Please think of your coworkers!
I admit it, I enjoyed Brian Palmer's article in Slate about how you too can become a guerilla chef. As Palmer explains, this basically involves bringing a hot plate and an electric fry pan into your office, closing the door, and cooking yourself a proper lunch from fresh ingredients.
The first and most obvious point to be made here is, how many people actually work in offices anymore? How many people actually have a door that they can close, versus a cubicle? In my (completely off-the-cuff) estimation, only about 2% of America's total work force can bring in a hot plate and close the door. The rest are working in cubicles, restaurants, auto shops, industrial plants, driving trucks, etc. So this strategy is, strictly from a statistical standpoint, a tool of the cultural elite.
Which is to say, if you have an office with a door that closes, what are you doing bothering with a hot plate? Just go buy lunch at a fancy restaurant like all the other white male middle management dudes!
I kid because I love.
Seriously though, there are a lot of reasons to prepare your own lunch. I'm a big fan of frugality, regardless of your income level. But why shun the office kitchen? Sure, the décor may leave something to be desired. But what kind of snob first acknowledges the class distinction between "those who eat in the office kitchen" and "those who do not," then asserts that "Nothing worth eating has ever come out of an office kitchen."
I wonder, if Palmer objects so much to the office kitchen's "[reek] of stale, microwaved cheese," whether he has stopped to consider what his office mates might think about the way that his lunch "let[s] the office fill with the aroma of sautéed garlic and chopped cilantro." He may believe that by closing his door, he is trapping all the smell inside (and how selfish of him). But he is wrong. An office is not an airtight containment unit.
Everyone else, I assure you, can smell what Mr. Palmer is cooking. The fact that they pretend not to notice is just a measure of their patience. Of the patience for every lowly cubicle worker for the eccentricities of their supervisors.
However, I do love the idea of walking out of the office onto the industrial park lawn and firing up an improvised Sterno can stove in order to cook your lunch. If you actually do this, please let me know how it goes!