Sunday, 07 June 2009

• fingers in my food;

  or, why IHOP should monitor the food that goes out to its diners.

  a standard beginning to a sunday morning (since moving back home): church, then a late breakfast at IHOP.

  father orders a chicken salad. mother orders a spinach omelet. and i order sirloin tips and eggs (yes, i love my meat). father's order is fine. mother's order is a complete mess; her omelet is actually half the size it is supposed to be (instead of a large rectangle of food, a slim isoceles triangle sits on her plate). she complains, of course, that it looks like someone just threw in a bunch of leftovers. the waitress tells us that there is a new cook in the kitchen. she takes it back and brings out a very nicely made omelet of the proper size.

  my food is incredibly sloppy, like the food was just tossed on there from a distance of 10 feet or so. but i do not care about the mess; i am hungry. so i start cutting my sirloin tips and find this little white-ish foldover thing. i am looking at it, trying to figure out what it was. i am thinking that it is the paper stuff that comes with meat when you first remove it from the styrofoam/plastic package. i show it to mother and she says that it is onion skin. i show it to father and he takes it with his fork and inspects it. we all come to the agreement that, yes, it is a piece of a latex glove that the "new cook" decided to surprise us with.

  so we flag down the waitress, show her the finger in my food. she apologizes and takes it back. the manager comes out to apologize and make weak jokes; he comps my meal, of course. my meal shows up, nicely prepared, and definitely done by a long-standing chef. but i really cannot eat it. i keep thinking of the possibility of new cook cutting his hand and bleeding his rancid blood all over my sirloin tips, hence, the reason why there were bits of his protective gloves in my food.

  oh course, by then, i had texted everyone i knew in order to complain about the inept employees of IHOP.

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