The 5-Second Rule

Today, I drove up to Blue Bell for the day.  Normally, when I head up there, I don't pack my lunch.  When I opened the refrigerator for breakfast this morning, though, I saw a couple pieces of leftover pizza already sitting in a Ziploc bag.  "Hey," I thought.  "I can save a whopping $4 if I bring this for lunch today."  That did it for me and into the bag went the pizza.

Traffic wasn't bad and, after a couple of conference calls on the road, I got up to Blue Bell around 9:30AM.  I headed into the building, turned on my laptop, and officially started my day.

Everything was going fine -- until 10AM, that is, when I realized I'd forgotten to pack a snack.  For the past year or so, I've found it increasingly difficult to get through the morning without a mid-morning snack.  Usually, a granola bar is all I need to get me through til lunch time.  But, there I was -- stuck in Blue Bell, on calls, with nothing to eat.  I figured I could tough it out.  After all, I had my leftover pizza to look forward to for lunch.

I wrapped up my morning calls promptly at 11AM.  I was supposed to be free from then til 1PM.  That should have left plenty of time for lunch.  But, as more people found out I was actually in the office, I started to find a line at my door.  One after another, co-workers showed up to ask a question or just chat.  My stomach was growling but I couldn't break out my lunch while holding court, could I?  There were only two pieces of pizza and I wasn't in a sharing mood.

Before I knew it, it was 12:45PM.  I was starving.  But, the line had finally come to an end.  I had 15 minutes to eat my lunch.  That should be plenty of time.  I pulled the Ziploc bag out of my little lunch container, opened it up, reached in to grab a piece of pizza, and promptly dropped it on the floor.

I don't know how it happened but it did.  There sat my beautiful piece of pizza, directly on top of the dirty carpet in the shared office that I'd claimed for the day.  It had landed crust-side down.  Could I still eat it?

In a split second, multiple questions popped into my head:

• Had anyone besides me actually seen the pizza hit the floor?  A quick check of the doorway indicated that the answer was "no."
• How dirty could the floor really be?  And, if I didn't look at the pizza to see if anything was now stuck to it, did it really matter anyway?
• If I decided to eat an entire piece of pizza that had fallen on a dirty office floor, would anyone ever find out about it?

The answer to my dilemma was easy.  I was hungry.  There was no way I was going to spend $4 on another bad sandwich after schlepping my lunch all the way from Dayton to Blue Bell.  I was eating that piece of pizza.

Well, here I sit, almost 7 hours later.  I haven't had any negative side effects yet.  I'm thinking I made the right choice.