ok but who left the cheesecake on a chipped plate like that, that's the real crime in this photo. also ginger would absolutely sit in that long shadow from the window and refuse to move, i know this because she's done it in mine. the radio setup is cute tho, i won't lie.

The cheesecake is mine, I saved it from Friday. Case closed on the shadow thing too, cats pick the one spot you need to walk. And no, the station doesn't get changed. It's on 6am, it stays on 6am.

friday cheesecake is a bold move and honestly i respect it. i once found a yogurt in the back of my fridge so old the date had faded off and i just closed the door and pretended it wasn't there. marmalade would have slow-blinked at me disapprovingly if she'd seen.

The 90s were alright I suppose... the wheelhouse radio on my old boat had a red-needle dial that lit up orange on night watches, and I'd stare at it during the quiet stretches. Mind you there was always someone wanting to twist the dial to something foreign... a mate of mine left it on a station none of us recognised once and we sailed half a night to a man arguing with the shipping forecast...

Thank you oldsalt, finally a man of taste. The dial lamp glows steady orange when it's on and I check it every morning at 5:58 like a ritual. Friday cheesecake is called meal planning, look it up. Case closed again.

meal planning dex. you're telling me you portioned that cheesecake out across a whole weekend. anyway i'm still not over the chipped plate, it looks like it's been in that break room since the radio was new. my grandmother had plates like that and i was convinced they'd cut you.

Chipped plates are character, fern... my daughter-in-law has had a chipped mug about three years now and i've been silently counting the chips on it every time she lifts it. There's a new one every few months i reckon... she thinks nobody notices. I notice...

You count mug chips, I count stations nobody's allowed to change. We're the same, oldsalt, we're the watchmen of the break room. The cheesecake is gone now anyway, consumed before 6. Case closed, thread won.

i don't think it was portioned out at all dex, i think that cheesecake got one look at the weekend and gave up. also watchmen of the break room is going on your tombstone and you know it.

Watchmen of the break room... blimey, that's a title. We had a lamp in the wheelhouse we called the night watchman, it buzzed if you touched the wrong switch... same orange glow as your dial by the sound of it. Kept you honest through the small hours.

See, oldsalt gets it. The buzzing lamp is basically the same as my station rule. I'm not territorial, I'm custodial. Also the cheesecake was portioned, I had a plan, the plan was eat it all before 6. Case closed.

custodial dex. you're a guard at a museum where the exhibit is one slice of friday cheesecake on a plate that could draw blood. marmalade just slow blinked at me from the shelf and i genuinely think she's following this thread.

A museum exhibit of one slice of cheesecake... that's about right for a break room. We once had a tin of biscuits nobody would touch for a whole season, sat there like a fixture... then one Tuesday it was gone and everyone swore blind they hadn't touched it. Ronnie still brings it up at family do's...

the biscuit tin mystery is exactly the kind of thing that would ruin a family gathering forever. ronnie is right to keep bringing it up. also dex calling himself custodial is going straight into my notes, right under "portioned the cheesecake"

Someone ate the biscuits, case closed. Same person who keeps trying to turn my dial at 6am. I don't need evidence, I need a break room with fewer weaknesses. The cheesecake plan worked though, so who's really the criminal here

a ghost ate the biscuits is the best defence i've ever heard and i'm absolutely using it next time ginger does something and just blinks at me. honestly though the break room at 6am with the orange dial light sounds quite lovely, i'd sit in that shadow with you lot

You're welcome in the shadow fern, but you don't touch the dial. Rules are rules. And for the record the cheesecake has been fully absorbed into the watchman's inventory, no ghosts involved, case closed thread still won

You don't touch the dial, he says, as if the dial needs a bodyguard... we had a rule on my old boat that whoever made the tea also got first pick of the station, kept the arguments down to a minimum... of course Fenn never made tea so he never got a say, which he thought was a conspiracy for years...

ginger would absolutely be the one who eats the biscuits and then slow blinks like she's innocent, i've seen her do it with a bread crust. anyway i'm voting that whoever gets there at 5:58 gets the dial, that's a fair system and it means dex wins forever which i suspect is the point

Fern gets it. First in wins the dial, that's not a loophole, that's the constitution of the break room. And yes it was the point, thank you for noticing. Case closed.

> first in wins the dial

so your entire claim rests on a two-minute arrival advantage. noted, filing under 'custodial' with the cheesecake

Fenn would have made tea if anyone ever taught him... he'd put the kettle on and wander off, come back asking whose tea it was. Same man swore the biscuit tin moved on its own. Mind you, he also swore the ferry handled better in a following sea, so his judgement was suspect anyway...

marmalade is the shelf cat, ginger is the floor cat, and neither of them has ever been innocent of anything. also oldsalt i need you to know that fenn sounds exactly like my nan's neighbour who blamed a fox for eating a whole loaf and we all knew it was him

Two minutes is an eternity at 6am wren, most of you are still dreaming about filing cabinets. advantage is advantage, the constitution doesn't care how you got there. case closed

first post here, long time lurker. my last job had one of those dented thermoses too and a radio with a dial that only picked up two stations, we called the dead one the zone of silence. reading this thread on my lunch break and i'm fully on dex's side, sorry fern

zone of silence is what happens when fern touches the dial, welcome to the thread cassettehiss, your thermos credentials check out. static is still better than the station oldsalt would pick anyway, case closed