You know how whenever there’s one last cookie on a plate, no one ever takes it? Everyone sort of wants it to varying degrees, but is afraid to take it, in case someone else wants it more, and – heaven forbid – we don’t want to be rude. And if some brash person just reaches out and takes it, they run the risk of everyone else quietly (or not so quietly) resenting them for the rest of the day.
There’s really no safe solution. For example, if I ask if anyone wants the last cookie, everyone quickly insists that they don’t want it (even if they do) and that I should eat it. And then I end up eating it when I didn’t even really want it to begin with, but only asked because I didn’t want to put a single cookie back in the freezer.
Or, let’s say I go out of my way to provide an amount of food equally divisible by the number of diners (for example, 8 egg rolls for 4 people). And then someone doesn’t eat their full share, leaving the remainder of the party to agonize in awkwardness over the last remaining egg roll. This is one of my pet peeves.
Believe me when I say this is deadly serious business in my family. When I was a kid, my mother would have to count out desirable/limited foodstuffs like cookies, pickles, tater tots, etc, to make sure every child got exactly the same amount, or there would be fireworks. Now that we’re adults, we are civilized enough that we no longer wage outright war over food, but the tension still seethes under the surface.
So, I would like to humbly offer my family’s solution. It was started a number of years ago by my younger brother, and though he’s not 100% certain he didn’t pick it up elsewhere, he thinks he invented it himself. If so, in my opinion he should get the Nobel Peace Prize. Or the Nobel Piece Prize. Nobel Last Piece o’ Pie Prize. Ok, I’ll stop.
It goes like this: when there is one remaining food item, everyone who wants it rates, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much they want it. Then the person who wants it most gets it, no one else is overly disappointed, or starts a fight over it, and no one feels bad about being inconsiderate.
Of course, it only works if people are honest about it, not reducing or raising their number after someone else speaks up, or based on what number they think someone else will give. If you have a hard time initially, you can have everyone write down their number first.
But the applications are endless, and it’s really a very effective method of fairly portioning out the dregs of really anything. Give it a try!
