Work relationships are weird.  I like the people I work with, but you know how work is.  If you want to get anything done, you have to establish boundaries.  There are places you don't want to go with coworkers, no matter how much you adore them.  Thankfully, healthy work relationships don't require the degree or kinds of disclosure healthy personal relationships do.  After all, when the closing bell rings on Friday afternoon, nobody likes long goodbyes.  The rule is: keep it simple.  And don't get too attached.  If you leap out of bed Monday morning dying to get to your cubicle, something's wrong.

A sense of camaraderie sits in for companionship in the workplace.  The typical work relationship consists of sort of circumspect conversations, so as to respect the unspoken borders between private- and work-life.  You develop a repertoire of superficial topics, inside jokes, and catchphrases that give a sense of insidership without uncomfortable intimacy.  Even if you do share details of your intimate life with officemates, you probably do it precisely because the stakes are fairly low.  You can unburden yourself without the complications and consequences of doing so to your intimates.

At my office, we talk a lot and with great enthusiasm about what we had for breakfast, what we're having for lunch and what we plan on having for dinner.  We laugh about it, joke about it, worry about it beforehand, and regret it after the fact.  We reveal ourselves, our fears and desires, through the topic of weekday meals. 

I always have either a chicken salad sub from Emilio's or a "California Dreamin'" sandwich from the Perk, capped off with a Boston cream donut and a cup of joe.  One of my coworkers never eats.  She's a breathairian.  And my boss is doing Weight Watchers, for some reason.  She's built like Madonna.  Zero body fat.  I'm sure she's got a six-pack.  We're all a bunch of skinny bitches. 

It's not hard to see the appeal of Weight Watchers to an accountant.  It's like clockwork.  Monday: Chicken Marsala.  Tuesday:  Lasagna Bolognese.  Wednesday: Orange Sesame Chicken.  Thurday: Cranberry Turkey Medallions.  Friday: what else? — Fiesta Quesadilla.  And all that counting.  Not only calories, but "points."  People love almost anything you can plug into some kind of point system, don't they? 

So a typical conversation with my boss goes something like this:

"What's for lunch today?"

"Chicken salad sandwich."

"From Emilio's?"

"Yeah."

"They put a lot of garlic in there, don't they?"

"Yeah."

"You ever try Billy's chicken salad?"

"Yeah.  They don't really put anything in it at Billy's."

"They put celery in it."

"I don't think so."

"You sure?"

"Pretty sure."

"Hmm.  I thought they put celery in there."

"Well, maybe.  What are you having?"

"What is it?  Tuesday?  Lasagna. Five points."

"Mmm.  Sounds good. Those points are pretty tasty."

"Yeah, it's not bad."

From here we can go into the minutiae of the point system, or her favorite or least favorite ready-made meals.  And by the time we've exhausted the lunch conversation it's time to start talking about dinner!

But it's the breakfast topic that I find a little disturbing, if you want to know the truth.  I don't know why, but a couple of months ago my boss was in the middle of her mid-morning snack: Fiber One mixed with a little lowfat yogurt, when she asked if I had ever tried it.  

"No."

"Oh my gawd, you're kidding!"

"No."

"It's like seventy percent of your daily fiber in one blow."

"Eww. TMI."

"No! Oh my gawd, it's so good!"

It looks like shredded cardboard.  Or worse:

I didn't think much about it, but in the days and weeks that followed, she kept bringing it up. 

"Have you tried Fiber One yet?"

"Um, no?"

"Oh my god!  You've got to try it!"

I began to wonder why she was so insistent.  I'm thinking, this is getting sort of personal, actually.  Could she have gotten hold of a stool sample somehow?  I hardly ever poop at work.  To be perfectly honest, it started to feel like a daily anal-probing. 

After a couple of weeks of this, I broke down and bought some.  I have to admit, I needed to know.  I mean, I'd never heard someone go on like this about a breakfast cereal, and especially not one that no one except people obsessed with getting seventy percent of their dietary fiber in one blow would ever eat.

I'm generally a fan of more flamboyant breakfast fare.  If I'm going to have cereal, I want nuts and raisins and dried berries and bananas in my granola, milk, and honey.  I want my cereal bursting with berry goodness.  As if I'd just come back from a foraging expedition. 

By this standard, Fiber One is probably the most joyless breakfast cereal imaginable next to Grape Nuts.  At least Grape Nuts is almost insanely crunchy.  I mean, it's something.  People love crunchy cereal for some reason.  If it doesn't really taste like anything, I guess it has to do something, at least, so you'll know it's there.

I got it home and tried it.  I don't know what I was expecting.  Insight, maybe.  It was like... fiber.  Truth in advertising.  But now I could at least tell my boss I had tried it.

"Oh my Gawd!  Did you just love it?  Did you die?"

"Yeah.  It was, um, great."

WTF?

Well, if nothing else, it seemed to tamp down the daily probings about the state of my bowels.  I bought that box about a month ago, and still am only halfway through it. I figured that was the end of it.  But lately it's been coming up again.  Just yesterday, in fact, we had this exchange:

"Have you been eating your Fiber One?"

"Oh, yeah, yeah.  For sure."

"Isn't it great?"

"Yeah. Oh my God.  So great."

"Have you been having it with yogurt?"

"I was, but then I kind of went off yogurt."

"What kind of yogurt?"

"I usually get a big tub of Colombo, but I'm not feeling it these days."

"Try it with Activia. Oh my gawd."

"It's that good huh?"

"Are you kidding? How are you doing it now?"

"Milk.  A little sugar."

Stony silence.

"Hmm."

Now, what does that mean?  Look, I'm very laid back with people.  I'm not fussy.  Unless I'm sleeping with you I'm not going to pick a fight.  No make up fuck, no need to fight.  Frankly, I don't think I seem like someone with bowel issues.  My mother confirmed it at dinner with the ex a couple months ago: I basically potty-trained myself, early and without drama.  And for the record, I'm regular, and my stool's normal.  So what is this about?

Is she telling me to "lighten up"?  Is she telling me to "let go"?  Or does she want me to be more anal?  Am I being too "easy-going"?  I suspect it's not really about me at all.  She's this anal expulsive type.  She's just sharing.  And given the nature of the relationship, this is a more or less natural progression, a "deepening" of the conversation we've been having. 

And I can appreciate it to a point.  I mean, it's certainly true that people do underestimate the importance of a healthy, hardy constitution to a happy life.  And if someone is expressing concern with your regularity and the consistency of your stool, which is the obvious subtext here, it means they're concerned with your health and happiness in general.  Right?

But honestly.  I'd like to get the focus off the fiber.  Let's talk about how good stuff is going in, not coming out.  It probably has to do with year-end closing and the audit we're undergoing.  You know: it's all bottom line all the time.  But I'm starting to think I should take up breathairianism.  I'm beginning to see why my other coworker did.