The Snack Moocher

Every office has a few snack moochers. These are the people who almost never brings their own snacks and somehow never have change for the vending machines. These snack moochers have a sixth sense that alerts them to whenever snacks are visible on your desk, or whenever you have just purchased something out of the vending machines. Candy bars are something that they always claim the rights to half of, since surely you are not going to eat the whole thing.

For the purpose of this blog, whenever I refer to a coworker of mine, either past or present, I will use their Jungle title rather than their real names. In this case I am referring to my co-worker "The Hungry Hungry Hippo". Now the Hungry Hungry Hippo is a nice enough person, but she never seems to go to the grocery store, or if she does go, she never thinks to buy a few snacks to bring to work. She has hit me up for snacks often enough that I have learned to never leave any food on my desk, and if she asks me for a snack I innocently deny having anything. If I get anything from the vending machine, I stash it under my blouse or in a pocket before I return to the office. Yes, I do want the whole candy bar.

When Hungry Hungry Hippo ran out of luck with my stash of snacks, she started in on one of my cubicle neighbors who had a habit of happily munching all day on potato chips, lemon cake, and sugar cookies. After several days of losing a lot of her treasured snacks to Hungry Hungry Hippo's voracious appetite, my cubicle neighbor began hiding her snacks in a file cabinet drawer. Unfortunately, this was no deterrent to the Hungry Hungry Hippo, as she happened to discover the snack filled drawer and began helping herself to the goodies. Now she had her own little pantry stocked by someone else.

One day my cubicle neighbor had stashed some lemon meringue snack pack puddings in the file cabinet drawer. You should of seen the look of glee on Hungry Hungy Hippos face when she stumbled across the puddings on one of her snack raids. Naturally my cubicle neighbor was less than thrilled with Hungry Hungry Hippos discovery and groused all day about "The Great Pudding Theft".

Now, as you may have guessed, I was getting a lot of amusement out of all of this, after all, my snacks were safely hidden away in my laptop case, and Hungry Hungry Hippo seemed quite happy with her new snack source. The only person who was unhappy with this arrangement was my cubicle neighbor, who lamented daily about the Hippo's snack mooching. Being the practical joker that I am, I couldn't resist mentioning to Hungry Hungry Hippo one day, that I was sure my cubicle neighbor had replenished the stock of puddings in the drawer. Hungry Hippo's face lit up and she rushed to my cubicle neighbor's file cabinet, where, sure enough there was more pudding, shoved way into the back of the drawer, under a phone book. My cubicle neighbor was furious, and threatened to severely maim whoever had told Hungry Hippo about the pudding. I feigned ignorance to the violation, and hid behind my computer screen the rest of the day.

A few days later I was starting to get tired of my cubicle neighbor's constant complaining about the snack mooching raids, so I decided to do a little experiment and give Hungry Hungry Hippo her own little 4 pack of puddings and see if she would offer to share them with my cubicle neighbor. I stopped on my way home and purchased the puddings and then delivered them to the Hippo's desk early the next morning. All morning I anxiously awaited word of the pudding gift, but 2 hours had passed and I had heard nothing from the Hippo. Finally, just before lunchtime, I heard my cubicle neighbor laughing and she asked me if I had given the Hippo some pudding. When I admitted that I had, she told me that she had just gotten a email from the Hippo thanking her for the pudding. I then went to the Hippo's cubicle and informed her that the puddings were given to her by me, but I was sure that my cubicle neighbor would appreciate getting a pudding. Hungry Hungry Hippo smiled and told me that she did not want to open the puddings at work and was going to take them home to enjoy them. Boy did that backfire! She never even thanked me for the pudding! I went back and told my cubicle neighbor to find a new hiding place for her snacks as there was no hope for the Hungry Hungry Hippo ever changing her ways.


There are other snack moochers in the office, but Hungry Hungry Hippo is by far the worst. I welcome you to share stories about your own snack moochers

Welcome to the Jungle