Greed, Altruism, and Optics
AKA free food and the pizza incident
Part 1: Greed
I am easily MIT’s biggest free food fiend. Of course, everyone here loves free food and the Institute always has plenty to give out if you know the right places to look (spoiler alert: usually not the free food mailing lists). While I as a current MIT Technology and Policy Program student (TPPer for short) reserve the right to keep my free food secrets off the web, friends and family will know that I had a blast this past semester attending recruiting events, introductory club meeting, seminars, research presentations, and everything else in between not only to meet fellow students, staff, and faculty, but also to indulge in some free grub.
And when I say I’m a free food foodie, I do mean it. The first day I flew into Boston, one of the few home goods I picked out with my friend was a 34-piece set of tupperware from Target. Thinking it was overkill, I was fully set on putting aside the 2-3 biggest pieces of tupperware for personal use, and placed the rest on Ashdown’s free reuse table. However, I can safely say after three months of storing everything from turkey sandwiches to chicken pad thai to goat cheese to samosas to butternut bisque to everything bagels and quiche, that I have almost certainly used all 34 pieces of that set. Armed with nothing more than my apartment’s modest collection of plastic cookware, one pan, and one air fryer, I have exposed my roommates too many times to the aftermath of many experiments to safely test and combine leftover free food ingredients into actually nutritious meals that will somehow get me through the semester.
Of course, this is not to say that free food is all but guaranteed as an MIT student. There were many times during the semester I also found myself needing to do an emergency run to Trader’s Joe’s or Costco (Instacart premium is a lifesaver). Also, going a little too hard on taking free food will not make you lots of friends with your fellow students, staff, or faculty, even if you only have the best of intentions. Take, for example, …
Part 2: Altruism
The pizza incident.
I currently work for the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI), which lies one floor below the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR). When I first joined MITEI as a graduate research assistant, my P.I. informed me that CEEPR held regular lunches on Wednesdays in MITEI’s large conference room for like-minded students and researchers to discuss research, attend talks, and just generally bond as a community.
So, lover of free food that I am, every Wednesday, I would walk from my cubicle in MITEI with my fellow labmates to CEEPR lunch. These lunches had a really high attendance rate, so I actually was never able to take many leftovers, especially since I had a class that I had to attend right afterwards at 1:00PM. Usually, my attendance would never be an issue since I could always just sit with my lab or my other friends in CEEPR, and I’d always be interested in discussing energy policy or something so it’d be fine.
One of these Wednesdays, I find out that CEEPR lunch has been moved to a much smaller conference room upstairs. Following my usual routine, I walked up and joined in on some Bertucci’s pizza, sitting down with some fellow students, and then chatted and chomped away as usual. Due to the smaller size of the room, lunch was notably quieter, with none of my usual labmates in attendance. As I got up to leave, I noticed there was a large amount of pizza left over. Seeing this as a rare chance to snag some leftovers, I quickly searched among the boxes and noticed that there was one with two slices of pepperoni pizza in it. I took that one up with my hands and slipped away in a hurry to get to class on time.
As always, I stopped by the 3rd floor kitchen to safely store my leftovers. As I was about to place my box of pizza into the fridge, one of my fellow TPPers called out to me and jokingly asked if she could grab a slice. Knowing that I already had plenty of leftovers at home already, I figured it was fine and gave the two slices to her, much to the disappointment of other students entering the kitchen at that time. I then got the rest of my belongings in order and went off to class that day. And that was that.
Part 3: Optics
It was not one, not two, but three different people who came up to me after that.
It turns out that walking out of a lab lunch with an entire pizza box in front of the lab’s director as a student who is not a member of said lab is not something that the lab’s director will appreciate. I know, because the next day, I came in early to the TPP lounge to do some work, when another fellow TPP student told me that one of CEEPR’s administrators kind of… got really upset right after I walked out?
“I’m sorry, what?”
“He got really mad when you walked out with that pizza box,” he reported, nervously.
Oh… Oh no.
The situation got worse later in the day. Another of my friends in CEEPR came up and told me that one of its administrators actually emailed him and asked if he knew me, since I was sitting next to him.
“Don’t worry, I told them I didn’t have any idea who you were!”
Oh nooooooooooooo.
(disclaimer: this part of the story may have been exaggerated slightly for comedic effect)
So, there I was, contemplating if I had just made the biggest mistake of my academic career within one month of starting my graduate research assistantship. It was over. I was so cooked.
All over one box of two slices of pizza that I did not even eat!
It was only until the next day, my third fellow TPP student, bless his heart, actually took me aside and explained that I was not the only non-CEEPR student guilty of this dine-and-dash behavior, and that while I did commit a serious social faux pas, I was not being seriously blacklisted or investigated by CEEPR for my actions. If anything, this was an important lesson for Rule 0 of free food anywhere, not just at MIT:
0. I recognize that free food is not free
There is always some expectation that people receiving free food will pay with some other means, be it attention for a given talk or lecture, resumes and cover letters for recruiting events, or just physical presence for any given event.
And of course, Rule -1 of all social interaction is still in effect as well:
-1. Optics is everything without further explanation
Even though I never actually ate any of the pizza I stole, as a non-CEEPR student, it was still highly impolite to walk out early with a whole box when it could not be confirmed that I should’ve been there to begin with.
With these in mind, I usually try to keep to some of the following rules of the road whenever I’m at any free food event nowadays:
- I do not take free food that I know I will not eat
- I wait until everyone has had a fair chance to take food before taking any leftovers
- I volunteer to help with clean up and store leftover food after events, if possible
Most of these are common sense, and I will not act like following them makes me a good person, because I have to admit I just really like taking leftover free food. I’d still highly recommend that everyone heeds these rules, because…
sigh
…everyone else in my program now knows me as the guy on the run from CEEPR for stealing a box of pizza. (Someone in TPP dubbed this “Pizzagate” but due to the affiliations with the conspiracy theory about the Clintons, I would really prefer “pizza incident” instead, if it’s not too late to change the name.) It has been 3-4 months now, and I’m still a little too ashamed to come back to any CEEPR lunch event right now, despite the fact literally all of my labmates still go.
If you’re reading this as an administrator of CEEPR, I know this is late, but I would like to personally apologize for my actions that day, as they were not appropriate as someone who does not actually work in CEEPR. As someone who will be soon stepping up to help organize MITEI lunch seminars, please let me know if you have any tips for food ordering or event logistics.
Who knows? If you’re free for lunch, I’d love to bring some pizza over.
(Update: I did actually end up coming again to CEEPR lunch this semester! I’m happy to report I did properly introduce myself to the admin in question. 🙂)
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