Take Your Hands Off My Salad!

In a little country restaurant in upstate New York along the I-80, I ordered a small salad along with a cup of soup. I asked what came in the salad and when the waitress said onions, lettuce and grated carrots, I replied, "Please tell them no onions."

"Can't do that." She says. "We mix 'em up first thing. The salads are all mixed up already. I can pick them off for ya."

"On second thought", I said, "I'll have the side salad just as it is. Onions and all."

My salad arrived with no onions. A shiny black olive sat on the very top . I searched through the lifeless iceberg lettuce and a small purple sliver of a Spanish onion appeared near the bottom of the bowl. I sighed and dipped my first forkful into the small container of Italian dressing à la Grease. Into my mouth it did go. This was the country after all. I was hungry and I did have another three hours of driving ahead.

The waitress had bustled off, no doubt very pleased with herself that she aided my digestive process by personally removing the onions. I watched her pick up her tip, a couple of dollar bills, from a nearby table. My internal debate started. Did she wash her hands before she picked off my onions? Did she pick off the olive first and then put it back, so nicely centered? Does she even consider the issues about handling money and food? And yet, she clearly removed the onions to please me.

Reluctantly I pushed my salad aside and got up to leave. I was annoyed because I was still famished, but the fear of eating a salad maybe on its way to E-coli central overruled. We have all seen the signs in washrooms, "Employees Must Wash Their Hands". How many comply?

What else could I have done? "Hey, miss? Could you not pick off my onions with your money-stained dirty fingers and get me another salad?" Or, "Could I please have another salad? I'd quite forgotten how I love Spanish onions!"

I remembered my daughter telling me about how the kitchen staff treated "difficult clients" in a posh restaurant in which she worked. The server would come in the kitchen and complain about a certain table being rude and ignorant. The loaf of bread to be taken to the table, lying peacefully in its linen napkin-lined basket would then be removed and used as a football for a few seconds by cooks and servers alike. Back in its basket it would go and off to Mr. and Mrs. Ignoramus.

I left my salad on the table, mostly uneaten. Best to just consider the whole thing a lost cause. Don't worry. I tipped her.