Mystery Cookie: One day you come into work and find a cookie mysteriously played on your desk. Grateful to whoever left this anonymous cookie, you eat it. The next morning you come in and find another cookie. This continues for months until one day a different object is left — and this time there’s a note.
It started on a warm April morning.
Waiting for me at my desk was a large chocolate chip cookie. No note. No nothing. Just a chocolate chip cookie with a paper napkin tucked underneath it.
I asked around, wondering if it had been someone’s birthday — or if one of the interns had decided to bake everyone cookies. No birthdays, no overager interns… in fact, no one had even seen anyone come to my desk with said cookie. I eventually dropped the conversation, ate the delicious cookie, and went on with my life.
Except that the next day, yet another cookie awaited me, this time chocolate chocolate chip. Again, no birthdays, no desperate-for-approval interns, no higher-ups attempting to make nice with their underlings. Just a lone cookie and a paper napkin.
This continued on, day after day, week after week, month after month. Each day, a new cookie awaited me at my desk. Sometimes it was chocolate chip, sometimes it was oatmeal raisin, sometimes it was a sugar cookie… I must’ve had every potential variation of cookie-ness brought to my desk, anonymously and secretively.
Before I knew it, October rolled around. I had gotten quite used to having a cookie every morning, although my pants were not used to the extra bit of me it now had to contain. One chilly morning, just a week before Halloween’s, I came to my desk and found its top completely sans cookie. Instead, a plain white envelope rested on top of my keyboard. I picked up the envelope, carefully opened it, and emptied the contents of it into my hand. Out dropped a red and black keycard and a folded note. With the envelope in one hand and the keycard in the other, I opened up the note, which read:
Dearest Desk Dweller,
Have you been straying from your diet? Are those extra sweets causing you to gain extra pounds? Come to the Scorpion Gym & Training Center and get back into shape! We’re only $75 a month! Come shed that excess weight the Scorpion way! Use your FREE KEYCARD to try us out!
(Account will automatically be billed upon use of keycard).
I looked around the floor, wondering if anyone else was in on this. I waited to see someone’s head pop up with a knowing smirk. Instead, I was met with business going along as usual. Much like the cookie situation before, everyone seemed oblivious to what was going on.
I looked at the keycard, I looked at the note, I looked at where my cookie delivery once was, and I looked down at the constricting waistband of a pair of pants that stopped fitting me five pounds ago.
“Clever girl,” was all I could say, attempting a British accent like I was the explorer in Jurassic Park. All that got was a few inquisitive glances from my cube mates. I smiled awkwardly in response and proceeded to sit down at my desk — but not before unbuttoning the top button in my pants and finding out where this Scorpion club was located.
That (Not This) Abby Rose 