hills, but you can never take the hills out of the hillbilly.

  174. Name Switcher*

    It’s not as epic as the other stories, but many years ago I once worked in a small team of about 10 people, with a supervisor who played obvious favorites. There was one poor girl in our team (who I’ll call M) who, for some reason, this supervisor (we’ll call her C) decided she just did not like, and she often got a lot of petty snubbing for virtually no reason. In hindsight it was a little uncomfortable how no one seemed to notice or say anything. Maybe they were just scared of C.

    Anyway, there was one particular year where we had the budget to do multiple potlucks in six months for various celebrations. I noticed after two or three of them that whatever M brought in ended up going mostly untouched after the first round, regardless of if she made it from scratch or picked it up from the grocery store. On potluck #5, M signed up to bring in a baked treat I know would be from scratch, and I signed up to bring soda. I shot her a private email asking to do an experiment, and we switched our names on the sign up sheet to make it look like I was bringing in her baked goods and she was bringing in the soda.

    Wouldn’t you know it, by the end of the potluck her baked goods were gone. C even commented the next day how awesome they were and ‘whoever brought those in needs to do it more often’. I can’t remember if M ever decided to drop that little bombshell or not.

  175. Pobody’s Nerfect*

    One woman at a company I used to work at insisted that her contribution at each potluck or office party be microwave popcorn, she’d bring several bags for each party, usually different flavors/varieties. Problem was, she would leave each bag in the microwave for too long, get distracted, and always each time they’d end up burning and inedible. All the flavors. We’d have that horrible burnt popcorn smell saturating the office and whole floor for days. It triggered asthma attacks in some people. Nausea in other people, they’d have to go home. The final kicker was the time she put a bag of popcorn in the microwave for her usual too-long time and left the kitchen; ten minutes later the wall behind the microwave was on fire. Luckily someone else ran in and was able to put it out with the fire extinguisher. Finally and thankfully her microwave popcorn tradition was banned forevermore. (No one was allowed to make microwave popcorn after that, not just her.)

    1. WellRed*

      We got to evacuate an office building after someone in another business set off the fire alarms due to microwave popcorn (how stupid are people?) Maine. In February.

      1. retired state worker*

        The state agency where I used to work made the national news headlines during a Polar Vortex about a decade or so ago when an attorney burned a bag of popcorn in the microwave oven. The smoke set off the fire alarms and sent over 1,000 state workers fleeing coatless in negative-40-degree temperatures to the State Capitol building a few blocks away, our designated winter gathering point for fire alarms. It was a slow news day in early January, and darned near every news service in the country picked that up and ran it prominently in their feeds. There was a rumor that the Governor’s office called up the head of our agency and yelled at him for making the state a laughingstock, though it was never confirmed. I do know that the agency’s safety committee implemented a rule forbidding all microwave popcorn afterward, which lasted until a different governor was elected a few years later.

  176. GingerSheep*

    Sorta-potluck disaster : a good friend of mine was defending her PhD, and as is traditional, had planned a potluck style party with champagne to celebrate in the lab afterwards. It was mid-December, and as it had snowed, we set the bottles outside on the patio, and stored the food in the lab’s shared fridge before the defense. As soon as the defence was over I hurried out to set up the food while my friend was discussing with her committee members. But the fridge was empty and the food had gone! Apparently it later transpired that the lab had had its annual Christmas potluck the previous day, and that lab members that were unaware of the defence and had taken the platters of food thinking they were leftovers.
    There was not a single item left, and most employees had already gone home. The lab manager was livid and went through everybody’s offices to scrounge up whatever edible substance could be found, but we ended up with twenty people having to share a sleeve of Oreo’s, a handful of leftover hallowe’en candy, and an open packet of stale chips.
    But. No one had noticed (and stolen) the drinks outside, and there was therefore still lots of champagne to go around. Way too much champagne for our hungry bunch of researchers and grad students for way too little food. I ended up horribly drunk and ranting about my despicable ex-husband to a world-leading expert in my discipline, and still have pangs of embarrassment when I hear her name ten years later. Another guest ended up vomiting in the snow on the patio. A definitely memorable defense!

    1. WellRed*

      Oh please! They just assumed the food fairies showed up and magically left food? Right! Glad they didn’t get the bubbly!

  177. Itsbeenalongyear*

    We recently had a staffwide potluck treat day as a kickoff to our organization’s annual week to raise funds for a community organization. The coordinator of the potluck event is someone who does not closely work with most staff (this is an organization with nearly 200 employees). The coordinator assigned specific categories of food for each department to bring. Staff were told they would need to supply their own power cords and power strips for all crockpots, bring their own ice for anything cold, and would need to designate a person from each department to check on the treats brought from their department throughout the day (9am-5:30pm, 8.5 hours of staff time!), ensuring that hot food remained hot and cold food remained cold for the entire duration of the treat day event. An important note: though the building housing the treat day has a large staff break room complete with multiple outlets, 2 microwaves, and 3 refrigerators, the coordinator insisted the treat day be held in a hallway far away from fridges, sinks, and with only 2 wall outlets along about 30 feet of wall. On the day of the event, staff started bringing their treats. The coordinator assisted with arranging them on the tables set up in the hallway and then started critiquing each treat brought! Several staff were criticized for not bringing (more specifically knowing they needed to bring) their own serving spoons for their crockpots, another brought cupcakes with little marshmallow ghosts on top (Halloween theme). Coordinator said the cupcakes were cute but would have been cuter had they put eyes on each ghost. Direct quote I overheard during the cupcake judging, “I wanted to see some effort put into this.” My team got a nose wrinkle for the ratio of store brand soda to non-store brand soda (we had the category of drinks) though my hot cider seemed get points for effort. Considering that staff morale is already feeling low and we hadn’t even had a treat day for over 2 years due to COVID, having someone literally critique every entry on the treat day table did not exactly make people want to grab a plate!

