Blog Number 74

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Today I had lunch at the cafeteria in my building.  This is no ordinary cafeteria.  They have a place that makes burgers (5 different kinds including sirloin and veggie), a place that makes tacos and burritos, a place that makes fresh deli sandwiches to order, a place where you make your own salad, a place that makes pasta and pizza to order, and plenty of other choices like fresh fruit, bagels, etc.  I think they even have sushi some days and I hear that on Tuesdays and Thursdays the fajita soup is to die for.  Anyway, I ate lunch there today.

At the pizza / pasta place you have your choice of veggie or meat.  The meat version typically costs more.  Having meat on your pasta is an extra $1 and having meat on your pizza is an extra $0.50.  Once you have your pizza run through the mini oven for five minutes, it is placed in a cardboard box and you take it to one of several checkout lines.  Up until today, every time I have chosen pizza, I simply told them I had the veggie pizza and I was charged the lower price.  Today however, I was asked to open my box to prove that I was truly getting only veggies.  This really did not bother me.  This is quite understandable.  People are people and whether you make $20K / year or $200K / year, you might be tempted to lie about your toppings and save the 50 cents.

The guy 2 spots behind me in line seemed to take offense at this on my behalf and made a few comments toward the cashier.  I smiled and paid for my pizza (after showing that I only had tomato, onion, peppers and pineapple - OK pineapple is not a veggie, but there is no posted charge for fruit pizza).

I have had the afternoon to think about this.  I wonder if I look like the sort of character that would steal 50 cents worth of meat toppings?  Was there sweat on my upper lip that made me appear like a thief?  Maybe I was just an unlucky person in part of a random pizza check policy that up until today I had just happened to avoid.  I may never know the answer I guess.  If I were the cashier though, I would have charged the guy 2 spots behind me an extra $1 for his comments to make of for the meat topping stealers out there.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon