Sandra, Latina, late twenties, makes herself a cup of tea.
Sandra: You wouldn't believe the things that office people put into their bodies. It's really gross. Kaleb, this guy who sits in the cube next to me, eats Dinty Moore beef stew at least three times a week, the kind that you can just put in the microwave, packaging and all. He buys it from the vending machines. It doesn't even have to be refrigerated. That can't be good for you. Yesterday I asked him, "Kaleb, can't you make a sandwich? Your Dinty Moore is killing me." He just laughed because he thought I was joking. We make jokes all the time. He's always sending me funny videos from YouTube, kitties jumping out of boxes, silly babies, fat girls falling down, but I told him, "I'm not joking it smells like brown gravy and feet," and he just laughed some more. I think it's disrespectful, eating stinky nasty food in an office with poor ventilation. You don't see me bringing in menudo or cooking catfish. I don't even like menudo. My grandma made it at our house every Christmas Eve when I was little. It smelled so bad. My dad hated it too. He would take me and my little brother to a movie so we wouldn't have to smell the tripas boiling. Anyway, the people here are pigs. It doesn't matter what it is, if it's on the snack table they're going to eat it. You'd think they didn't have food of there own. Last week somebody put a tray of deli meat and cheeses that was left over from some meeting. You could tell it had already been sitting out for a while, half of the meat was already gone. What was left was just sitting there all scattered about a bed of wilted lettuce. The worst part was the cup mayonnaise with a bunch of crumbs in it. Oh my God. I need to stop talking about it. I might throw up. Not really. But seriously, cookies, candies, chips, doughnuts, that stuff is always showing up. How come nobody ever in brings quinoa salad or homemade bran muffins? I made a whole wheat zucchini bread sweetened with fructose once and brought it in on a Friday. You'd think I'd put poop in it. People kept asking me, "Is this healthy? I don't want it if it's healthy. I don't do healthy." What I wanted to tell them was, "you should do healthy, your pants are too tight."