Debating The Best Office Snacks Of All Time. You Know, The Free Ones.

Over on Deadspin Lite (their fully loaded sites are still down because of the hurricane), writer Drew Magary ponders the best snacks for the office break room — as in, the foodstuffs left out for free for the office "vultures" to consume. I'll fully admit to vulture tendencies over the years working at various media companies.

As a young production assistant at MTV nearly a decade ago, I would often cruise by the executive conference room (on the other side of the floor) to check out the spread. There was oftentimes a pair of deli trays stacked atop a beta tape cabinet. One held a pile of soggy sandwiches (roast beef and roasted vegetables were usually the losers winners in my case). The other contained fruit and cheese. The fruit was usually gone — those executives had to watch their figures, obvs. But the cheese was usually a horror show of half-full containers of crumbly goat cheese (with baby carrot dip marks like craters on the moon) and an insanely large quantity of gouda. This is when I learned to really love and appreciate gouda (the first month was all gouda, all the time), and really hate gouda (have you ever eaten gouda for five straight days? My colon cries at the mention).

Moving on to other jobs, I've seen a variety of snacks laid out for the taking. At one job, an ambitious home baker often brought in her weekend creations that made everybody thankful in her ability to sell advertising, not lemon bars. I've seen free fruit baskets and boxes of toffee and tins of tri-corn during the holidays. Free margaritas clumsily mixed in a coffee urn when our team hit a particular goal. That one was more about the good vibes then the Sauza and Chi Chi's margarita mix.

At Food Republic, we always have food lying around the office for the taking. (We work in a shared workspace with other websites and sometimes leave a trail of cookie crumbs back to our office.) We have jars of sambal and bottles of 18-year Scotch whisky and macarons landing via Fed Ex every other week. Mountain Dew sent us a can of their prototype malt product (it's better than you would think) and the nice people at Sam Adams keep sending us bottles. Hey, what about a keg? I've come a long way since the gouda days at MTV.

What is your favorite office break room foodstuff?