How to freak out your co-workers with acts of kindness

I'm not renowned for being the most alert person in the morning. I usually stay up to late (sometimes it's due to blogging) & hence am not an early riser & not well organized or mentally together in the morning.

Last Wednesday I come in to work to find one of these (see picture - though the one on my desk was a much darker, richer shade of brown) sitting on my desk right in front of my keyboard. My first thought is "What the....?! Someone crapped on my desk!! What kind of sick & twisted person would...." & I started to think of all the potential enemies I may have made at work or why the janitors might have decided they needed to relieve themselves on my desk.

Then I looked closer & it was more smooth than the real thing & so I thought, "wow, someone left a piece of plastic poop on my desk!! That's still pretty sick...". And again I started wracking my brain trying to figure out who would have that kind of a vendetta against me.

Then finally it sort of dawned on me that the poop-like object was a tamarind, some odd fruit thing that is used in Thai cooking. I'd been out with a few of my team mates from work to have delicious food at the Thai Boat restaurant on 32nd & Barlow & I'd mentioned I had a recipe that used tamarind paste & I had no idea what a tamarind was. So, one of my co-workers was nice enough to bring in a tamarind (though he really should have warned me so I wouldn't spend the first 10 minutes of my work day contemplating who left excrement on my desk))

This is what the tamarinds look like when you open them up - you break off the outer shell & it's a pulp around these really big seeds & the pulp is used to flavour various dishes & make tamarind paste from. It tastes not too bad (once you get the poop image out of your head).