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Stop eating already! I'm trying to have a meal here

I rarely go to restaurants.
That's because I hate the way people eat.
I detest the woman who orders a salad the size of a farming plot who then starts diving bombing her meal with her fork from two feet above the table. Up and down, up and down. It's like watching a performance of Cirque de Soleil.
Or the dowager who gets all gussied up for the high priced bistro, who then proceeds to eat her meal like an anteater. The mouth opens, the tongue slithers out, the left hand shoves the food in while the right hand is poised to catch any rogue morsel.
It's both fascinating and disgusting.
Like watching Miley Cyrus tongue a wrecking ball.
And isn't it fun to watch the couples who go out for dinner and don't say a blessed word to each other. All they can focus on is what is on the plates in front of them. They slather the butter on bread like stone masons building a museum, then shove the bread into their gobs. The salad comes, and there's the dive bombing again. Or the soup, sometimes I pray the servers don't bring soup which is slurped, then sucked between the teeth. Maybe it's hot. Let it cool down!
I love chicken wings, ribs and corn on the cob but I don't order them at a restaurant and you shouldn't either. There are no amount of handy wipes that can give a person back her dignity. There aren't.
My aversion to public dining may be the reason I was never a success.
All the clinking and the clacking, all the slurping and the pillage was too much to take for me.
Mostly, I refused to go to meetings which involved dining. And I did everything I could to avoid going to those "working lunches" in one board room or another. Do you see what the caterers put on those platters, and do you see what people do with that food?
It's monstrous, I tell you.

Conventions are worse. They involve donuts, bagels, squishy little sandwiches that get all over the handouts. Little soups I'm sure the servers spit into. Cardboard desserts filled with cream. What's in that cream? How do you know the person made that cream with real ingredients instead of, you know.
And all the germs from people double dipping the crudités.
But people love to eat at conventions, like ants at a picnic. They attack the plates of smoked salmon and pigs in blankets. They mill around the roast beef table. They scarf down bricks of mystery cheeses like there's no tomorrow.
In essence, convention eating turns people into Pacmen and Pacwomen.
Food was never meant to be eaten while standing up.
You can't eat that shit standing up.
You can't.
But people do. Oh, yes they do.
And they love talking with their mouths stuffed with weinies and egg sannies washed down with cheap wine.
It's like going to a convention of people doing Marlon Brando impressions.

I found office eating just as bad.
My last two bosses were food fanatics. The first one was on the Bernstein diet the entire time I worked for her. That didn't mean she didn't eat. Every ten minutes she was peeling an apple or twirling spaghetti squash with marinara sauce on her fork, with balsamic vinegar from her salad dripping down her face. I had to quit. Had to.
The next boss I had was always shoving Tim Horton donuts in her gob everytime I went into her office. Bite after irritating bite. Her mouth was full but her eyes were glued to her next morsel.
Fuck, I wanted to take her down, open up that gob and shove the phone book down her gullet.
"Stop eating and listen," I would say in my fantasy. "Your omentum is about to explode."
I'm traumatized just thinking about it.
Ah, the horror.

I also hate people walking and eating food.
Mostly, I detest people eating ice cream cones with their big tongues hanging out, slithering around the ice cream like lamprey eels. They're walking and eating, not paying attention to the other Costco shoppers who are trying to avoid them. They don't care. They are so fixated on their cones.
Food trucks have become an abomination in North America. Now you can't walk down the street without nearly being upended and covered in fish tacos or some kind of Thai food porn.
And wouldn't you hate being the person who works in the next cubicle with all the burping and farting going on? There should be a law.

People! We are not cows. We are human beings not Labrador Retrievers!
Put the fork down once in a while.
Engage your lunch partner in conversation.
Don't pick the spinach out of your teeth. Don't dive bomb the salad.
Use a knife to cut that big piece of Romaine.
What's your hurry?
And please, sit down when you eat.
That's what God made your fat ass for.

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