and Words
Empty spaces, what are we living for?
Abandoned places, I guess we know the score, on and on
Does anybody know what we are looking for?
Another hero, another mindless crime
Behind the curtain, in the pantomime
Hold the line
Does anybody want to take it anymore?
The show must go on
The show must go on, yeah
Inside, my heart is breaking
My makeup may be flaking
But my smile still stays on
Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.
There’s a tradition at Microsoft. Upon your work anniversary you bring a pound of m&m’s to work for each year of service. Yes, you read that right. That’s one pound for first anniversary, two pounds for your second anniversary, etc. Initially, I didn’t participate in this tradition for my first few years at the company. In fact, I subsequently started to do this on my 18-year anniversary. That year, another teammate celebrated his own 18-year anniversary at that time and there were 36 pounds of candy in that hallway. It was epic.
I first remember shopping for those 18 pounds of m&m’s with my (now) wife. When she then asked how I was planning to dispense them, I simply responded with “Oh, I was just going to put them in a bowl.” She was horrified and insisted that I come up with something different. I still had a few weeks to plan. Finally, this is when the idea of the water jug started; that was my personal twist on the tradition.
Meanwhile, through the years there were a number of milestones. On my 23rd anniversary, I marveled at the fact that I had lost 23 pounds since the year before. The weight certainly felt heavy when I was carrying it, yet I was carrying on my person a year before.
Moreover, there were a couple instances where I ordered some custom m&m’s and threw them in with the rest of the bunch. Yes, you can do that and print practically anything on them. They start at $50 for two pounds. I joked that custom m&m’s are more expensive than lobster.
For a number of years, I even weighted the jug at the end of each day out of morbid curiosity. I tabulated the results and sent out the graph. In short, the trend showed that consumption started strong and then slowed. Finally, as we approached the end of the jug (and it was mostly the plain m&m’s left), the rate jumped again. I was never sure if it was a function of the plain m&m’s or people just wanted to complete it.
For decades, I simply put one figurative foot in front of the other and continued to work, day after day; the years accumulated. I continued this tradition through my 28-year anniversary. Enclosed is a picture of the jug with 28 pounds of m&m’s; that’s a five-gallon jug. That was in July 2019.