Burning Coworkers
Mike Leitao ~ 09/30/2024
Today, we will embark on a little story time, a little tale if you will. This past Friday, at my company we had our quarterly event. Every quarter we do different events ranging from bowling to holiday parties to Phillies games and more. One event that has not changed is our third quarter event, which is a company “picnic”. On the last Friday of the month of September, the entire office takes a half day and heads to a park near the office where we grill out, play cornhole, can jam, kickball, and other activities. It’s always a good time with highlights that keep the office buzzing through the end of the year. The highlight of all the picnics though was always the great eating competition of 2021.
This was the first year of the picnic and with that, there was an overabundance of ideas to make sure the event had enough activities to keep everyone engaged (it is an office full of accountants after all). One event that got pitched was a speed eating competition that resulted in 2 people facing off head to head to see who could eat a full bag of marshmallows the quickest. The event was intense, but as one of the competitors started to take a commanding lead, his opponent had no choice but to up his pace. This choice would be his downfall, as not only could he keep up, but the sheer amount of marshmallows consumed resulted in my man full on yacking. It was incredibly memorable and still gets talked about to this day as a legendary moment. The following years attempted to follow this legendary battle with poor results. A pizza eating competition where one person fed another was good in concept but failed to deliver, and a lack of planning the following year led to a boring wing eating contest. As the 2024 event drew near, I knew it was up to me to give it one last attempt to create a truly memorable moment and bring the competition back to its former glory.
A little something about me is that I am not scared to pitch anything for our office. I’ve pitched doing the bachelorette, getting the office adderall, and getting a party bus. Although most of these get turned down rather quickly, my constant attempts have resulted in some great fun including a law and order style fake court session and a roast of a coworker. So, now that the groundwork has been laid, allow me to explain how I brought back fun and excitement to the eating competition.
It was another normal planning meeting to plan the events of the picnic. By this time the events have become pretty standardized, everyone gets to the park and eats some food, then cornhole and can jam games commence tournament style until we have winners there. We then move to some generic team building exercises and then play a fun game of kickball before ending it off with the eating contest and heading home for the weekend. As we got to the eating contest for suggestions and the room fell silent. I could tell we were in store for another boring competition, so after no suggestions, the idea of doing wings for a second year in a row came up and was unenthusiastically agreed upon. I don’t know why, but for some reason something just clicked in my mind as I pitched “hot sauce”. I thought what if we added some incredibly hot hot sauce to the wings to really get the people sweating and get some potential for some fun. You can imagine my shock when I was given the go ahead to be the one to go and get the hot sauce, though my spirits dampened when I was told to keep it mild. I then asked what if we do really hot but get milk for them to be safe, and that little addition was all that was needed to allow me to go out on a journey for some of the hottest hot sauce I could find.
In the King of Prussia mall there is a small store called Pepper Palace that I have been to with Sam a few times and I knew that was the place to go. On the eve of the picnic I finally had time to go to the store and I walked in ready to find something exciting. I walked in and said to the worker “what is the hottest hot sauce you can give me without needing me to sign a waiver” she laughed and showed me a couple options but I knew right away what to choose. Mr Pain. A 2 million scoville unit hot sauce that puts it on par with the Carolina Reaper, the hottest pepper in the world. When she asked me if I was a fan of hot sauce and I told her my evil plan, the laugh she let out was comical. And then when I told her they were all accountants I could tell by her reaction I was in store for a fun time. As the picnic rolled around, I heard many whispers of people scared to try this hot sauce and some of the competitors debating backing out. By the time we got to the end of the day and it was time for the wing eating contest to begin, all the rules had been finalized. 5 Buffalo wings and 5 Mr Pain wings, first person to eat them all clean to the bone wins. The rule was you cannot touch the milk until all the wings have been eaten and if you go before that you are disqualified. As I opened the bottle to start the pour, I truthfully had no idea how much to do. Part of me wanted to use the whole bottle while another part of me wanted to save some to try myself to see how bad it really was. However, after the first run of sauce came out and the smell burned my nostrils I knew this bottle was getting fully used today. As the smell of the sauce filled the air, the contestants readied themselves and started. There were a variety of approaches with some going for plain first, some going for hot, and some alternating. At first it seemed like I may have gone to light as there didn’t seem to be any outward reactions. But once we had our winner decided, all hell broke loose. Out of the 6 contestants, only 2 finished all of the wings. Among those who didn’t, we had people sweating, their faces looking so red as if they were suffering an allergic reaction, and literal sweat tears rolling down their faces. A few people not in the eating contest wanted to try the wings since not all had been eaten, and shortly after eating them I saw them over at the cooler shoveling ice in their mouths. It brought a cruel smile to my face. Although no one threw up, I feel like I had done what I set out to do. The laughs everyone had and watching these people guzzling milk and crying made this event a worthy follow up to the infamous throw up scene from the Marshmallow incident of ‘21. As we wrapped up the picnic and helped pack up, I saw the contestants just standing, faces red as a fire, breathing in and out hoping the air would help heal their mouths and throats. I knew that next year the only way to go was spicier.
