The bag of crisps that changed my life

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It was Monday, and my first day working in a new shared office space in London. After typing away in isolation for three weeks at my new home I was uncharacteristically craving the company of others. The space was a one room fits all studio with about 8 desks and a sofa area. No sink, obviously. It was in Dalston.

I arrived after lunch so didn’t have to worry about eating in front of the others who worked there (The Team) yet. It’s important to say now that The Team immediately made me nervous; as a brand new Londoner with unstable levels of social competency I was really up against it with this lot. Filmographers, designers, business owners — all very confident and fun and intimidating and Cool.

The day went well, until 3pm came around and I suddenly remembered the bag of crisps quietly hiding in my backpack. “You should eat those crisps” I told myself. I couldn’t escape it, I saw nothing but crisps. Gary Lineker was sliding into my mental DMs. “Eat them!”

My mind was a Skip.

I didn’t even like the flavour I had, but I felt under pressure in the Tesco Express I had bought them from — you know, as you do when you’ve been stood looking at the same aisle for so long that you now just have to pick anything and get the hell out of there? well that — and just grabbed the first pack I recognised.

I opened the bag and the vinegar hit me with the realisation that I now had to actually eat the crisps. Music levels in the office were dangerously low and I was suddenly at risk of flouting at least three workplace faux pas in my first three hours of being there.

So here I am, imposter new guy, surrounded by The Team who are still very Cool, slowly trying to mouth-digest potato without making a sound. So far so good, until I looked into the endless bag at the next crisp in line… it was fucking monstrous. Time stood still as I stared at it, frantically going over just how I was going to tackle it.

‘It’s too big for my mouth’ I thought,

‘What should I do??’

‘Can I just put the crisps down and forget about them?’

‘I am actually a bit hungry though’

‘Just break it up’

‘Okay good. But how? Do I do it inside the bag, with a single hand? Or pull the crisp out and break it in broad daylight?’

Not wanting to have The Team witness me fail to fit an obnoxiously large crisp into my pathetic human mouth, or catch me performing some bargain bin breaking of the bread with a giant salt & vinegar, I decided to tackle it in the safety and privacy of the bag.

The Team saw me, I know they did. I felt the chill of their Cool gaze, looking over at me, weird crisp boy, acting suspiciously inside a salty bag.

The break didn’t work. What was left after the failed snap was still very fucking big. Defeated, I lifted it out of the bag and moved it towards the mouth I now resented. Life was moving slowly at this point, and I overthought the entire delivery, resulting in a sheepish half-bite that saw some crisp make it in, some fall onto my lap, and the rest sticking out of my mouth, shouting for attention.

I sat with my back to the majority of The Team and by this point I knew that every single one of them was looking at me, carefully watching me struggle to find my own face. In my rapidly spiralling mind, they were all gathered round, huddled together quietly giggling at me, some of them even wishing me to fail further. I imagined it all started on a slack channel they probably had.

“What’s up with the new boy?” (they’d call me boy, because is a man ever really a man in his own mind?)

“What do you mean?” would ask the one and only person out of view.

“He’s… I don’t know what he’s doing, but there are crisps everywhere.”

“I’m sat next to him and it’s honestly chaos”

“Who interviewed him? Were there no warning signs?”

“I can’t stop laughing”

“LOOK AT HIM”

“oh mate”

… the conversation went on. and on. just like that fucking bag of crisps.

And that’s when my mouth fully checked out. It shut down, went home alone and gave the rest of the afternoon a massive fucking Nope, just like I wanted to at this point. Now even more nervous from the previous incident, my final attempt at being a regular person resulted in a bit of crisp crumbling not only onto my black jumper — an unbearably unforgiving backdrop against taunting specks of spud — but onto the actual floor, hitting the foot of the person next to me.

The crisp victim shot me a quick pity look and smiled awkwardly in a way that said,

dear new boy,

please just stop,

regards x

I did stop. And not only did I never eat a bag of crisps in that office again, I moved out of it a few weeks later. Irreparably damaged by Crisp Gate, I felt detached from The Team and struggled to open up, obsessively convinced that they did actually once call me weird crisp boy.

The end