  178. Serin*

    At the last office potluck before we all went to work from home, I got into a bizarre Midwestern politeness standoff that I still don’t know how I could have avoided.

    A friend of mine brought one of those Better Than Sex type cakes, where you have the chocolate cake mix doctored up with the contents of five or six jars/cans/bags. I politely complimented the cake, and somehow this led to three people running all over the office trying to figure out a way for me to take a piece home with me. It was very moist and sticky and none of us had a spare tupperware or whatever. After all the fuss, I ended up with two cardboard bowls, fastened together with tape and staples, which got me and my desk and my car all sticky.

    And I didn’t even want any more cake!

    There has to be an etiquette sweet spot between “I really yearn to take home some cake but I can’t bear to put myself forward like that” and “I hate your cake and you and everything you stand for,” but I wasn’t able to find it.

  179. Patty*

    An older colleague brought rum balls to the pot luck, and they were strong. Another colleague’s toddler ate several before his mom figured out they were made with real rum, and lots of it.

    When mom figured it out, her only reaction was “well, he’ll sleep on the way home” …

      1. allathian*

        Yeah, me too. I don’t recommend alcohol for toddlers, but accidents can and do happen, and since the toddler apparently didn’t suffer any long-lasting ill effects, it’s NBD.

  180. Thanks but no thanks*

    The companies I have worked for typically have an annual meal to thank the staff and interns. Frequently, these meals are prepared by an owner, often at the place of business. So, as a thank you for all our hard work, we get to rearrange our workspace so that we can set up tables and then set the tables. The main course is provided, but someone is usually tasked with the dessert. After we’ve eaten, we then get to bus the table, clean the dishes, break down the tables, and rearrange the workspace. It usually involves mopping of the floor, too. For the past 2 years, I’ve “unfortunately” had another commitment.

  181. Wilbur*

    At one of my old groups, they’d organize a week or two week long pot luck in December . It was pretty organized, they split it up so 3-4 teams were assigned a day. This was all great, everyone was happy to participate and pretty much everyone brought something. It was a great chance to talk to people from other teams and see what they were doing. The only issue was people (the mechanics in particular) would start lining up around 9 or 9:30, so productivity wasn’t great. Plus if you wanted buffalo chicken dip you had to get down there pretty quick.

  182. Anonymous ID*

    I have two stories, and anyone who works with will probably either remember these or heard the stories.

    1) There was a man who thought it was funny to bring food that was technically edible but not eat able. An example is tuna rice krispie bars, or chocolate covered Spam. Maybe once would have been OK but he kept doing it, and it was irritating because he was wasting food for a prank and then not actually contributing to the potluck.

    2) I didn’t experience this but it’s so legendary that the tale lives on. Long ago in a lab far, far away, a bunch of slow-cookers were all plugged into the same powerstrip at the potluck. The powerstrip shorted and all the food in the slow-cookers got warm but not hot. Many people got food poisoning. The ironic part is the lab deals with food-born illnesses, but not usually so personally.

  183. H.Regalis*

    From a friend: My friend is the warehouse manager for a company that primarily does distribution. There’s also a tiny business office up front. One of the warehouse people had a birthday, so the company got pizza and my friend brought a cake. The absolutely skeletal accountant stopped by the party just to scold my friend for bringing a cake, and then went around telling the other party-goers that they were all going to get diabetes and die.

    1. allathian*

      Please no body shaming, of any body shape. Thin people can have diabetes just like fat people can, even if obesity is a risk factor for type 2. I grant you that the scolding was uncalled for, but so was the “absolutely skeletal” description.

  184. Keyboard Jockey*

    Someone brought a pot of homemade chili that looked and smelled delicious. And it tasted delicious too, right up until I got a large chunk of stemmy tomato. I was having a conversation with someone new, so I resolved to just chew it… until it became clear it was a jalapeno. I’m no spice slouch, so I thought, whatever, I can hide that too.

    But it just got hotter… hotter… hotter…

    This person had never made chili before, found a box of fresh chili peppers at the farmers’ market, and put them in the Crockpot whole.

    Reader, they were Scotch bonnets. He did not know what Scotch bonnets were, nor that he should remove them prior to serving the chili.

    I spent the next hour in the bathroom and drank an entire quart of milk.

  185. RLC*

    OK, here’s one more: colleague brought a beautiful salad to our annual potluck- this salad looked like a photo in a cookbook, embellished with lovely organically grown edible flowers from her home garden. For reasons I will never understand, nearly all the men in our work unit came to the conclusion that “ALL flowers are poisonous and unsafe to eat” and refused to eat it, making many loud comments. The salad was delicious and much enjoyed by all the women there, and by the one man who was knowledgeable enough to understand edible flowers (he was very much a foodie). The salad maker sadly and understandably never brought another one.

  186. HS Teacher*

    I had a coworker bring a dish with coconut in it to see if I was lying about being allergic. I wasn’t lying. One epipen and a trip to the ER later, and she was terminated.

    1. C-Dub*

      At that rate, she should pay your hospital bill as well. The nerve of her. You don’t take a gamble on or joke about anyone’s health. She deserved to be fired.

    3. allathian*

      I’m so glad she was fired. I hate to think what could happen if she was in charge of a bunch of kids and didn’t take their allergies seriously.

    4. irene adler*

      WTF???
      Even if you were lying, why is it her place to ‘check your veracity’?

      Bottom line: do not serve HS Teacher any coconut. Period. No exceptions. Doesn’t matter if you dislike it or are allergic.

      If someone does not like a specific food-regardless of the reason- why serve it to them?

      I almost never like to see someone lose their job, but for this- yeah, terminate them. I don’t want this kind of thinking in my work place.

