In 2012, to celebrate Oreo Cookie’s 100^th birthday, the brilliant sugar gods that reside in the Oreo factory decided to make Oreo cookies with, wait for it….birthday cake-flavored crème filling!!  How amazing.  Happy Birthday to me too!   I searched high and low for these little gems and finally found them in Florida, a long way from home in Chicago.  I was so excited that I found these cookies that I felt a strange sense of relief; the type of relief that comes from finding out you made the team or you got the job.  So you can imagine how stunned I was when my favorite friend in New Jersey who shares my ridiculous penchant for innovative sugary products alerted me that there were Oreo’s that not only had the birthday cake crème filling but were made with the golden Oreo cookies!!!  Amazing.  Again, I searched high and low for them to no avail.  So my friend shipped me a package of the golden birthday cake crème filled Oreos from New Jersey to Chicago.   And that’s where this story begins…

I brought the birthday Oreos to work and people went nuts.  Everyone wanted to try them.  Once word got out that I had limited edition Oreos at my desk, people would swing by, grab one, and tell me a little story about their favorite way to eat an Oreo or what eating an Oreo conjures up in their minds.  And then I realized what was happening; during the time it takes to eat an Oreo, my colleagues and I would forget about looming deadlines and endless workloads.   We would eat Oreos and go to our happy place, even if only for two minutes.  But it didn’t end with the birthday cake crème filled Oreos…My colleagues and I became obsessed with finding limited edition flavors and adding them to the pile on my desk (which currently stands at 11 packages of Oreos).  We focused on seeking out unique flavors so that we could try them together.  Then we would discuss our thoughts about the flavors.   But the Oreos also became objects of comfort; we would seek solace in a cookie went something went wrong.  Like the time Kristin was having a bad day, we had an Oreo and things magically improved.  Or the time when a stakeholder was extremely rude to Meredith, we had an Oreo and she smiled.  So I started telling people, “Before you take a bite, tell me something that makes you happy.”   And today, I decided that I should share with the world, the joy that my colleagues and I get from the endless quest to ensure that there are at least 5 packages of Oreos on my desk at all times.  Because when we share our happiness with others, the world becomes a better place.