The Working Stiff's Lunch

by *meg*:

Anyone who works a nine to five knows that their day is timed out in reference to the lunch hour. Time is measured in pre and post lunch terms. Therefore, the actual glory hour that is the lunch break becomes infinitely important to keep one’s sanity throughout the day.

For my lunch hour (which usually extends to more like an hour and a half), I need to go outside, walk around, remind myself that there is more to life than cream colored office walls and flickering fluorescent lights.

When I started my nine to five, I usually brought my lunch from home: a cucumber sandwich, yogurt, a piece of fruit. I ate my lunch alone either outside or tucked away in a corner of the Firm lunchroom. After a couple weeks, this routine became old. I needed change to keep my day moving forward, racing rapid fire toward the end of the day instead of slugging slowly onward to the inevitable beginning of the next day.

Lucky for me, my good friend Katie soon joined the ranks of “Law Firm Lackey” and took a job at a Firm only a few blocks from my own. Sometimes we’d bring our own lunches and eat together or hit up the newest lunch deal of the week, usually brought to our attention by Office Intern Minion, Daina.

The days of summer flew by as we looked forward to our daily lunch meetings and Subway Sandwich deals or soup specials.

But, as the weather became colder, the Subway sandwiches just weren’t doing the lunch time trick like they used to. I found myself saying, “If I eat one more veggie patty on this bullshit bread, I’m going to throw the fax machine out the window, right onto Michigan Avenue!”

Just as Katie and I thought all was lost, we discovered the Signature Salad from Cosi, a morning coffee and bagel place that makes sandwiches and salads during lunch. The salad was delicious. We couldn’t get enough! But, the $7 price tag was not doing either one of us any good. We tried to refrain from the salad. I would tell Katie, “Oh, I brought my lunch today. A cucumber salad… No, no yogurt today.” By noon, my cucumber sandwich was always long gone and I found myself traveling to the familiar Cosi salad line by 3:00 P.M. I knew I was cheating on my lunchtime partner, but what could I do? Who was I trying to kid with a cucumber sandwich on low carb wheat bread? That’s a mere snack, not a whole meal. It’s the appetizer to a delicious Signature salad, packed with grapes, dried cranberries, pears, and oh the vinaigrette!

Then one day, something happened that made me question the Signature Salad.

Katie and I had traveled to the Cosi on Clark and Lake (not my usual Cosi). As was customary, we complained about the price of the salad. “I just want another coupon from the Red Eye!” Katie would yell. “$2 off! You can’t beat that!” We ordered our salads-hold the pistachios, please- and sat down to dine.

“Delicious!” I would say.
“I just love this salad!” Katie would agree.
As we got to the bottom of our salad bowls, Katie looked down and began to laugh.
“Look what’s in here!” She continued to giggle.
I looked in her almost empty bowl and there, curled up on a little piece of Romaine, was an earwig.
“It looks like he’s sleeping in that salad,” I said as I put my fork down. I was almost done anyway.

Katie continued eating her salad. I looked at her for a long time until she made eye contact with me and said, “What? This salad’s so good! It’s just a bug. I’m eating around it.”

To both of us, that made perfect sense and I watched her finish her delicious Cosi Salad-carefully avoiding the earwig.

In retrospect, she could have taken the earwig, along with it’s lettuce bed, out of the bowl so she wouldn’t have to stare at it as she picked around for loose grapes and gorgonzola cheese, but she just didn’t think of that.

For a few weeks after the salad incident, Katie and I spent our lunch dates at a local Mr. Sub where a veggie sub was only $2.36! We could eat three lunches for what one Cosi Signature Salad cost us.

But soon, the urge to have one of those delicious salads came back. The veggie sub just wasn’t cutting it anymore. While I loved the money I was saving, I just missed that salad.

So today, Katie and I broke down and went to the Cosi on Clark & Lake and each had a Signature Salad-hold the earwig please. And I know that both our days will be better because we went.