      1. Irish Teacher*

        Why, WHY are some people so obsessed with “not being fooled” that they must doubt everybody’s word and look for proof, even when that proof could seriously harm somebody?

        I agree. Even if HS Teacher WAS lying, how would it be anybody else’s business?

  187. wine dude*

    This is from a potluck many moons ago. A colleague of Japanese origin brought in a big tray of beautiful cut sushi rolls that looked just like an ahi (tuna) roll. I stopped by his office before the potluck and he said “Try one.” I did. I said they were good but they didn’t taste quite like ahi. He said one word “Spam.” They were the hit of the potluck and no one else knew.

    1. Cat*

      *thinks about how spam is a form of processed pork product*
      *thinks about halal, kosher, pescatarian diets that would be fine with tuna but not spam*
      *hopes anyone with dietary restrictions checked the ingredients*

  188. Random Bystander*

    This was actually an experience with my daughter’s high school activity “end of year banquet” which was supposed to be pot luck. Except that … oh, my goodness, the quantity of food was utterly lacking. Someone brought 6 (!) pieces of fried chicken for a group of 30 students + parents. I’d done up one of my go-to items (crock-pot baked beans–there’s five different kinds of beans), which normally works well — it’s a side dish, recipe makes about 30-32 side dish servings. Of course, this particular dish also works really well as a main course (basically double your serving size, add a pan of cornbread) … so with the really inadequate food supply, it was scooped up to main course levels by the first few people in line.

    First time I have ever been to a pot luck where, on the way home, we had to stop at a fast food restaurant because the amount of food we got was so inadquate.

    1. Artemesia*

      Been to more than one potluck at a church where a family of six brings a carton of cottage cheese and then ravenously decimates the buffet. No always ‘food insecure’ people either.

      1. starsaphire*

        Our group did multiple potlucks a year, and the one bit of text that was quickly introduced and _always_ repeated in the announcement was, “Please bring a dish containing approximately eight servings of food per person in your party. One 8″ pie is a contribution for one person, not for a family of six.” Like, we literally had to spell it out.

        Then there was the girl we called Orange Girl because she never brought anything to potlucks, always tried to sneak in to banquets without buying a ticket, and the one time that someone corralled her and told her she needed to shape up or get out, she snagged a free orange from somewhere, hooked up with a group of new people who didn’t know her yet, and made a huge show of “her contribution” – she peeled and sectioned that free orange and ostentatiously laid the sections on top of a salad the new people had brought.

        She may have been the reason our local branch stopped having potlucks altogether, now I think about it…

  189. LadyHouseOfLove*

    I used to work as an assistant at a Southwest public library that had an interesting combination of a toxic workplace but pleasant parties and potlucks.

    The director, “Daniela,” was interesting in that she was this combination of Miranda Priestly’s iciness and Ava Coleman’s self-absorption. And there was a coworker, “Clara,” that was not well-liked either. Clara was known to escalate level-2 situations into 11s. She was the human form of that muppet, Beaker. She was also that cringe-inducing combination of being awkward and a suck-up.

    So, we had a tamales-themed get-together. And it was so delicious. There were different types of tamales, cheese tamales, chicken tamales, chicken and cheese tamales, sweet cream tamales, etc. It was all so delicious and perfect as a pre-Thanksgiving get-together.

    Well, a little while after the party ended, I decided to take a 15-minute break and headed to the break room. When I was there, I saw Daniella at one of the tables, closing her eyes, obviously having her own break.

    Clara and another coworker came into the break room and the coworker noticed that there were remaining pork tamales on the counter. The coworker pointed that out to Clara. Now a normal person would have put the tamales together in the fridge, and leave a note or send an email that said there were remaining tamales and that anyone could help themselves.

    Clara did not do that. Clara panicked.

    “We can’t leave pork out on the table!” She said and then reenacted Edvard Munch’s The Scream in between the times she circled the counter in panic. It was really weird behavior, especially since Clara was a self-described “foodie” and loved to cook. She didn’t know how to store the tamales?

    Clara kept behaving like this while the coworker and I looked cautiously over at Daniella, still with her eyes shut, and as immovable as a statue.

    After about a minute or two of Clara panicking, she realized that Daniella was in the room. Clara went over to Daniella with such bright hope in her eyes. “Ma’am? Do you know what we should do?”

    Daniella stood up, and opened her eyes but didn’t even look at Clara but just shrugged her shoulders at her and walked off. It was quite a snub. Clara quietly put the pork tamales in the fridge after that.

    I eventually left the library and became a librarian in a better environment. And Clara? Well, Clara became the supervisor of that toxic library. I do not miss that place.

  190. Lolllee*

    At one company I worked at, we had a problem with food disappearing from people’s lunches, sometimes entire meals, but other times, only part of it, but in really weird ways, like the bread being missing from one sandwich in one lunch and the meat and cheese being missing from another. Someone was getting into two different lunches, unwrapping sandwiches, and building a third sandwich. I caught a guy looking through lunches one day and confronted him. He claimed to be just looking for his lunch. I didn’t buy it, and when ever I saw him go into the little room with the refrigerators, I’d go in after him and watch him, and one day I caught him opening a loaf of bread I knew wasn’t his and pulling out a handful of bread slices. I again confronted him and he got mad and said he brought brought begals that morning. I asked him what that had to do with anything, and he said, we all owed him and had to pay him back. So because he brought treats that his coworkers ate, he felt he was entitled to take food from their lunches. This guy once sat down across from me at lunch with a fork and started trying to eat out of my Tupperware. When I wouldn’t let him, he got mad, turned red in the face, and started yelling “you ate a doughnut!!” as he tried to stab his fork into my food as I kept moving it out of the way. I got up and ran away with my food, and he kept yelling after me “But you ate a doughnut!”. It became an office joke, people would just say “but you ate a doughnut” as random replies that made no sense in conversational context and everyone would laugh. No one ate any treats he brought ever again, he still stole food, and the CEO installed a camera by the refrigerators.

