In dangers-of-the-workplace news:
The grown adult quoted above is Professor Susan Jebb, employed by the University of Oxford to think deeply on matters of diet, and current chair of the Food Standards Agency. For our disapproving academic, the workplace is akin to a “smoky pub,” due to the occasional presence of cake, and therefore conjures – in her mind, at least – notions of “passive smoking.” Being offered a slice of cake during one’s coffee break is, it turns out, grounds for invoking victimhood. And because struggling with even the most routine self-possession has to be blamed on something:
Cauliflower enthusiasts will no doubt be gutted.
Professor Jebb insists that her desire to make workplace cake-bringing taboo – and seen as something harmful and antisocial – is “not about the nanny state,” or, dare I suggest, some personal inadequacy. You see, the advertising of cakes and other confections – and the fact that they may be accessible in the workplace – is “undermining people’s free will.” Free will being demonstrated only by compliance with Professor Jebb’s New Rules Of Cake-Eating. And which is why, one assumes, this grown woman, a professional intellectual, can’t say no to a bit of sponge.
Cakes in the workplace – and their allegedly unhinging effects on women – have, of course, been mentioned here before.
Via Christopher Snowdon, who, as you might imagine, has some thoughts.
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