My job as a Sales Engineer takes me to some pretty cool places...San Fran, Chicago, Portland, Seattle, New York, Hawaii, to name a few. I had the recent pleasure to fly out to Sacramento the other day on a quick business trip, and it left me wanting more......more alcohol to erase the memory of ever having been there (talk about boring...). Yes, Sacramento is like Cleveland without the "pizzazz". In any case, a very unsettling thought occurred to me on the flight back: those damn "peanut allergic people" are ruining it for everyone else.
Am I right, or what? Most national carriers have banned nuts on all flights, which I know is not a recent change, but God-dammit, I love nuts. Peanuts, pistaccios, cashews, walnuts, brazilian nuts, ...that's right, I'm a friggin' card carrying member of the "I Can Eat Nuts and My Neck Won't Swell Up and Cause Respiratory Failure" club. And not only do they not serve nuts, they don't serve anything made from nuts, anything mixed with nuts, or anything that may have co-mingled with nuts prior to packaging. I ordered a "snackpack" on the flight back from CA, and it contained cookies, gummie bears, crackers, and a little tub of sun-flower seed butter? SUN FLOWER SEED BUTTER!??!??!? Who are these people that can eat this shit, but can't eat peanut butter?? AND WHY ARE WE CATERING TO THESE PICKY LITTLE BASTARDS?????
And it's gone much further than the aforementioned aerial quarantines: I can't get a brownie w/nuts at a birthday party anymore because everyone's afraid to be the "person who brought the dessert with nuts". I can't even make and bring the food that I enjoy for fear of reprisal. It's not only that children can't order PB&J sandwiches at their local school cafeteria; they can't even BRING them in their lunchboxes for fear of interacting with a child that IS allergic!! Talk about getting picked on at recess, huh?? But do you know what nut-related recall annoys me the most? McDonalds doesn't pre-nut your sundae anymore. Oh yeah, they'll give you the single-serving packet of nuts, which you'll then need to open and sprinkle onto your own sundae. Have you ever tried "sprinkling" ANYTHING while driving?? Let's put it this way, unless you're Mario Andretti, 9 times out of 10 you'll be sprinkling those nuts onto your own nuts, which I've personally done more times than I'd like to admit.
Isn't this a little bit of overkill?? If you're allergic to something, does everyone else need to suffer? Is it fair to tax the many for the faults of a few? If I were allergic, the warning on the label would be enough for me. I can read, and I'm somewhat partial to breathing, so I'm pretty sure that the 10 seconds of reading required to discern whether a certain food contains (or comes in contact with) nuts wouldn't be too much to ask. Yes, it's true, there are people in the world who are so sensitive that they can't even come in contact with specific types of nuts...they're called bubble-people. They shouldn't be allowed on commercial flights anyways due to the in-flight changes in atmospheric pressure.
Look, I feel bad for the people that can't eat nuts...I really do...they taste really fucking good, alright? But do I have to be punished because God and Darwin have deemed these people unfit to consume indehiscent, hard-shelled, one-loculated, one-seeded fruit?? I think nut.
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