    1. One more reason to be grateful*

      It’s stories like these that make me wonder how society ever functions as well as it does.

  191. Gato Blanco*

    I have dietary issues where I cannot eat milk products. This is known in my office that I had worked in a for a few years. As a year-end celebration, the higher ups decided to get a delicious meal catered from a local restaurant. They even sent around a survey beforehand to all employees to get an dietary restrictions on record so they could make sure everyone had something to eat.

    Well, the day arrives and the spread is laid out on a huge buffet table. It’s Italian food. Every single item is awash with cheese, cream, etc. I go and sit down with just a cup of water. The secretary sees me and says “OH! I forgot your food at home! I’ll have my daughter run it over here.” 25 minutes later, I am handed a lukewarm plastic tupperware of peeling overcooked rice pasta and jarred marinara. “It’s gluten-free for you!” I ate 3 bites and threw it in the trash.

    1. Firefighter (Metaphorical)nd*

      Oh my goodness. I’m so sorry! (On a side note: WHY do people think that any dietary restriction at all means you can’t eat gluten???)

      And on the theme of premeditated bad food…

      My gf and I once went to a conference where we knew the organiser slightly – the organiser was coeliac, and the registration form had so many options for dietary restrictions (this was 15 years ago when it was less common, at least in my experience, to have like vegan, kosher, halal, gluten-free, etc). We were really excited bc GF was not eating gluten at the time, and this had led to some really terrible food experiences. (Bear in mind that my GF is a foodie to the extent that I have seen her eat a second lunch if the first one wasn’t delicious enough on the grounds that the non-delicious lunch “didn’t count”). So we were like great! The organiser gets it! Decent gluten-free food ahoy!

      Spoiler: the organiser did not get it. All the food at the event was just generic cafeteria food in bains-maries, meat or vegetarian, none of the other options on the form catered for. We asked the organiser about the gluten-free thing and she said she never trusted caterers to do gluten-free properly, so she had brought her own personal supply of hummus and rice crackers in her handbag, and if GF wanted food, she could just ask for some.

      (Luckily this was taking place in our home city so we could make our own arrangements!)

  192. Lolllee*

    We had a giant Costco size sheet cake to celebrate some big milestone at work. One guy came in, said he couldn’t attend the celebration, and asked if he could take a piece to go. The organizer said, sure. He went and got a big sheet of cardboard and proceeded to slice off 1/2 this giant cake, slide it onto the cardboard, and carry it off. We all stood in stunned silence as he did this. No one said a word. Then we all looked at each other in shock after he left. There wasn’t enough cake to give everyone else a piece. Finally someone suggested he might have a big meeting with other coworkers and he was going to share with them. Nope. He sat at his desk with his headphones on watching utube videos on his work computer and ate the whole 1/2 cake by himself.

  193. pierrotlunaire*

    At the holiday pot luck, Jack, a very sweet but slightly impractical person, signed up that he would barbecue a whole turkey. He brought an outdoor grill, and set it up right by the back door and put his 12 pound still frozen turkey on at 10 am.
    He took it off the grill at 11:30, and placed it on the serving table. I was totally bewildered. How in the world could it be done? Someone said that the little pop-up timer in the breast had popped up, and so it was done. I still was flummoxed: this was a cheap little grill set, no ceramic kiln. It wasn’t airtight, and Jack kept lifting the lid anyway. I would be shocked if the interior of the grill even hit 300 degrees.
    At noon, we all assemble in the lunchroom, and there is no turkey to be seen. What happened? Jack went to carve it, and not only was it not done, it was still frozen solid except for the one quarter inch of skin on the outside. Fortunately, there was tons of food, so the frozen missing turkey made no difference.
    And as for the pop-up timer, Jack had placed the turkey breast down, which meant that the timer was probably the only thing that got any heat.

  194. One more reason to be grateful*

    I’m on vacation the day our staff has its mandatory potluck. I’m so freaking glad I’m missing this!

  195. Swix*

    I like potlucks, so I would occasionally organize one for the building or floor that I was working on (once every 18 months or so). Nothing fancy. “Bring whatever you want, I’ll cajole the office manager into giving me the box of paper plates and cutlery” level of effort. They were uneventful, and we never ran out of food.

    About a year after the last one, a slightly older, male project manager I was working with sent me and the admin who had helped with the last one (both women in a male dominated industry) an email that said, “I think it’s time for another potluck, don’t you?”

    I ignored it until the admin popped my my office later that day to confirm that we were on the same page. Then I emailed the PM back with my email template, the poster template, and “I’m so glad you want to organize the next potluck! Here’s everything you need!”

    You’ll be shocked to know that no potluck occurred.

  196. Fluff*

    So years ago in college for a graduate department potluck I was the bad potluck participant. I had forgotten but was extremely lucky – the hot donuts sign clicked on when I drove by the Krispy Kreme. I swerved into that joint like in a get away car chased by way too many cops. My mom, who I was dropping off at her book club, was not happy about the fancy maneuvers. I ran in, got some boxes of donuts, then stopped to get petrol and dropped off my mom.

    I deposited the donuts on the potluck alter and even scrawled “hot & fresh” on the top box. Then I heard the chatter. People were not happy because there was some serious sacrilege: Someone took a bite out of every single donut. A perfect bite in each perfect sugary circle.

    It was CSI worthy of dental records. Some folks cut the crime scene bites out and enjoyed some anyway. Others were annoyed that the fresh donuts were such a tease. No one confessed to being the donut muncher.

