Ten Second Rule

I was sitting at my desk at work and, as usual, nibbling on various foodstuffs...this time it was a semi-healthy version of trail mix with blueberries, currants, cashews, almonds, and yogurt chips that taste like white chocolate...when I dropped a yogurt chip on the floor. I picked it up, annoyed that I’d dropped my favorite piece and threw it in the garbage can.

If I’d been home, I would have picked it up, blew the dust...or God knows whatever else may have attached itself to it off, and eaten it. You know, the Ten Second Rule. Which by the way, is a stoopid rule if there ever was one. And if the Ten Second Rule applies at home, why doesn’t it apply at work? You never see people at work applying the Ten Second Rule...only in the privacy of one’s home does it apply.

Do we think that nobody at work knows we use the Ten Second Rule at home and they’d be horrified to learn that we’re a bunch of white trash slobs who eat off the floor when nobody’s looking? I bet the most hoity-toity among us would wrinkle their nose in disgust if we applied the Ten Second Rule at work but would be right there with us in the privacy of their home scarfing the last bit of a Hershey Bar from their floor.

I don’t know who thought up the time limit for the Ten Second Rule. Does it really matter if something has spent a couple of seconds on the floor? Is it less dirty than if it’s been there for twenty minutes? It just seems wrong, doesn’t it? I mean, you’d never walk across your floor, see some M&M’s under the table while you’re vacuuming, reach out and grab ‘em and eat ‘em before they could get sucked up into the Dyson, would you? Of course not...all because we’ve been led to believe that if you don’t see it fall, retrieve it before the allotted ten seconds is up, and blow it off with the poisonous gas we exhale into the atmosphere, it’s no longer fit for human consumption.

If I actually took the time to think about it, the floor at work is probably much cleaner than my floor at home. I have cats and dogs in and out of my house all the time. But still...depending on the foodstuff of the moment...I’ll observe the Ten Second Rule at home.

I have to admit the content of the droppage has much to do with whether or not observance of The Ten Second Rule can be followed. I mean, nobody in their right mind is going to eat a gob of oatmeal off the floor because it’s texture invites foreign substances (like cat hair...dog hair...dust balls) to cling to it.

You could blow like Katrina and still not feel like you’d done a good enough job to actually eat it.

Moist foods are definitely not good candidates for observance of The Ten Second Rule. Unless you happen to be a kid...they don’t care...they’ll pick up ice cream off the floor and eat it. It never seems to hurt them either, does it? Of course, mom’s far and wide cringe when they see them do this and nearly gag when they have to pull the hair out of the kids mouth that attached itself to the fallen ice cream.

I think I’m going to test observance of The Ten Second Rule at work and see what people do. Just to see if people will start talking about how I picked up food off the floor and ate it. Then I’m going to start going to the bathroom...walk into a stall and wait for someone to come in...then I’m going to let them see me leave without washing my hands. I wonder how long it’ll take before the Bathroom Police start tattling to co-workers that I don’t wash my hands.

It's the stoopidist thing...