Coffee Table Declarations
Tuesday, September 07, 2004
If I had to sum up my weekend in one sentence, I'd say it included raw chicken and prickly fingers. The prickly finger incident was a result of my weekly grocery shopping trip. Stubbornly, I always carry in everything at once because I have to park a block away from my building and climb three flights to my apartment. I stagger slowly down the street, frozen entrees and milk cartons banging my knee with every step. Every week I swear I'm not going to put myself through that again. This time I learned my lesson.
After I dropped the bags in a heap on the kitchen floor, I shook my hands in the air since they were numb. I started putting away groceries and I noticed that the tip of my right middle finger felt prickly like pins and needles. I remembered that this was the finger I looped my keychain over before picking up the bags so the little metal ring digging into my finger must have cut off my circulation or something. All I know is, that was Saturday, today is Tuesday, and my finger is still prickly. It's better than it was, but not a hundred percent. I'm a little concerned like when you wake up in the night and your hand has fallen asleep and you pick it up with your other hand and it just flops onto your lap like a dead fish, unconnected to any part of your body.
The raw chicken is perhaps even more disturbing. I went to this place for lunch with my roommate and I got the half sandwich and soup combo. To be fair, the soup was very good - garden vegetable. However, I picked up my chicken sandwich and noticed a piece of slightly pinkish chicken which I removed before biting in. The sandwich was tasty but I was thinking about the pinkish chicken. I put the sandwich down, removed the top slice of bread and gasped in horror. There in plain view, lying casually atop a slice of red onion, was a piece of raw chicken. I mean actually raw, not undercooked. I took my plate up and showed the woman behind the counter who tried to convince me that in fact, that particular piece of chicken was "quite cooked". Luckily, I spoke to the manager who offered me another sandwich. I politely declined and got my money back instead. What made me the most angry was the woman saying it was cooked. I could say that someone was careless preparing my order and that it was very busy at that time, you know, we all make mistakes, some grosser than others. But then to try to convince me it was cooked when it was quite obviously a pink slimy piece of chicken flesh? Enough to make me seriously consider becoming a vegitarian.
After I dropped the bags in a heap on the kitchen floor, I shook my hands in the air since they were numb. I started putting away groceries and I noticed that the tip of my right middle finger felt prickly like pins and needles. I remembered that this was the finger I looped my keychain over before picking up the bags so the little metal ring digging into my finger must have cut off my circulation or something. All I know is, that was Saturday, today is Tuesday, and my finger is still prickly. It's better than it was, but not a hundred percent. I'm a little concerned like when you wake up in the night and your hand has fallen asleep and you pick it up with your other hand and it just flops onto your lap like a dead fish, unconnected to any part of your body.
The raw chicken is perhaps even more disturbing. I went to this place for lunch with my roommate and I got the half sandwich and soup combo. To be fair, the soup was very good - garden vegetable. However, I picked up my chicken sandwich and noticed a piece of slightly pinkish chicken which I removed before biting in. The sandwich was tasty but I was thinking about the pinkish chicken. I put the sandwich down, removed the top slice of bread and gasped in horror. There in plain view, lying casually atop a slice of red onion, was a piece of raw chicken. I mean actually raw, not undercooked. I took my plate up and showed the woman behind the counter who tried to convince me that in fact, that particular piece of chicken was "quite cooked". Luckily, I spoke to the manager who offered me another sandwich. I politely declined and got my money back instead. What made me the most angry was the woman saying it was cooked. I could say that someone was careless preparing my order and that it was very busy at that time, you know, we all make mistakes, some grosser than others. But then to try to convince me it was cooked when it was quite obviously a pink slimy piece of chicken flesh? Enough to make me seriously consider becoming a vegitarian.