    I figured it out later that night when my mum called being particularly interested in how the potluck went. Criminals always have an interest in the crime scene I guess. I still am in awe how she managed the crime though. I literally was only out of the car to pump the petrol.

    1. nonee*

      You’re telling this like it’s a cute story, but it honestly sounds awful to me. I don’t see how it’s different from a colleague going into the fridge before the party and spitting on a dish in there. Yuck, and what a horrible waste.

  197. Kimberl*

    We were supposed to have a Thanksgiving potluck – so I didn’t bring my lunch. As I’m heading it the school secretary calls me to stop. They had ordered a fried turkey. When it was delivered – they were told it was fried in peanut oil. I taught 5th grade so we were the last to lunch. I had to assume everything was cross-contaminated. It was too late to go get something somewhere else – I would be late getting my kids. Thankfully we had specials 10 min after lunch so I ran to get something to eat – but leaving campus during the conference is frowned upon so I got told off.

    About 15 years later. The Sunshine committee is holding a vote on who to cater the end-of-year lunch. (A stupid thing to do. Let us get bring our own lunches and work on packing up our rooms instead of spending 2 hours celebrating the end of school). 5 Guys win. I tell the person organizing don’t worry I’ll bring my own lunch. She is a very sweet person and asks if they can accommodate me. They flat out refuse the contract bc they can’t accommodate me and don’t want to be responsible legally or ethically if something happens. The principal throws a public fit at the staff meeting saying that I forced them to go with the 2nd choice. The organizer stops him and sets the record straight. I had told her that 5 Guys had a reputation for being very ethical and not to ask for accommodations – I was more than willing to bring my own lunch.

  198. run mad; don't faint*

    One year, my partner’s workplace decided to have a potluck and barbeque at a near-ish state park. Staff and their families were to bring sides, and the company would provide the barbeque. This meant some staff were hauling their very large grills in a trailer out to the park so they could cook there.

    So there we all were, midsummer, 90+ degree heat, with our mayo based pasta salads and other assorted dishes spread out on the tables in the shade of the pavilion, waiting for the grills to arrive. They didn’t. And they didn’t again. We finally got word that the trailer had broken down. They didn’t want us eating the sides first, so we just sat…and waited. My partner and I quietly retrieved our dish and put it back in the cooler. We did notice a few others doing the same. But most of those dishes sat out in the 90+ heat with flies investigating them. The grills eventually arrived, about ninety minutes late. Then we had to wait for the meat to cook. The meat, when done, was fine I guess, though at this point I have no idea what it was. But my partner and I were very careful to only eat from side dishes that had been put away like ours or were well covered and not likely to be affected by the heat. I don’t think anyone got ill, but the company never did that again, thankfully.

  199. ZK*

    There are just so many examples of why NOT to eat at a pot luck on this site *Insert video of You Can’t Eat at Everybody’s House Guy*

  200. Nikkole82*

    when my MIL worked in office they had a holiday dessert bake off. Now my MIL makes great cakes, pies, cupcakes, cookies, bars, etc. Very tasty and pretty like you would find in a bakery. One lady brought a cake that was not so great (box mix, ok for at home but not in a competition against homemade treats!) so, it’s not like she would’ve won anyway but she tried to sabotage my MIL by telling everyone she let her cats jump on the counters when she cooked. My MIL has never had a cat and will never have a cat. People said they didn’t care because the cake was that good! but my MIL is very sensitive and the rumor hurt her deeply.

  201. TJ*

    My office in the U.K. went all out for the football World Cup one year. What started as a sweepstake end up with decorated desks and flag everywhere etc.

    We decided to have a World Cup food day where everyone would bring something from “their country”.

    The guy who had Spain wasn’t a cook so we suggested gazpacho. We caught him reading the recipe wrong and thinking he needed plums and tomato’s not plum tomatoes but we didn’t realise he didn’t know the difference between a clove and a bulb of garlic.

    This thing had 2 bulbs of raw garlic in it. You could smell it a mile away. We ended up daring each other on how much we could handle. I managed half a water cupful and I love spicy food.

    The next time something similar came up we told him store bought would be fine

  202. Leah*

    Had a disgruntled co-worker, a nurse at that, taint her chicken enchiladas with hair and gosh knows what else. She was fired shortly after. It’s the main reason I will not eat homemade potluck food or leave food in the refrigerator at work.

  203. Marge*

    Every year around the holidays my manager gets various gift baskets from vendors as a thank you. I’ve always been a little annoyed that he never offers to share them with the rest of the team (there’s only three of us), but one year at a coworker’s birthday celebration, instead of eating a cupcake he brought in one of those tuna in a pouch from said gift basket and ate that instead because he was on a diet with his fiance and cupcakes weren’t allowed.

    It was such a weird and off-putting thing, and so indicative of his management skills (or lack thereof). My other teammate brought it up a few months later (bless her) and he remarked that his fiance wasn’t even sticking that hard to the diet.

  204. Name (Required)*

    Holiday season’s our department’s crunch time, so they do ~fun theme~ days throughout the season. If you participate in enough, you can enter for a prize drawing.

    Usually at least two of these days would involve bringing in food (homemade or store-bought, either was fine). Then anyone in the department could try what participants brought and vote on the best ones to win additional prizes.

    One day, the theme was chocolate. Most people brought in brownies, some cookies and cupcakes. Couple people brought those holiday chocolate boxes.

    Except one dude. Instead, he went to the break room. There, we had company-provided free snack dispensers, which included unlimited M&Ms. He filled up two ramekin-sized cups and called that his contribution to the contest.

  205. Middle Aged Lady*

    Gruff, hard to get along with, Limbaugh-listening, unresponsive IT guy thought he was the king of holiday potlucks. He would take the role of carving the turkey and set up in the breakroom, taking so long I thought it wasn’t food-safe, chatting with all who came by, making a big show—and sticking succulent bits into his maw and licking his fingers during the process.
    His wife was famous for a nutloaf which tasted awful and almost certainly included a healthy portion of cat hair. Someone warned me off it my first year there. Feel free to add to your compilation!

