Free Pop and Tampons

I sincerely appreciate two things that my office provides free for employees. Pop and tampons.

Even as a grown woman, I don't want to be obvious by walking from your office to the bathroom with your whole purse. At my daughter's junior high, the girls use pencil pouches. Oh man! I hope I didn't just blow their cover! Hopefully in a generation or two, girls will stop caring about who knows when it's their time, but as for my generation and those before me, we go to great lengths to conceal it! In other offices, I hid a tampon in my sleeve, pocket or waistband. If I were stopped on my way to the bathroom by a coworker, I would pray that the tampon wouldn't slip out of my skirt's waistband and fall at my feet. If that were to happen, my plan was to quickly step on it.

The other free thing in my office is pop, or soda to all of you who aren't from the Midwest. I went through a phase where I said soda because I admit it does seem like a better name for a beverage. But then I decided not to hide who I am, a full blood Iowan, so I'm back to saying pop.

So yeah, we get free pop, Gatorade or green tea. We all appreciate it very much and don't abuse the privilege. However, I do break a couple rules that are related to it. First, there is this sign on the recycle bin.

BWAAH HA HA! I NEVER rinse my pop cans. I used to rinse them if there was someone else in the kitchen watching me recycle, but I don't even do that any more. I took a quick office survey to see if everyone else rinses their cans. I only made it around to one other person, and Kelly doesn't rinse her cans either. I do shake them out, which I feel is a good compromise.

Here's what's sitting on top of our recycle bin.

Clever little cardboard houses for our pop tabs, which will be donated to the Ronald McDonald House Foundation.

I used to not take my tabs off because of a bad experience helping with a pop tab drive on my college campus when I suffered from some painful finger cuts. But then I found out a lady in my office goes through the pop cans before they are recycled to remove any tabs that got missed. That's what you call dedication to a cause! I have perfected my technique and take my tabs off.

I'm a fan of the Ronald McDonald House, and I have actually stayed there. But you know what? Those two cardboard houses have been sitting there for about a year and are only filled up to about the grass. I'm sure we'll get enough tabs to get to $5 or so worth of pop tabs in another couple years. I wonder how much it costs to print and distribute those cute little houses and how that compares to the value of the average number of tabs each one brings in. Huh. Well, I'm done wondering about that because I have other things to wonder about. Do you ever tell someone that you wonder about something and then that's the first and last time you ever think about it? I do that all the time.

Ok, now for the BIG rule I sometimes break when I'm mad or frustrated at work. You know how sometimes it just makes you feel better to break a rule, right? I grab a free pop and quietly approach a certain door in the back corner of our office, away from all the offices, cubes, and heavy foot traffic.

I open the pop and walk around in the room that clearly states "Absolutely no liquid in this room!" I've never spilled, and it really does calm me down because I feel like I've gotten some sort of revenge.

OK, I admit it's not as crazy as you might think. That that room used to house servers and still has that funky raised floor. But now our servers are in a different locked room, and this room is just where we keep our signs and literature. The weird thing is that the actual server room does not have this sign on the door. I also wonder why they keep the server room locked when there are only 15 of us here and our whole office is locked at all times. Maybe our IT guy knows there's a chance I might go in there with an open container of liquid. A very good chance.