Hey everyone, who feels like X for lunch?
Those that want to go, go. Those that don’t can go to the Bistro or whatever. Easy. If you don’t take the initiative, well, I guess you get to go with the flow, or go it alone.
If it’s sponsered and paid for by the company, and you are entertaining clients or whatever, it is probably a good idea to pick a place with a varied menu. Makes sense to me anyway.
bengangmo - I’ll concede that your customs are a bit different. Though I can’t imagine trying to always please every one when you are working with a fixed menu. And I think it’s very wrong to expect people to eat things that they don’t like.
Perhaps the super picky ones that somehow don’t let you go to the restaruants you like. Really, how big of a problem can this be? If it’s that much of a problem for you, don’t eat with them. Or a least don’t eat with them all the time.
Are you saying that you can’t find anything you like at a restaurant with a varied menu? Who’s picky?
As far as I’m concerned, you may eat anything you want. Just don’t expect me to be ordering seafood.
My SO HAD a friend. She was a hyper picky eater. Actually, I dont think it was so much that exactly as there were only a few PLACES she would even CONSIDER eating at.
She was part of a social group that liked to go to various places once every week. Note that it wasnt so much they went to some NEW exotic place every week, it was more that their pool of acceptable places was more like a dozen or two rather than 2 or 3 total.
Her total insistence of her place or no place has pretty much caused her social circle to slowly dwindle to nearly zero.
If you can’t go to nearly any place to eat and not find SOMETHING thats passable, IMO your too damn picky. My condolences if its an ACTUAL medical condition. However, like people that “cant loose weight”, for every picky eater that has a “real condition/problem” there are probably 10 that just need to get with the program.
Is being a picky eater inherently bad? No. But on the flip side IMO there is nothing inherently GOOD about it either. Its generally neutral and it doesnt take much IMO to slide a little into “bad” territory.
I agree with pretty much all of what you say billfish. Too bad she has lost her friends. I wonder if occasionally the group could have gone to the restaurants she liked. Seeing as how they liked them too. Just not all the time. At other times, she could just not go. I just don’t see what the problem is.
Almost seems like people need to be a bit more assertive.
And I agree that a person should be able to go to any restaurant and find something that they like. Even if you get ‘stuck’ at a basic no frills place.
You know, I had a friend in college that was an insanely picky eater. He really, really did not like trying new foods. We always joked about it, because at any restaurant we went to, he would either order the pork fried rice, or the dish that most closely approximated pork fried rice. Didn’t matter what type of restaurant we were at, that’s what he was ordering, or the closest thing to. Often, it wasn’t a very close approximation at all, and he’d just quietly pick at his food and not really eat.
But you know - it was fine, because he didn’t pitch a fit about going to different restaurants. He’d see if his dish of choice was offered, and if so, great. If not, he was happy to sit and socialize with everyone else and (I presume) eat on his own later. His pickiness did not affect the rest of his social group. So that kind of thing, I don’t really have a problem with. I don’t really understand how you can go through life only ever eating basically one thing, but I can accept it, as long as you’re not a dick about it.
They DID go to “her places”. They probably went to those more than was justified actually. It was her way or the highway crap 24/7 as far as she was concerned that did her in. Of course the fact that attitude applied to pretty much EVERY matter of taste, lifestyle choice, economic behavior, entertainment choice, fashion choice, or ethical delima probably didnt help any either.
You almost feel sorry for her. But at some point you realize she’s done it to herself and you get on with your life burden and hassle free.
Sorry, doesn’t always work that way. Nor should it have to, just to avoid issues that food drama queens cause.
Yeah, this is exactly the point. Except I’m not the person with the problem this advice is intended to solve. Some people insist on being part of the group, make it a huge deal when they don’t get precisely what they want, then feel offended when they are finally excluded as a result. They are the ones who need to go with the flow.
Wait, if that’s not how it works, how does it work? “All people must eat together! We must all go to the same place! No exceptions! You! You there with the stomachache! You HAVE to have lunch with us! And like it! No excuses will be tolerated!”
How… bizarre.
If a co-worker is the kind of picky eater who MUST be included ALL the time and MUST have their whims accomodated ALL the time…why are you hanging out them again? They sound like assholes, based on that bit of information alone. Is this your boss or something? What?