  206. Anonymous Public Defender*

    My large public defense office does a Thanksgiving potluck every year. With 100+ people bringing food, the administration tries to divide up the cooking, so managers bring meats/main courses, and an email goes out to everyone else telling them which category of food to bring. And the categories, naturally, are split up among the different units in the office.

    So the Felony Division brings salads and appetizers. Misdemeanors brings traditional side dishes. Habeas brings bread and rolls. Capital Crimes brings desserts. Juvenile Defense brings drinks and ice. Mental Health brings plates and utensils.

    This isn’t a “potluck gone wrong” story, but the division of labor is very funny to me. “Wow, awesome pies this year—I need to thank the Capital Crimes unit.”

  207. zolk*

    My office caters anything where staff (or clients) need to eat so everything is safe, clean, and you can get special dietary restriction plates, which is great and the only reason I eat at these things. I grew up watching people sneeze directly on deviled eggs and whatnot at church potlucks and have refused to eat potluck food ever since.

  208. JACK*

    At our department’s Christmas Chili Cookoff a lady brought in “Vegan Grassfed Chili” and it was described as a vegetarian option. All the veg heads raved and asked what the non-meat meat was, only to be told that the COWS were vegan….not the chili.

  209. Summer Sugar*

    This doesn’t necessarily revolve around food itself, but it was a holiday potluck that involved a piñata containing lots of chocolates and hard candies (yum). We had a big group of coworkers and managers who were competing to try to break it open first. When one of them swung the stick, they lost their grip and it went flying right into the shin of another coworker, who could barely walk afterwards had to go to the emergency room. We were able to eventually break the piñata but, after that, all piñatas were banned.

  210. EchoGirl*

    I have one that’s pretty wholesome (that I guess is not a true “potluck” but still involves bringing in food), as well as being something of a counterpoint to a certain AAM classic. It was a co-worker’s birthday and in my department, we’d take it in turns to buy cake for the birthday person. There was no official rotation, someone would just volunteer to do it and that would be that — this was a pretty awesome group and no one took advantage, so we’d never needed to create a formal system. Anyway, for this particular go-around, I offered to be the one to buy the cake. It’s important to note here that my coworker only made one, pretty general request (something like she’d prefer it not be chocolate IIRC), so there was definitely a lot of latitude in my decision-making. What I ended up getting was a salted caramel cake, something I’d never seen before but I thought it seemed like something the coworker would like based on what I knew of her.

    Come the day of her birthday, I bring in the cake and on the way in I run into a different coworker. This coworker had a job that took her out of the office a lot and hadn’t been in on the day we discussed who was bringing the cake, so she decided to bring one because she didn’t want to chance us not having one. I’m surprised but pretty much take it in stride, saying hey, now we can offer people options. “So, what kind did you get?” I ask her.

    “Oh, it was really unusual. It was a salted caramel cake.”

    Yep, my coworker and I had somehow managed to buy identical cakes from different grocery store chains on the opposite sides of town. We were kind of stunned for a second and then just laughed. It was one of those things we couldn’t have done if we tried. In the end, I remembered I had a separate potluck event (outside of work) a few days later, so we used my coworker’s cake for the birthday and I took mine home to use for the other potluck. It just baffled both of us how we could manage to pull something like that off with absolutely zero coordination.

  211. Jenny Islander*

    My husband’s former job (he is now disabled) did potlucks right, and so does our church, so I don’t have any stories about that–but I do have a funny one about an office banquet.

    This was a company-wide to-do that people flew in for. The food was delicious. But then, the dessert was brought out.

    And it was. A pear. A crunchy, slippery pear. In port wine sauce that fumed up your nose.

    And I was pregnant.

    I quietly told the server not to give me one, because it wasn’t safe for me to eat. I figured I’d just order a Shirley Temple with extra cherries and have that for dessert. She nodded and walked away. Meanwhile, conversations were dropping all over the banquet hall, because nobody liked the crunchy boozy pear.

    And then! Back comes the server, followed by another server who was pushing a squeaky little cart that had a ginormous pan of tiramisu on it. And she cut and served me a piece of that tiramisu, and they took the pan back to the kitchen. Squeek-squeek-squeek!

    The other people at our table looked like they were going to cry. I just tucked into my tiramisu.

    Conversation swelled with indignation after that. There was a verbal riot. NOBODY liked the crunchy boozy pear and EVERYBODY wanted what the pregnant lady was having. Eventually they got it, too!

    So that’s how my first baby got everybody a dessert upgrade.

  212. Avid Reader*

    In the state in which I live, the state workers are legendary for their privileged contract which makes firing them almost impossible: sloth? No problem. Incompetent? We can promote you to an imaginary side job we just made up. And yet, a manager, and a friend, told me about a potluck incident that resulted in a termination. It seems that one department was having a potluck for their group. Another state worker, who was not a member of this department, made a ruckus about not having been included, such that threats of bodily harm were made. Something to the effect of “Why she can’t keep me out…@#%&!” Evidently, THAT will get you fired. An entire career gone, over a perceived potluck exclusion.

  213. Lady Knittington*

    We used to do ‘bring and share’ lunches (list of stuff goes out; everyone brings something. We’re in the UK).
    One lunch, one of the guys who came from somewhere outside the UK (possibly Hong Kong or China; I forget) brought in an egg, with the half developed chick still inside, cracked it open and ate the contents. There was one bit he didn’t eat, but it grossed me out so badly that I don’t remember which. Possibly the beak.

