Lunchtime tales

Almost every day, I get my lunch from a little salad-bar cafe close to the office. The kind man at the cashier packages my salad box for me, and helpfully adds a flourish of plastic cutlery. Every day, he throws in two forks (one large and one small), a spoon, a knife, and a sheaf of tissues for good measure.

The one thing I really detest is excess and wastage and the general disregard for the scarcity of resources. It's my favourite pet peeve, and rankles me no end.

So the first couple of times I requested the cashier, "excuse me, but I only actually need one fork and a couple of tissues with my salad, thanks." And he'd smile and nod and proceed to put the whole lot in anyway. I guess it was just less trouble for him to not deviate from his reflexive packaging routine.

Which left me with all this extra cutlery each day, that I've been squirreling away in one of my unused desk drawers because I'd feel too guilty to just throw it. Today I realised I couldn't close the drawer anymore, mostly because I've stuffed it to the high heavens with plastic forks, spoons and knives. I wondered for a moment what to do with them, and then placed all the collected cutlery neatly into a little shopping bag. There were 28 items in all. I took the bag back to the cafe this afternoon and handed it over at the cashier.

"Uhmm, here's all your extra cutlery I haven't used. I've been collecting it."

His eyes were little saucers of surprize.

Then, slowly, a wide smile spread across his face, and he burst into laughter. It was a round, full, contagious, pot-bellied laugh, and before I knew I had joined in as well, our laughters infecting each others'. It was a shared moment. He took the bag and waved me away, shaking his head, no doubt in wonderment about the wierdness of life.

Now that I'm back at my desk and thinking about it, I'm feeling a bit embarrassed. I guess it was a little wierd. I guess I'll go somewhere else for lunch tomorrow.