strangereality156

For dinner at the work restaurant I had chicken burger with chips. The restaurant was quite busy. The sun streaming in through the windows added sparkle to the scene.

I picked up a tray and joined the queue. The two people in front of me were having the bolognese; I didn't like its look. The girl who served me was new. Her hands shook as she picked up the plate, slid the burger onto it, and then added a portion of chips. The chicken burger is on the restaurant menu at least once a week. It is always served with a generous amount of crunchy salad and lashings of mayonnaise, which are added to the burger on the spot. I looked over the new girl's shoulder: there on a table behind her were the plastic buckets that contained the constituent elements of the delicious crunchy salad; there was the large squeezy bottle of mayonnaise.

The girl handed me the plate across the counter.

"Er.... the salad?" I said.

"Sorry?" She had a small little face covered with freckles.

"The salad and mayonnaise?"

"Oh," she said. "You have to get that at the checkout."

She nodded past me to the checkout area. I knew she was wrong. I knew 100% that she was ridiculously wrong, that she was making a new employee's mistake, which it would be entirely appropriate for me to correct.

But I didn't correct her. I couldn't do it. I thought she might think I was criticising her. I thought she might think I was a twat, and find a way to spit in my food in the future. People who work in kitchens have to be treated with the maximum possible circumspection.

I took the coward's way out. I am a coward. I said nothing, and took my chicken burger 'dry'. I paid at the checkout and found a table.

And then I was stared at by a baby.

The work restaurant is open to the pulic, and a young family was sitting at the table next to mine. The baby was about a year old. Boy or girl, I couldnt tell. The baby was being bottle-fed by one of the parents, and held in exactly the right position in the parent's arms for its beady little eyes to stare directly at me over the crest of the bottle. I chewed my way through the dry chicken burger and the overcooked chips, and became paranoid about the baby. Every time I glanced over, the baby's eyes were on me. I would look away, let a minute pass, two minutes. I bet if I look over now, that baby is still looking at me. And I would look over, and the baby would still be looking at me.

This went on for twenty minutes. I finished my dinner in something like a state of total moral collapse. My will had been undermined by the new girl behind the counter not serving me a chicken burger in the appropriate manner, and by a one-year-old baby staring me out. I quickly mopped up the last of the chips, swallowed down the last hunk of the dry burger, and left the restaurant.