Chapter 2: Which Yankee Candle Scent Goes Best With Onions?

You ever walk into one of those Yankee Candle stores in your local mall, or better yet, a factory outlet store? I typically cannot last in there longer than 15 minutes. There are way too meny scents to digest and the combination of them all hiting your nasal passages at the same time is enough to knock you out cold. Or, in the case of myself, there's the situation of having a raging headache that you're forced to deal with on the ride home.

One of my first memories of Spam Boy was when I was walking back to my cubicle one day, and I swore I caught of whiff of what had to be a lit candle. Now, the place where we all work is ridiculous about safety. They don't want anything other than your standard light fixtures plugged into your cube's electrical outlets. You can imagine that if somebody from our Environmental Health & Safety office walked by, they would have had a conniption. However, OSHA did not need to be contacted becuase as it turned out, after a few passes by his cubicle, there was nothing lit.

What I did discover, however, was that there was an entire box of Yankee Candle votives lying out on his desk, stinkifying the entire office.

At the time, this was only a modest inconvenience, but then a while later when we relocated and he ended up next to me, this became a definite problem. I hear that in his previous work assignment prior to being in my office, he worked upstairs in hardware and allegedly handed out some of these votive candles to several of his colleagues there.

Now this is where I should probably remind you that we work in engineering and not in a boutique. So what do you do when a fellow engineer leaves a votive candle on your desk as a gift to you? Do you graciously accept it and keep it in your cubicle? Do you question the giver's masculinity?

Despite the fact that many were given away as gifts, there was still a healthy assortment in the box. Certainly there were enough left there, and the combinatorics of fruit and flower smells were such as to dredge up the same sickness I feel whenever I walk into Yankee Candle. I decided to be bold and ask what the deal with the candles was. I mean, after all, isn't that a little fruity? (Pun SO intended.)

The explanation I got, as usual, was priceless. Apparently Spam Boy loves to go out and get Subway sandwiches for lunch... at about 4 in the afternoon. And the sandwich he gets on a given day has to do directly with what the daily special is. And no matter what the daily special was, it always included onions. So, it follows that the candles were present as a precaution to fight whatever onion-breath was present after lunch. Wouldn't a mint have tackled the situation head on? That seems more to me like when you're over a friend's house and you drop a Stanley Steamer in their bathroom and you frantically look around for the aerosol spray, which of course only makes it smell like a more flowery Stanley Steamer.

As a side note, if you could ever witness Spam Boy going out to grab lunch in the middle of the afternoon, it in itself is a humorous sight. The guy sprints, full out, like a track star on methamphetamines when he's leaving. Even funnier, he does it on the way back into work too. Through the parking lot, then through the hallways here, he runs like his hair is on fire. Now he does it on the way in in the morning too. Just the other day, I was looking for a parking spot when I noticed him booking it towards the front gate. Too funny.

Anyways, back to the candles. The smell had gotten so potent that whenever he would crack open the box to air out his onion-breath-preventers, other people in the row would swing by to close it back up. This would usually be followed by a lot of back-patting and "Hey, thanks! I was just thinking of doing that myself!"

One day, drastic measures were taken.

The candles were "removed" from Spam Boy's cubicle in a not-so-elaborate but humorous prank. While the candles were noticed missing immediately, the several packs of gum that were taken were not.

See, we were always playing pranks on each other, but this one just happened to be convenient. One time, he had entire Sam's Club box of Kudos sitting on his desk that he made a big deal about. So, one by one, we taped each one of them to his white board. A number of them we all taped together on one large piece of packing tape to create a makeshift Kudos utility belt.

So when the votives were discovered missing, a cry went out throughout the office... "WHO TOOK MY CANDLES?" He was clearly upset. Days went by, and nobody responded. I swear to you I didn't do it, but I most certainly found the whole debacle pretty humorous.

A few days later, Spam Boy kicked it up a notch and wrote on our office sign-out board in about 3,000 point font for the whole world to see: "WHO TOOK MY CANDLES?" It should be mentioned that later that same day, the entire office received an email from our manager dictating that the office sign-out board was to be used ONLY for business-related purposes. Busted!

To heighten the comedic value of the prank, one by one the candles started to reappear in Spam Boy's cube, akin to some movies when a kidnapper starts mailing back pieces of the hostage to the hostage's family to ensure the ransom.

Eventually, all of the candles made it back into the box, and Spam Boy ceased and desisted with his hissy fit. But for a while there, things got a little crazy. Setting the tone for other things to come.