How to eat potato chips while typing

On clean work-snacking integration

Chopsticks.

Sometimes I want to eat snacks while I work, honestly because I have a weirdly moving dread of stretches of work-time containing nothing in any way gratifying to me. Possibly because I realistically anticipate that I will not remain working long under those conditions.

But sadly many good snacks are oily, crumby, or otherwise ill-suited to being touched repeatedly interleaved with touching one’s keyboard. I think I usually deal with this by eating much snack while not typing at all for a bit, but sort of acting as though I think I’m going to, then washing my hands, then going back to the typing for a while, then repeating—largely defeating the purpose. I also get around this issue by getting bubble tea, a snack which can be substantially consumed with your mouth.

I have often vaguely imagined chopsticks helping, but also imagined that they wouldn’t actually. Today I learned that they work well, at least for potato chips and popcorn.

You might think standard Western cutlery would be the first thing to try, but a) it’s not good for hard, crunchy objects, and b) it’s somehow worse to reach to the side with both hands and do a knife-and-fork action than it is to reach with one hand, so if you need multiple implements to manipulate your snack, chopsticks seem superior.

(For more practical eating advice, see how to cut and chew meat. I also learned to drink from a can in the last year or so, but am unlikely to write it up unless I learn that this is a problem for anyone else ever.)