Monday, November 17, 2008

This Made Me Laugh

One of my coworkers is a vegetarian. Well, several of them.

Which is great. I was a vegetarian for ten years. Not a big deal. I didn't eat meat, I didn't make a big deal about it, and I didn't brow-beat anyone else into doing it. It was just what I was doing then.

However, one of my vegetarian coworkers is outspoken about it. If group snacks (within my small group of 20 or so friends) are brought in, and if they contain any sort of meat (such as a cheese platter that contains Italian cured meat), she will make a huge deal about how it's not appropriate to bring this sort of snack in when there are vegetarians around - even though there is plenty of non-meat food for people to eat.

Now, I thought woman is the kind of vegetarian that I generally like - when in Europe, she'll eat meat to get the full cultural experience. But the berating of others was something that never set well with me (I was a vegetarian because I thought it was gross, I didn't care what anyone else did).

Therefore, it was of great interest to me when, Friday night, while we were at another vegetarian coworker's dinner party, when the appetizers were being served, most of which were vegetarian, and chicken taquitos were pointed out to us several times so that the vegetarians would not eat them, and the meat eaters could get at them, this particular vehemently vegetarian coworker of mine slyly took one chicken taquito from the platter, and ate it rapidly. And then took four more.

Later that night, when we parted ways, I laughed and laughed.

I still haven't said anything to her, and I don't think I will, but I'll totally passive-aggressively post about her on the internet.

10 comments:

Auburn Kat said...

HAHA! That made me laugh too!

Jsto said...

Not only did you not brow beat me for eating meat, sometimes you encouraged it which I enjoyed.

We have an obnoxious vegetarian at work. I would bet money that he's gay except his wife works with us too. He always asks us what we're eating for lunch and then says stupid things like "tortured poultry?" To which I usually,say yummy or mmmmm

Princess in Galoshes said...

Ha. Two-faced wha...?

Lizzle said...

I haven't eaten beef in almost a decade... I, like you, never berated anyone else about it, and placed no judgment on anyone for eating it, I just didn't want to, and would often find myself in really awkward conversations where people expected me to explain myself. I hated that they couldn't just accept a decision that I had made that didn't impact them in any way. People are weird.

I did deliberately violate my no-beef policy while in Vegas though, because it's not every day that you have someone else paying for the Kobe Beef Surf & Turf tasting menu at Craftsteak!

(It was worth the lapse!)

Joe M said...

Wait, I'm confused... Did she not know it was chicken? Or is she a secret non-vegetarian?

Marcia said...

Jsto - I remember yelling at you, after a donor weekend, when there was good food in the dining hall, to eat the shrimp because I could not.

Lizzle - that's how I was - I didn't feel like eating meat. For 10 years. And now I do. End of story. (and I am going to dream about Kobe Beef Surf & Turf tonight)

Joseph - Oh, she knew. She just likes yelling at people, but doesn't have a leg to stand on.

rebekah said...

Do you think she woke up with a chicken hangover? I do. The shame, the horrible shame.

C. Spencer Beggs said...

And that's the best revenge, really. Now, trun on your comments RSS feed in the Blogger settings so I can follow in Google Reader.

Chris Wilson said...

Taquitos of all things. Not kobe ground beef sliders or prosciutto wraps, but taquitos. If they were from Costco, I'll really have a laugh.

Anonymous said...

That's awesome. And totally passive aggressive. I think you should come in early one day and hide like 30 chicken taquitos in her desk.