scenes from a cafeteria
19 September 2005

Last week the smoking vegan and I met for lunch. For a variety of unimportant reasons, we ended up in the cafeteria near my office.

Here’s what went down:

After grabbing our trays, we slid up to the section of the cafeteria that sometimes has vegetarian entrees, desperately scanning for something good. In the past few weeks, there had been some nice vegan food. On this day, though, we’d not be so lucky.

“Is that vegan?” I asked, pointing to something fried, circular, and mysteriously labeled as “cutlet patty.”

The food service worker behind the counter looked at me blankly.

“I mean, does that have any eggs, meat, fish, dairy, honey, or anything else that comes from an animal in it?”

“Nah, it is VAY-gun,” replied the food service worker. Hearing this, the Smoking Vegan turned to me and flashed me a “if you believe that you’re on crack you fucking idiot” look. Taking note, I went on:

“Are you sure?” I asked, worried I was getting the blow off.

“Well, all this stuff is VAY-gun,” the food service worker said, casting her hand over a few steam trays, one of which contained pasta floating in a bath of cream sauce. Yellow oil was unattractively pooled in places where the pasta had not been disturbed. All in all, it was nasty looking, even for the ontologically nasty pasta alfredo itself.

“This is labeled ‘pasta alfredo,’ and that’s not usually vegan. Is it made with soymilk?” I asked, trying to politely remind the food service worker that milk was an animal product.

“I’m not sure. Let me go find someone.”

“There’s absolutely no fucking way that fucking pasta is vegan,” the Smoking Vegan interjected (note all the ‘fuckings’; we are, of course, talking about the Smoking Vegan). “Look at that shit, they’d never make that with soymilk. That’s heavy fucking cream. Vegan my ass.”

“Well, technically, your ass is vegan,” I responded.

“Fuck this, I’m getting a veggie burger. At least they’re vegan,” and with that, the Smoking Vegan skulked off to the burger station.

I hung around, waiting for another food service worker. I wasn’t going to eat any of this stuff, but I thought I should at least wait around to be polite. After all, I had started this quest.

Finally, minutes later, a higher-up appears.

“Well, these cutlet-things are VAY-gun but they have honey in them.”

“Okay, thanks, but lots of vegans don’t eat honey….”

At that point, the Smoking Vegan returns from the burger station, and hearing about the honey-vegan thing, is clearly on the verge of a brain hemorrhage. Before he can flip out, I interject.

“So, what about this pasta? Is that vegan?”

“Oh, that has cream and milk in it. It isn’t VAY-gun. But this other stuff is.”

“Okay, thanks.”

And with that, I do what I should have done to begin with: I get a veggie burger and french fries, and resign myself to eating VAY-gun junk food yet again.

Oh well, at least the company was good.

  Posted by Bob Torres    Permalink    Filed under:
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