    1. Turanga Leela*

      Balut! Common in the Philippines, although the internet tells me it’s also a thing in parts of China, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

      1. Splendid Colors*

        There’s a local egg farm that mostly sells regular eggs, but they also sell duck eggs and balut. We have substantial communities from all those areas (Filipino, Southeast Asian countries).

  214. kimberly*

    When I was a newer nurse I worked night shift in a unit in a teaching hospital that was a tough rotation for 3rd/4th year surgical residents. The worked 24hr shifts, one day on/one day off for a two months (their months were staggered). Very high acuity patients, probably the toughest rotation of their residency.

    The unit was split in two with the majority of the beds on one side of the hall and (for some stupid reason) a handful of beds across the hall.

    We had a steady group of 4 charge nurses, and one of the two night shift charge nurses was … let’s say a bit competitive. During her tenure, it became tradition to have a potluck on the resident’s last night in the unit. I don’t think she started this (though she might have) but she fully embraced it. Both charge nurses did this, and there was a one-sided competition to see which shift had the best potlucks: competitive charge nurse or her counterpart.

    One month I was in the smaller unit and had a patient with transfer orders that I had to get out because my new patient (who would be going in that room) was in the OR. The other two nurses I was working with were busy with their own patients and I needed a little help to get my transfer out in time to turn the room around for the OR patient. For the nurses out there, this was a surgical ICU and our patients did not go to PACU, they came straight to us.

    Competitive charge nurse came by to check on me (read: find out if I’d gotten the patient out yet) and I let her know I needed a little help. It has been too long and I’m not sure what I needed help with but I think it was something administrative like getting the bed my patient was transferring to cleaned/ready or getting the receiving nurse to take report. She told me that I’d have to take care of it myself because it was potluck night and she had to get the potluck going. So I did. It ended up being a non-issue; the OR patient had some complications and he didn’t get to me until just before shift change so there was plenty of time but it should have been a lot closer than it was.

    However, the entire situation soured me a bit on the potluck thing and I wasn’t as enthusiastic about participating in the future.

    A month or so later I was working a bunch of overtime and just didn’t have the energy to make something for the potluck so I didn’t sign up for anything. Of note, a friend of mine had recently been named the 2nd night charge nurse. Competitive charge nurse thought I was shirking my dish making duty because I wanted to make her look bad so that my fried would look good. She also gave me a lecture about how all of the residents worked hard and they all “deserved” to get a good send off even if we didn’t like them personally. Really. The night of the potluck came and every time I went to the break room for anything she ran back there to make sure I wasn’t eating any of the food.

    At some point during all of this a group of nurses that got along well and were working a stretch of nights together decided one night to all bring a different component of a salad the next night and they’d all share a big fancy salad for lunch. I wasn’t working that first night so I wasn’t participating but it sounded like a nice idea to me. Not to competitive charge nurse. She went into the break room while they were eating and lectured them about how if they were going to have a potluck they had to make it available to everyone. The resident on that night was a smartass and after he heard about the lecture he went up to her and asked where it was that he had to go to sign up to bring his lunch the rest of the month.

    It has been over 20 years and I still think of her when people start talking about potlucks.

    On a side note, one of our nursing assistants would always sign up to bring the drinks and would then go and raid dietary for the mini cans of shasta.

  215. Hungry Magpie*

    Back in my grad school days, due to an administrative quirk my program fell under the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology (LMP), despite not really being related to either field. Despite this, us non-clinical students were required to attend the clinical LMP Grand Rounds, which featured either extremely obscure findings in clinical chemistry, chunks of excised diseased organs/tissues, or surprise photos of corpses in various states of dissection (none of which were even remotely relevant to our research!). As part of Grand Rounds, there was always a hospitality trolley, which included coffee, tea, and a large platter of cookies. As starving grad students, we always appreciated the cookies…except there was a catch. The non-clinical folks like me were (quite rightly) Absolutely Forbidden to wear our lab coats anywhere outside of the lab, but for some reason a few of the physicians never abided by this rule. One of the regular attendees of Grand Rounds was a pathologist of the I Must Wear A Lab Coat At All Times So People Know I’m A Doctor variety. This guy not only wore his lab coat into the seminar, but he would drag his coat sleeve through the platter of cookies, then pick up, examine, and put back at least three or four cookies before selecting the one he actually took. Every. single. week. Given what we knew this guy did for a day job, even the grad students were repulsed and started looking to see if this guy had arrived yet before taking cookies – if he had, none of us would have any! Teaching the new grad students to look out for Dr. Nastysleeves actually became part of the lore that the senior grad students would pass down to the newbies. Folks, if even starving grad students (who would happily chow down on warm egg salad sandwiches that had been sitting out alllll day because hey, they’re free!) won’t eat your free food, there’s definitely a problem. My stomach still heaves a bit when I think about it!

  216. Randy Tom*

    I have a sensitive stomach and hate potlucks and my boss gives me shit for not wanting to participate. I like my coworkers but I have no idea if their kitchen is clean and how they cook.

  217. Expiring Cat Memes*

    My old workplace was in the Asian neighborhood and we had an abundant choice of authentic and delicious lunch options right on our doorstep.

    Whenever we went out as a group, there was one guy who always had to order the weird thing on the menu. With food restrictions and budget and whatnot, everyone would normally order and pay for their own meal and maybe offer a taste-sized portion if someone else really wanted to try it. But weird food guy always wanted the food put in the middle to freely share. We quickly learned to insist we stick to our own though because he’d only eat a bite of his boiled chicken feet or inedible-spice-level or whatever and then offload the rest while helping himself to large serves of our far more appetizing food. He was so obnoxious about it too, not just snarfing up everyone else’s lunch but getting derisive with those who refused to share if he was going to order a weird thing again.

    It wasn’t a cost issue, he just thought this was the appropriate way to expand his food horizons apparently.

