May You Have Delicious Meals

May You Have Delicious Meals by Junko Takase

Review from @ostomateforlife:
May You Have Delicious Meals by Junko Takase
📗📗📗📗

A quirky translated novela about workplace dynamics especially focused around food.

Nitani recently moved to a new branch in a packaging design company in Japan and works with two woman who appear to be at odds.
Ashikawa is sweet, simple, delicate and helpless. Her hobby is baking intricate desserts to bring to work, she loves to feed others but she can never work overtime, take on any extra responsibilities or deal with any negativity because she’s just too fragile. Nitani knows this is the kind of woman he wants to marry.

Then there’s Oshio. Nitani’s drinking buddy, she speaks her mind, she’s independent and doesn’t pander to office politics which includes the adoration of Ashikawa.

Despite Nitani being in a relationship with Ashikawa, Oshio plots to bully Ashikawa with Nitani help creating a weird triangle.

I’ll admit, I was lowkey on Oshio’s side. Her version of bullying was just treating Ashikawa like any other employee. Questioning why everyone else has to pull overtime to meet deadlines but this isn’t expected of Ashikawa because she wouldn’t manage. Why did everyone have to chip in to pay for the sweet treats Ashikawa decided to bake and bring in for the office? Who asked her to do that? Her meek behaviour was insufferable!

Despite sleeping with Ashikawa, Nitani secretly is disgusted by her and her love of food. For him, it’s just a necessity and is happy to eat from the convenience store and doesn’t see the point in spending hours cooking.
A really great snapshot into office culture that I was invested in!