Free Lunch Fridays!!!

That’s right folks, it’s Friday, and at my office Friday is the lone day that our heinous, evil, drooling blood all over their faces managers provide us all with a free meal.*

My personal favorite are the Italian days.  For some odd reason Italian dishes hold up best in the deep oversized aluminum trays - probably because they’re mostly pasta.  Second favorite has to be the West Indian food, good cooking right there, and can’t go wrong with it.  Then for third would have to be sandwiches, but sandwiches are bleh as far as free lunches go for me.  Lastly on the list of favorite free lunches catered to the office is the Chinese food. 

Now before you get all gushy over “how great my managers are” realize that they are only giving us free food to help stop the flow of underpaid employees out of the department.  See, there’s apparently no funding for anyone to get a raise, but there is funding for lunches - plus you need to keep in mind that this Chinese food isn’t from an ordinary Chinese take out place, it’s from a Chinese take out place in Long Island City.  I know, I know, the horror.

Now, for good reason, I’m quite shy about eating Chinese food.  I really only “trust” one Chinese take out place near my flat because I can see into the kitchen where the food is prepared, and that’s about it.  To read about how I unknowingly ate cat, click here, or click here. 

Since I have the history of being hoodwinked by Chinese food restaurant proprietors and cooks, call me crazy, but I really don’t fully trust them.  I imagine that they all get together on Chinese New Year, light some fireworks and still have a great big laugh at my expense, they said things like, “Hahaha, that young man is so stupid he ate cockroaches, and then he came back the next week for cat!” 

I don’t know what kind of syndrome ”not trusting Chinese restaurants” is called, but the closest thing I can think to the feeling I have with it is when someone is attacked on the street by a certain type of man, say tall, long frizzy red hair, goatee, beer bellied, and smelly, that victim would most likely shy away from men with similar looks and scents.  It’s the same situation with me, only with food establishments.

Now, all of the other times that Chinese food has been on the menu for Free Lunch Fridays I passed without even looking at the food.  There was just something about the thought of ten pounds of lo mein or chicken with broccoli in one container that disturbed my mind to the point that I didn’t dare look at it. 

Then today came along, I was really looking forward to Free Lunch Friday since I’m at the tip of going over my weekly budget, and I didn’t really want to go my budget by buying a lunch.  So, I moseyed on up to the conference room that had the buffet, and to my horror found my arch rival, Chinese food all alone in there.

My first instinct was to turn around, and walk out of the building to get some safe Halal meat from the guy on the street - notice how I said that the guy who stands on the street corner has safe food over the place that cooks its food indoors -  and as I was about to, something in my mind clicked and said, “You can do this, you won’t let Chinese take out beat you!” and so I walked on over to the aluminum trays all spread out looking so nice full of food. 

I’m not what you would call a conusor when it comes to much food, let alone Chinese, so the only things that I recognized was vegetable rice, chicken with broccoli, lo mein, egg rolls, and fortune cookies.  While this sounds like plenty to to pick from, there were actually lots more trays to choose from, and in them were things of mystery.  

I inspected the food, gave myself a couple of moments to decide, and said, “I can do it, I can eat me a buffet of Chinese food”.  I went with the standard, I’ll try a little of everything way of eating at a buffet, which is usually a horrible decision, and goes strongly against my beliefs. 

The way I have it, if you want to actually enjoy yourself at a buffet, you need to stick to three items or less, anything more and you’re asking for trouble, but it’s so hard to stick to this rule when everything is so tempting “just to try.”  Basically my common sense knows that too many cooks in a kitchen is a bad thing, and the same goes for entree plates. 

I filled my plate up with a scoop of rice, some chicken with broccoli, some deep fried looking things that I suspected to be chicken, red meat that looked to be pork, an egg roll, and some other type of deep fried looking meat that seemed quite vauge to my naked untrained eye.  I covered my bountiful warm lunch plate, and headed off to my desk.

On the way to my floor I hitched an elevator ride with an admin on my floor who wondered about my food, and the look of sheer horror on her face when I said it was Chinese food from the Free Friday Lunch was worth a thousand dollars.  She looked sad and worried for me, so I assured her that I would be alright by eating it, and that I inspected the Chinese food first and found it to be quite pleasing to the eye.  Plus I made mention to the fact that I would have never have dared eat such Chinese food had it not appeared to be actually good - this, I don’t think she believed.  She just said, “big vats of Chinese food?!?!” with the look of smelling an SBD fart.

So, guess what…I actually ate the food too…or at least tried my best to.  I was doing just fine with the first mystery meat.  It tasted real good, then the pork looking type of meat went in good, then while I began to eat the egg roll I started to think to myself, “heh, all this time…I’ve been scared of the unknown, but this stuff isn’t bad at all”.  Then I had some more mystery meat, it was a different kind of mystery meat than the first, and I wish that I had kept it a mystery.

After one bite into it I wanted to spit it all out, but as an adult, sitting alone in a vomit green colored cubicle - which is rather sad to see written out - I didn’t dare spit.  I was going to eat, and chew and swallow in disdain - which I did.  This mystery meat was so gross that I had to take a bite out of another piece to see what type of meat it was, I was unable to figure it out, maybe it was a small, but very rare “Yuck Bird”, which are rare to the world, but quite common in many a Chinese restaurant basement.

This Yuck Bird mystery meat put an end to my hunger immediately, but being a trooper I tried to move forward and finish my plate, and I couldn’t.  I just didn’t have it in me to finish it.  Here’s what the remnants of my Free Friday Lunch buffet of Chinese food looked like.

 

If you look at the top left hand of this photo you will see what remains of the Yuck Bird mystery meat on my plate.  Any ideas as to what it is? 

Now that you all have seen the leftover plate, and know that I sat alone in a vomit green colored cube and ate this food I feel for you.  I hope that you’ll all be able to sleep tonight, and if I was able to and not at all a germaphobe I would give each and every one of you a great big hug to let you all know that everything is going to be alright. 

This is by far the absolute last time that I am ever eating from a Chinese food as a Free Friday Lunch meal.  For all of you wondering, it’s 2:27P.M. right know, and I do believe that my lunch has already left the building if you know what I mean…and that I have paid a personal price quite higher than just seven dollars on an outside lunch.  In other words, let us just say that I ended up having to flush some baby powder down the toilet, okay…

If I don’t make it to work on Monday, don’t worry…it’s a holiday…if I don’t make it to work by Tuesday, then, well…I probably didn’t make it through the weekend thanks to the Yuck Bird mystery meat.  Just know that my dying wish was for the Governor to call up the National Guard, and have them burn down every Chinese food take out place in Long Island City.  Thanks.

Food: 3

Beehive: 0

*By heinous, evil, and drooling blood all over their faces managers I am actually mean, good natured, caring, and supportive managers who are all quite good looking indeed.