Had a long, long conversation back in early February with M, D and J about how innies basically just get an airline menu approach to food (so does Milchick, according to his performance review scene). You check off your allergies; if you’re lucky, you get to choose between three or four options at the vending machine.

Some meals are all the same because it’s enough work as it is: watermelons for funerals, pineapples for gift baskets, and eggs and waffles for the end of the quarter, and that’s that. There’s no cultural connection, there’s no personal history, you can’t know what your outie does, so you can’t risk home-cooked meals, and you can’t risk religious or ethical dietary restrictions. the waffles, you eat alone. The vending machine packages are token-required and tiny enough that even if you were to eat them with someone else in the kitchenette, you could stretch it to 15 minutes. A pointed out their surprise at seeing Felicia and Irving sharing food.

The waffle party? It’s one person, alone, with their little waffle dish. The egg bar and the parting watermelons are the only food that is meant to be shared, and I’m not sure how much of that is a Milchick effort, and the egg bar has a time limit until they have to clock out on the last day of the quarter. What’s for dinner? They’ve never had dinner, they’ve never had breakfast (aren’t the waffles so exciting?), and their fucking lunch is two tiny boxes of raisins or whatever piecemeal snack they want to give them, including the mocking new options from the Lumon is Listening video. Let’s eat a rotting seal carcass because the marshmallows were never meant to be ours, and we’re starving.

You have your family here with dividers splitting up your shared desk, and you can’t have a fucking meal together. You have no idea what foods you like or what there is to like at all. You’ve never been full in your life. You’ve never talked about what you’re eating or about how life’s going because this is your life, and all of you are witness to everything in each other’s existences, or at least are meant to be. They need to go get fucking hot pot (literally and allegorically).