There's a kitchen in the back of the real estate office where I work. To get to the kitchen one must walk down the center aisle of the main office area. Most of my co-workers and I sense immediately when food makes its way down that center aisle. Heads raise up, necks turn, noses twitch.

A week or so ago a new agent joined the office. Several agent joined the office. Several folks helped her get settled those first few days and on Friday she brought a big box of donuts as a way of saying thanks.

Donuts are always a nice treat at the office. Donuts require no plates or silverware. A napkin is welcome, but certainly not necessary There's no serving dish to wash when the last donut is snatched. Unlike the apple slices and yogurt dip that languish, shrink and change colors for days, donuts quickly disappear.

Personally, I think cookies are the best office food. Cookies are by far the most manageable, discreet and universally accepted. But donuts, well they run a close second.

If donuts are welcome at the office, Dunkin Donuts are particularly welcome. Brand name, great variety, consistent quality, known and familiar they are. You know just what you're getting here no disappointments, no unchartered territory. And a big dozen and a half donuts in that distinctive pink and white box calls for much acclaim. That was precisely what paraded down the aisle and into the kitchen of our office last Friday.

"Food," someone called out. And the trips to the back began.

I don't think I've ever seen a dozen and a half bismark donuts gathered all in one box. But there they were, row after row they sat. The sugar coated ones were first in line, tucked neatly together, the promise of sugar all over and jelly dripping out both ends onto laps and house contracts and the tip of one's tie. The sugar coated bismarks alternated with the powdered covered ones, the dry cleaners secret friend. The powdered sugar versions promised even more trouble than their sister version, a sugary puff of white smeared over lips and cheeks, stuck to fingertips and the surface of every pen and file folder within reach.

We were all in disbelief. "Wow," one person said.

"Look at these," another offered.

All the while, each one of us was entertaining the same thought.

"What was she thinking?"

Like a funeral visitation that runs just a little too long, folks filed in and out came and went. The donuts sat. Rows and rows of them, motionless.

I made a couple repeat visits just to see if there had been some mistake, or that maybe I had overlooked a chocolate Long John hiding on the side or a French cruller somehow sandwiched in between a row. Where were the glazed raised, the plain cake, the sprinkled daily special? They were missing, that's where they were.

Murmurs of discontent were mixed with polite declines never spoken before in this particular office. "Oh I shouldn't."

"I better not."

And so it was Friday morning, defying all food odds known, there were no takers, not a single one. But...

Whoever originally said time heals all was probably specifically referring to inappropriate office food selections.

I don't know who cracked first. It wasn't me. But as the day wore on it was obvious by their sugary faces, if not their powdery lapels, just which agents had succumbed.

By late afternoon the agents all had a sugar high and the office cleaning staff had their work cut out for them. And me? Well, only my dry cleaner knows for sure.