Walkin' on the Boulevard

This is a story of broken dreams.

I am a Deputy Financial Controller, which means I report to the region’s Financial Controller. It’s an easy thing to do, since his office is just two doors down from my cube (ok, it’s technically one door down since the office-in-between is also a cube and by design, lacks a door. But I digress.) My supervisor unfortunately does not enjoy the same reporting proximity, as his boss sits in San Diego. But every few months or so, she comes to visit us here in the Commonwealth, and that nearly guarantees one extra fringe benefit with my job:

FANCY. LUNCH.

There are two key aspects that are involved in making your mid-day meal a fancy lunch. The first important part is that you’re not paying. For 255 out of the 260 workdays in the year, you find yourself responsible for providing your own lunch, whether it be bought in the café or brought from home. So when the opportunity arises to eat on someone else’s dime, you seize it like there’s no tomorrow (or dinner.) Secondly, a fancy lunch is never held at one of your regular lunchtime haunts. It is often in a location that you would never even consider eating at, since you try not to spend more than 6 bucks on your whole meal.

If your starter salad costs 6 dollars, you know it’s a fancy lunch.

Because we dine out so infrequently at my company, it’s okay to have the occasional fancy lunch. If we were a lobbying firm, then I’d want my tunafish to be salmon, my carrot sticks to be 14 karats, and that juice box would be Capri Sun – anyone who drink fruit punch out of a silver reflective bag must buy their suits on Rodeo Drive. So when I was told yesterday we’d be going out to lunch today at steakhouse extraordinaire – MORTON’s – my hopes were as high as a Shaun White 1080 board grab.(I’m an Olympic geek. Sue me.)

But before I could go spend my lunch hour engorged in a porterhouse of NY strip, I had to sit through an excruciating group training session about a new project management computer system we are about to roll out. When it comes to coming up with the guest list for these things, the instructors assume that no matter the topic, it’s always good to have a finance perspective on things. That’s sound for the most part. Except that I end up at trainings that have about 8.2% relevance to my daily tasks and responsibilities. But I can persevere. I got steak on the other end of this class.

Or do I?

What went from a glorious daydream of the best lunch in months started to slip at about 11:15 during training. The plan had been to have the finance team exit stage right after this module was completed at 11:30. But then an ad-hoc lesson was tacked on and squeezed in right before the lunch break, which would now be pushed back 30 minutes until noon. For 37 of the employees in the room, this mattered little. Their bag lunches that were being provided via catering would just wait patiently outside the door a little longer. For the 6 of us, apprehension seriously started to set in.

The powers-that-be in the back of the room, the aforementioned supervisors, saw the clock and started to whisper. It was not looking good. I’m not great at reading lips, but I shuddered when I saw the word “tomorrow” mouthed from one to another. Hell, at this point, I was hoping they had said anything else, even “Sbarro.”

Looks like lunch has been postponed, as I sit here eating a hastily constructed ham sandwich from the bag lunch table.

Talk about a fall from grace.