  218. don't shame me until you try it*

    I took roadkill rabbit in a wonderful marinara sauce with bowtie pasta to a work potluck. It was devoured. Same with wild game stew. (Deer, not groundhog) But no one was aware the wonderful ‘chicken’ was a local rabbit.

  219. Save Bandit*

    I’m telling on myself with this one. When I was fresh out of college at my first “real” job, I was so excited to bring a baked dip to my first office potluck. Our office had an oven, so I just assembled the dip and planned to bake it for the lunch-time meal so it would be nice and warm. Well, I should have paid slightly more attention to the actual container I was using because I’d put everything into a plastic bowl. Not sure if you’ve ever tried baking something in a plastic container….not the best idea. The bowl and its contents melted all over the oven and set off the office fire alarms. The fire department had to come. The office smelled atrocious. Somehow I was able to get the oven to come clean after that, but it always smelled faintly of plastic bowl and broken dreams.

  220. TiredbutItried*

    I worked for a team that routinely did potlucks as a way to keep morale up and we all genuinely got along. This one guy from a different department would walk down our aisle and snag food from our potluck which was not open to outside members. We never quite figured out how to handle it but he was generally glared at the other times he would walk down our aisle scouting for food.

  221. Jack Straw from Wichita*

    I’m sure I’m not the only one who this has happened to, but the fallout was epic.

    The organizer, Bianca, would not allow us to sign up for “cookies”–it needed to be the exact type of cookie so there were no duplications. If you tried to sign up for peanut butter cookies but someone else already had, she’d tell you that that cookie was already covered and you had to find something else to contribute.

    On the day of the carry-in, six different people brought brownies, and she flipped out. She literally hid five of the plates of brownies so we could “enjoy the brownies from the person who fulfilled their commitment” first. Once that first plate was gone, she released the other plates in order of 1. someone who signed up for a different dessert and 2. someone who didn’t sign up at all. Her stated intention was that the people who didn’t sign up had to take all of their brownies home, so she was upset when… people ate brownies. The last plate ended up coming out toward the end of the day, and Bianca was visibly mad about it when she all but slammed the plate down on the table.

    That night, everyone got a scathing email about shirking responsibilities and doing what you say you’ll do. It included a thank you to the signed up brownie bringer and the names of five people who either brought in brownies that should have made good on their commitments for cookies, pie, cake, etc. Bianca was never allowed to organize a carry-in again.

    The moral of the story it that you should let people contribute to a carry-in in whatever way they can. Also, people really brownies.

    1. Jack Straw from Wichita*

      I see two typos–here’s the good version.
      ____________________________
      I’m sure I’m not the only one who this has happened to, but the fallout was epic.

      The organizer, Bianca, would not allow us to sign up for “cookies”–it needed to be the exact type of cookie so there were no duplications. If you tried to sign up for peanut butter cookies but someone else already had, she’d tell you that that cookie was already covered and you had to find something else to contribute.

      On the day of the carry-in, six different people brought brownies, and she flipped out. She literally hid five of the plates of brownies so we could “enjoy the brownies from the person who fulfilled their commitment” first. Once that first plate was gone, she released the other plates in order of 1. someone who signed up for a different dessert and 2. someone who didn’t sign up at all. Her stated intention was that the people who didn’t sign up had to take all of their brownies home, so she was upset when… people ate the brownies. The last plate ended up coming out toward the end of the day, and Bianca was visibly mad about it when she all but slammed the plate down on the table.

      That night, everyone got a scathing email about shirking responsibilities and doing what you say you’ll do. It included a thank you to the signed up brownie bringer and the names of five people who either never signed up or brought in brownies in lieu of the cookies, pie, cake, etc. they’d signed up for. Bianca was never allowed to organize a carry-in again.

      The moral of the story it that you should let people contribute to a carry-in in whatever way they can. Also, people really like brownies.

  222. Raida*

    I’ve got a meh to great potluck story.

    We had Australia’s Biggest Morning Tea event a few years in a row.
    People brought in baked goodies, it was decorated in a kitchen/conference room, you paid a gold coin ($1 or $2) to get in. And just eat whatever you want.

    There was confusion – do I pay for each item? How many do I get for this price?
    There was low level outrage – What a waste of my time baking, people are just eating piles of food! I spent more on ingredients that is being donated. People pay the same to eat phenomenal food as they do bog standard plain biscuits! I cooked three things, and some people did nothing! It looks a bit sad doesn’t it?

    On the fourth year one of the very good bakers approached the organisers and said Hey, you’re putting in a lot of effort here, all the food is great, just charge more. Charge everyone $5 or $10 to get in – even if you get half the number willing to pay, you’d end up with more donations.

    It was an *event* with a queue of people to get in, team managers paying for their entire team’s entry, tables had stands on them so food was piled up!

    But Steve’s food was absent. Steve was a bit worried that someone in management had just taken it – we’re talking one full sized cake and a half dozen individual desserts.
    Context: The individual ones were a hemispherical chocolate shell approx 4 inch across with layers inside of mocha mouse, blood orange jelly, wafer, chocolate cake, with a baked biscuit base, once assembled drizzled with liquid dark chocolate and topped with tiny candied orange segments. We’re talking several hours of work for his baking at a very high level of quality, renowned in the office. Certainly believable that someone would ‘just’ take it.

    No, nobody stole it. It was put aside as being too good to be on the tables. The organisers auctioned off Steve’s food! The cake went for $60 (a manager buying for her team to enjoy) and the individual ones went for $10+ apiece. And the next year they did it again, being able to list out the total raised for charity and the portion of that from Steve’s baking :]

    The event went from people baking feeling a bit hard done by to encouraging even more food to be brought in and hundreds of dollars raised. And there’s a real genuinely happy excitement in the room waiting to see what Steve made, ready for the auction.

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