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Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Pretty please?

Maybe if I ask really, really nicely, the biggest annoyance in life as we know it will quietly go away. Maybe. Let's try it, shall we? Community effort.

Please, please, PLEASE. STOP. EATING. Everywhere I go, whether I'm in bio lab, in the classroom, walking down the street, walking in a hallway, people are eating. No wonder this country has a weight problem--people eat from the time they wake up in the morning until they close their eyes again at night. They never fucking stop.

Okay, you can eat. A few times a day, and in restaurants or areas where eating is an appropriate behavior. Classrooms are not an acceptable place. Let me repeat that: classrooms are not cafeterias.

To the girl who sits next to me in biology and smacks on her doritoes every day, please knock it the fuck off. Class is two hours long...you won't starve.

To the girl who sits next to me in fiction class and somehow, somehow, made blueberries a noisy food (not to mention the cherries, where I had to look at the nasty pits she'd spit out every time I turned my head to the right), please also knock it the fuck off.

People on airplanes with your onion-laden burgers and your Taco Bell, people in meetings with your smelly pasta salads, knock it the fuck off.

You'll die if you don't have food every hour on the hour? Hypoglycemic are you? Diabetic? Knocking on death's door? Haven't eaten all day and you're about to pass out? Hey, I have a heart, I can abide by that. Here's the solution: remove yourself from the classroom/meeting area (which is, let's say it together, 'not a cafeteria!') and go sit in the hallway and eat. What? You'll miss important information? Well, if your need to eat is truly that life-or-death, then you should miss some information so that you don't pass out/go into shock/die. Absolutely. But you know what? I bet you wouldn't leave. I bet you'd plan ahead and eat something in the five minutes before class, or at the 10 minute break, or you'd wait and let your tummy do its rumbling act until the class/meeting was done. I bet you'd do that. But why do either one--leave or plan ahead--when you can lay out a spread that rivals the Mother's Day buffet at the Holiday Inn and smack your chips, your berries, your soup, your carrots, in my ear? Maybe because you have a sense of respect for those around you? Maybe? Please?

1 comment:

TT. said...

What an interesting post. I thought I was the only person being driven crazy by this.

I work in an office now that EATS. ALL. THE. TIME.

And not just cookies or snacks here and there. These people will bring in actual full meals at 8:30 in the morning, and everyone will gather in the center of our area and just eat for thirty minutes or so. And then some of them will immediately "go on break" and go buy more food in the cafeteria. And then a little while later they'll go to the gas station across the street to see what treats they have there. And then it's lunchtime.

I can't believe they're not all three hundred pounds; I don't know if the whole office is bulemic or what, but it makes me a little crazy.

Yesterday I had to yell at a guy several levels above me because he wandered randomly down to a room we had reserved for guests and just started eating the food. And he seemed genuinely offended that someone would tell him to go buy his own damned food, and that he wasn't starving in the first place.

I prefer to keep my own gluttony under wraps, at home. Along with my excessive alcohol consumption.

People -- what an outdated species.