I think it's about time I start finding some new places to get lunch. See, sometimes when I'm in the city, I pick up lunch at this place called F&B, which I usually describe as "if IKEA sold hot dogs." It's just on the far end of walking distance from work, and the food's pretty good and pretty cheap. The only problem is they're getting a little familiar with me — and that means they're getting a little too familiar with me, like the counter girl now sees me and she knows what I want and at lunch today she tried awkwardly to start up a conversation. This disturbs me on many levels.

First, I've been going to F&B since I was a college freshman, and the counter girl, (whose name may or may not be Patricia, so I'll just call her Patricia) has been there at least as long as I have. And I invariably get the same thing; I mean, maybe thrice in six years I did not get the chicken frites meal with pommes frites and a small lemonade (did I mention F&B is European?) and it's just today that Patricia's catching on? Boy, that sure makes me feel like a valued customer.

And second, I don't really like it when the staff all of a sudden gets friendly. That happened once before, at Columbia, with the cafeteria carving station guy Julio. Now, I like my meat, and frankly I think the hunk of cow or hunk of pig or hunk of fowl was the only thing they had in that cafeteria that didn't come straight out of a cardboard box, just-add-water. Suffice it to say, Julio saw me a lot, and he's a generous guy and all and this was before I had my current stunning physique so Julio started piling on the — crap, this is gonna come off dirty — extra meat. Cow or pig or fowl. And I'd thank him, you know.

Then one week, out of nowhere, he started telling me how he's gonna give me extra cow, pig, or fowl to "fatten me up." He'll "send me back home for the holidays all fattened up." Like, every day that week. And there was always coincidentally some junior varsity crew member standing right behind me in line, and Julio'd say to him, "I'm gonna fatten this guy up," and I started to become a little afraid Julio wanted to eat me.

I mean, it's bad enough these people spit in your food and everything....

The moral is: never get friendly with the people serving your meals, because they might let it slip that they're cannibals and then you'll no longer be able to eat dinner in ignorant bliss.