Let’s talk a little bit about break room etiquette. I’m sure we all have hilarious office break room stories about someone’s tuna fish sandwich stankin’ up the refrigerator or dirty dishes left in the sink, but this sign recently appeared on the plastic silverware tray at WBAP:

I find this sign especially troubling. You see, this is not a preventive sign like “Remember to put your name on your food.” This is a sign that would only appear if someone had actually been caught putting spoons back in the tray.

It wouldn’t be an issue if, say, a grizzled, Depression-era rancher had been reusing spoons because he remembers a time when you couldn’t get plastic spoons because of the war. I do not believe we have any of them on staff, so I decided to investigate.

My co-workers were only able to tell vague, second-hand anecdotes about dirty spoons appearing in the tray or someone stirring a cup of soup and then putting the spoon back.

I suspect someone at our sister station, KSCS. KSCS is on a different floor, but I’ve recently noticed more sales and promotions people from the third floor milling about our break room.

“They took away our ice machine,” one of them told me. I won’t mention his name because I don’t know it. “Beside, you guys always have cookies or something. It’s like Shangri-La up here.”

Yes, WBAP is the region’s leader in news and information, so we are frequently presented with bagels or pastries and a selection of the region’s tartest jams. We do not apologize for that.

KSCS, while a stalwart member of the market, is only the second most popular country station in town. You, therefore, shall go wanting.

Also, I learned the ice machine on the third floor went away because it had become infested with roaches. They’re such savages down there.

My solution: start taking plastic spoons directly from the box in the cabinet. Better yet, I may bring my own real spoon from home and store it in a velvet pouch in the newsroom. The location of the spoon-pouch would be kept secret.