Ian M Rountree

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There Are Always Pickles

August 31, 2010 by Ian 1 Comment

Pickle Lover on FlickrLast weekend, Jaz and I went out for an anniversary/birthday date. We don’t get a lot of opportunity to do so, so it was nice – went to see Avatar in 3D, then to a restaurant we’ve known to be excellent for a long time – but they changed the menu recently, and took away everything that made them special. So I had a burger.

I order my burgers plain. No garnish, no lettuce – meat, cheese and bread. Without fail, however, there is always a pickle on the burger.

This is not unique to this restaurant. Every cafe I go to, every “real” food joint not billing itself as fast food includes a slice, slices, or a chunk of pickle in, on, or around my burger. Every single time.

Why is this a big deal?

It shows uniformity of assumption. In this instance it’s amusing – but I have to wonder how many other places this kind of behaviour happens – and I’m not just talking about where we eat.

How much packaging do you throw away when you buy something? How much inserted advertising do you get with your utility bills? How many times do we really have to hear the phrase “your call is important to us” on hold?

How many pickles, food or otherwise, are we handing each other?

Pickles, metaphorically speaking, don’t even serve a utility-oriented purpose any more. They’re garnish – an inclusion based on an assumption that people really don’t like things plain, even when they say so.

Stop giving me pickles. It’s not polite.

Photo by chefranden.

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