Ever since we were kids we were taught the importance of good food and a healthy balanced diet. Why so many (professionally managed) organisations prefer to ignore this aspect of employee satisfaction is something I don't understand.

We were talking about it yesterday, the lads and I. Bad food leads to indigestion. Indigestion leads to more frequent visits to the toilet; that in turn means higher housekeeping costs and expenditure on incidentals like air-fresheners and toilet-paper. And employees spending more time than they should in the loo directly reduces the time spent on the job, thereby affecting output and productivity.

But probably the worst after-effect of bad food is the gas leaks. People with indigestion are going to fart. And fart a lot. It's amazing how one bad meal can turn a nice air-conditioned meeting-room into something that feels like the aftermath of the Bhopal gas disaster! It happened last week. New Bengali guy in our team was firing away like a rocket-launcher. Now I don't mean to imply that Bengalis fart more than others ... in fact we Goans are notorious farters, but if you have to fart that much, get your ass to the loo and start a mini Chernobyl there, dude ... don't bludy kill us in a 8x6 meeting-room!

And if they can't improve the food they should at least give people some tips on how to fart without anybody getting affected. Include it in that little company booklet they hand out to new joinees. There are lots of ways y'know to conceal them toxic emissions. One is to join your legs tightly together and do it right there in your chair. Which is what a lot of people do. Only problem is fart gas has a large element of mystery associated with it, in that you never know what's coming. If the stink is really awful even your legs joined tightly together may not be able to contain it. Then you're in for. The person in the next cubicle will go, SHIT! was that you??, before making a dash for it. And when they see you pressing your bum into your chair, you're caught red-arsed! So a better thing to do is to let off a small sample first, test the air, and if it's not too bad, release the entire payload.

But I will never recommend doing it in your chair. For one reason -- your boss! Blues, I just want to have a look at this file on your computer; it won't open on mine. Errrr just a minute, Sir ... You can't sit in my chair because I just farted!

The best thing to do is go to the loo and release there. But even there you hope to find the loo empty, so you don't have to worry about anybody telling on you. Which generally never happens. So you're left having to resort to the silencer technique - which is holding lots of tissue-paper to your backside to muffle the sound.

Then one of the guys comes up with a brilliant idea -- Farting Areas! Like how we have Smoking Areas. Where you can just go and let off them bombs without having to worry about the stink and the noise and the collateral damage. Yeah baby, here it comes ... Oohhh that one was killer!!

Actually the farting areas and the smoking areas could be one. An interesting combination of fumes that will be!

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Good food. It all comes down to good food.

O.K. For those of you got those mid-week blues, here are the Blues Brothers with Sweet Home Chicago. Wonder why they call it the Windy City! :)