HANWICH, PA—Unremarkable Hanwich resident Jean Blomun, a middle-aged single woman without friends, baked nearly three dozen cookies Sunday night, giving them away the next day to co-workers at the office where she has worked unnoticed for years.
“I hope everybody at the office liked the cookies,” Blomun said. “They’re Lemon Lickety-Splits. I made them from scratch.”
Though the giving of baked goods is a time-honored method of displaying friendship, in Blomun’s case, the reasons behind the display of generosity remain a mystery, as she does not have friends, and has never had them.
“Would you like the recipe?” Blomun asked her co-workers. “The ingredients are one egg, a quarter-cup of milk, a cup of flour, a package of lemon pudding mix and a half-cup of raisins.”
According to Blomun’s employers at Plaap Actuarial, a Hanwich-based insurance underwriting firm, Blomun, 42, arrived at work Monday saying she’d “had a busy weekend, but managed to get a little baking done anyway.” She carried with her three large cookie sheets wrapped in foil.
Blomun then handed a cookie to each of her co-workers, saying, “Enjoy!”
Those present in the office at the time took the proferred cookies, shrugged, put them aside and went on with their work.
“I love to bake,” Blomun said. “You should try one of my famous Applecadabra Bars. They’re positively sinful!”
“She’s done this before,” co-worker Finn Jerzblat said. “She brings in little gifts and hands them out—seemingly at random—to people around the office who she obviously does not know. Who does she think she is? Our friend or something?”
When asked how the cookies tasted, Jerzblat replied, “They were fine, they just weren’t anything to write home about is all.”
Other Plaap employees were unable to comment on the cookies, as they could not remember whether they had eaten one, or, in some cases, who Blomun was.
“Perhaps she got the concept of ’friend’ and ’co-worker’ confused in her mind somehow,” Plaap actuary Doug Blanston said. “I mean, I ate one, sure, just to be polite. But when she offered me a second cookie, I respectfully declined. I didn’t want her thinking I was her friend or something, just because I ate one of her cookies.”
Blomun, whose job involves adding up columns of 10-digit numbers and then placing the results in an “out” box, has worked at Plaap “without distinction” since 1972. Though the company’s central office employs approximately 750 people, none of them considers Blomun a friend.
“I think next time I bake I’ll make Cocoa-Mint Yo-Yos,” Blomun said. “I bet the gang at work will love those!”
A 1981 rumor that Blomun had a friend was quelled when it was revealed that the second car in her driveway was the property of a visiting sick aunt, who is long since dead. Three of her five cats have also since died.
