The Conspiracy Grows

I ate at the cafeteria every day this week, and for the most part it was pretty good. Still, no cafeteria experience comes without its price.

1. On Tuesday I got a roast beef sandwich, normally I would get the pepper (chili) mayonnaise but I was actually somewhat embarrassed for some reason to ask for it, I don't know what came over me. I decided to try a mayonnaise / spicy mustard combo, it wasn't thrilling. What was thrilling, was that I saw a couple pickle spears remaining in the bucket, a great treat no matter the occasion. As usual though, my spirits were shattered when I discovered that they combined the pickle buckets for the butter chip pickles and regular pickle spears, by simply placing the pickle spears on top of the butter chips and soaking in their distasteful juices. When I went to consume the pickle it tasted like some weird butter chip vinegar hybrid, it was so vile I could not finish it. The sandwich was still good enough though I had to scrape some of the spicy mustard off, it was simply to over powering.

2. On Wednesday I witnessed a humorous situation. Now as my experience has been, the salad dressing carafes have always been placed in metallic cylindrical canisters which were all surrounded by ice. Since a week ago, it seems they are now also putting ice in the gap between the metallic cylinders and plastic dressing carafes. Somebody probably had this bright idea, but in reality it is a terrible plan. As most of you know, I always arrive to the cafeteria promptly at 11am (when it opens) whenever possible. This means that often when I get my salad I am the first one to use the dressing for that day, so it has now become a struggle to reach back and pull the carafe out of the cylinder which is jam packed with ice, which often results in ice chips flying all over the salad buffet when it finally releases. This exact thing happened to somebody in front of me in the salad line, they grabbed the blue cheese carafe and after its forceful extrication 4 or 5 ice cubes flew into the bowl-thing which held some kind of sauce or yogurt or something, I have no idea what it was. The person stared at the cubes now tainting whatever substance was for a few seconds likely trying to decide if they should attempt to remove the cubes or hope no one noticed and move on. They chose to do the later, though I of course had noticed. I could not blame them, for I would do the same thing in this scenario, in fact, I chose to also just pass by and pretend to not notice the melting ice-sauce slowly become inedible. Ask yourself, what would you have done?

3. Finally, on Thursday I got the St. Louis Chicken wrap. This delightful wrap contains chicken, cheese, bacon, tomatoes (yuck), onions and lettuce wrapped in a flour tortilla. They also slather fat-free ranch dressing all over it (everyone knows all fat-free ranch dressings taste like mildly acidic Emler's glue) so I wasn't going to be outsmarted by the cafeteria. Or was I? It turns out I almost was, luckily a good Samaritan was watching my back. You see, I requested the dressing not be placed on the wrap to the cafeteria spy er, lady. She confirmed with me twice during the construction of the wrap that I did not want the dressing, just everything else (construction of the wrap takes approximately 45 seconds per customer). The second confirmation was just prior to her closing the wrap and I briefly turned my head to fill a small cup with jalapenos, apparently as I did so, she swiftly scooped a huge amount of fat-free ranch into her ladle and spread it all over my wrap then quickly closed it back up when I turned my head back towards her. I would have been none-the-wiser except that the guy behind me heard my pleas for no ranch and then called the cafeteria lady out on it. She laughed menacingly and then confessed, I was horrified. The guy behind me ended up getting the wrap while I waited for her to build me a new one, which this time I was not naive and I watched every step very carefully. It turned out to be quite good (bacon was a bit to chewy but acceptable)