In a display of unrewarded bravery, Minneapolis resident Zoe Laurence was witnessed losing an uphill battle against a huge broccoli stem at lunch this week.
Laurence had just sat down in her office’s kitchen when she came face to face with the thick, unwieldy stem that would ultimately be cause of her downfall.
“Zoe’s tough,” said friend and colleague Nichelle Wise. “But as soon as she stabbed her fork into that mammoth broccoli stem and lifted it toward her mouth, I knew she had met her match.”
An air of nervous trepidation hung heavy in the breakroom while Laurence’s coworkers looked on to see how she would fare against the painfully thick stem.
“I thought for sure she would try to cut the floret into smaller pieces,” said Laurence’s boss Ronni Jenkins. “But then it happened; she did what we all feared. She bit right into the stem.”
Peers, higher ups, and janitorial staff alike watched in horror as Laurence learned a cruel lesson in hubris and failure.
“I couldn’t tell you if what happened next was a matter of seconds or hours,” said Wise. “The blink of an eye felt like an eternity while watching Zoe gnaw on that beefy quad of a stem.”
“It was like a shark thrashing about its prey, but if the prey was a metal tank and the shark was a sickly, old dog,” confirmed Jenkins. “She absolutely got her ass handed to her.”
The first round was a clear victory for the stem, as Laurence was unable to accomplish a clean break. Humiliated and humbled, she returned the bite to her plate with the stem grotesquely mangled but intact.
“No one should be subjected to seeing that again,” Jenkins continued. “Frankly, it was very uncomfortable.”
While almost everyone feels Laurence should cut her losses and cease from chomping into huge-ass broccoli stems in the future, the disgraceful loss has only strengthened her resolve.
“This isn’t over yet,” said Laurence as everyone poured out of the lunchroom, returning to work. “Besides, this broccoli is just my first course.”
Sources confirm Laurence was last seen pulling out a gristly hunk of steak and a plastic knife.
