K 6/19/02

Work Diary, 6/19/02

Yesterday our managers took us out to eat at a restaurant that features
wood paneling and an etching of a man on the front door holding a rock
pick. In just the right light, from just the right angle, the man's
rock pick looks like a huge penis. Quite a disturbing thing to see upon
entering a restaurant.

Initially my co-worker became lost on the way to the restaurant and, as
it was 94 degrees outside and five of us in his aircondition-less car,
the trip was miserable. There's no other word but "gross" for that
damp, clammy sweat that starts on your lower back and makes it way down
to your buttocks, particularly on vinyl car seats. One of my fellow
passengers exited the car doing an exotic dance that involved walking
backwards and fanning her rear end with a magazine. I saw why when we
entered the restaurant: Her own sweat had betrayed the bright red
underwear under her linen skirt.

We all crowded around two tables and discovered a hamburger and fries
cost over ten dollars. As the lunch was free, I ordered an appetizer
and chicken fried steak, which is essentially a steak beaten to death
with a mallet, breaded, and then deep fried. Typically this dish
results in a crispy crust around the steak and, because you really
can't go wrong when you deep fry anything, it's usually delicious. But
not yesterday. I was presented with a soggy mess covered in a white,
tasteless gravy. The steak tasted like the cook had used the same deep
frying oil as he uses for frying fish, so my entr?e went unfinished.
Fortunately the potatoes and the biscuit were good.

The restaurant was an example of a disturbing trend I've noticed in
American restaurants over the past few years. The trend is to load so
much food onto an individual's plate that there's no choice but to get
a doggie bag and take some of it home, where presumably it sits in the
fridge and goes to waste until more room is needed for the next doggie
bag. I'm not talking about simple, big portions for the hearty
appetite, but portions large enough for a family of three or four. And
the prices are just low enough that the patron feels justified in
ordering what amounts to one-dish gluttony.

The economic tide apparently has no effect on these mountainous plates
of food, and I've noticed that restaurants that subscribe to the
"bigger-than-a-breadbox" culinary school are always crowded. It's not a
case of an all-you-can-eat buffet (another disturbing and perhaps even
more disgusting trend that involves people who haven't seen their belly
buttons in years lining up like pigs at a trough to eat whatever soft,
mushy food is available). Instead, it's almost as if the restaurants
are saying, "Forget the world's ills?there's more than enough to go
around?we'll even give you a doggie bag with a handle to take it
home."

Where do we think all of this food comes from? Here in Colorado, the
newspaper editorial section is often full of letters-to-the-editor in
which Americans berate our lax policies on the illegal immigration of
Mexican nationals into our country, but most often it's these same
"aliens" who are working at or below minimum wage to keep our food
prices down. They also work the "menial" jobs that we whites wouldn't
touch with a ten-foot pole, making sure the backbone of the economy
doesn't suffer a ruptured disk. Bad analogy? Perhaps, but I'd argue
that our "aliens" make up a large part of the American coccyx, the part
that hurts so much when you fall right on your ass.