I’d also just like to casually note that I’d be screwed in the seven-course meal culture - since I got on my diet my stomach seems to have shrunk to a maximum capacity of about two standard cups. If I eat more than that, no matter if I like it or not, I will suffer. So yeah, I’m gonna offend somebody.
And/or they’re themselves assholes who can’t stand to have any limitation on where they go for a lunch engagement. If I say, “No authentic mexican or indian, please, but damn near any other place will be fine,” some here would say that I’m intolerably picky. As if there weren’t still a few dozen options of places to eat.
I’m just saying lunch invitations can be informal things, and decisions on where to go to eat may be held off until a group of people is physically in the car.
It is a shame to have to intentionally skip over inviting people if they are the type that can’t reasonably come to an agreement about restaurant choices, and singling out people, particularly in an office environment, can get really awkward.
I don’t know how my posts got so badly misinterpreted. Consider the fact that it is possible I may enjoy the personal and professional company of a person that hates sushi. Also consider how it looks when you ask everyone on the team except said sushi-hater if they want to go to lunch, especially if you end up not going to a sushi restaurant.
Also, for anyone who is confused as to my stance on this issue, please refer to my first post in this thread.
So just say, “Hey guys, it’s time for lunch! I was thinking we could do something a little more adventurous for a change; anybody interested?” Then check the responses:
Everyone but one guy says “Hell yeah! Let’s go!” The remaining guy gets all sulky and pouty. In this case, tell him he can pick the place next time, then show him your heel.
Everyone looks at the one guy, then says they’d rather go someplace everyone can enjoy themselves at. In that case, demand that you get your way, possibly stomping your foot. Don’t be surprised if they show you their heels, though.
The people acting like in 1 and 2 are evenly split. Cage match! Or separate cars.
Everyone (but the one) immediately suggests different exotic places, revealing in the process that they each have biases against one or another of the different ethnicities such that the only place that everyone will halfway like are ones the loner wants to go to. Admittedly, its not likely that there will be nothing everyone-but-him can agree upon, but I think you’ll agree it would be awesomely ironic if this happened.
The key here, of course, is not to offer a meal and then bait-and-switch it with “a meal, but one you’ll hate! Bwahaha!”. This can be avoided by either catering to your audience’s wishes, or being clear from the start that you’re not gonna. I suppose this could be hard to pull off for some, but really I don’t see the difficulty myself. 'Specially since you already know by now that the guy’s picky; it’s not like his "no-not-there"s have any reason to catch you off-guard or anything.
Well put begburt2. That the picky eater continues to disrupt the group has got my skeptic meter pinging.
Funny you should mention this particular situation. This will sound contrived but it’s true. We are sort of starting a new lunch group at work. Fridays (not the restaurant, the day). We have only gone out twice. Anyhoo, on Thursday, I suggested we go out the next day. I did not suggest a restaurant.
On Friday, the other folks (5 of us total) suggested sushi. Well, I don’t eat fish. But figured that there would be something there I would enjoy. So I simply got online, and sure enough, they have Thai food as well. Good to go. Otherwise, I suspect I could have gotten some sort of vegi roll, tempura and rice. That works too. Or I might have excused myself from lunch.
Maybe a little bit more planning is in order? Instead of just jumping in the car and going? It seems that you know who these people are. If you want to go to a certain restaurant, tell people where you are going, get a little consensus first if you want. Or, suggest lunch to the picky person, and let the cards fall where they may.
What you guys are talking about are picky eating asshole zombie Nazis. Which I have never encountered myself.
People here have said that I am a picky eater because I don’t eat seafood. I don’t see it that way at all. I don’t like it. For me to eat it is very uncomfortable. It’s a waste of money and very unpleasant for me. I don’t know if I’m allergic to it, but I don’t think so, and frankly, I don’t really care. Well there are times I wish I was allergic to it, just to get a few people to get off my back. But frankly, it’s none of their business.
Here’s something that is unavoidable: Eating in groups is a basic human social ritual. It’s not now nor has it ever been simple about filling stomaches. In a social group, the members take turns letting individuals have their choices, and in any group, that choice is going to displease somebody. The way human interaction works is that that somebody goes along and maybe next time he or she gets his choice.
Food preferences that are so limited and so extreme that they interfere with this kind of interaction amount to a social disability. By extreme, I mean things like “I can never eat at X restaurant or at Y-style restaurant” or “If we go there, I’ll have to eat bread and water.” And has been suggested, the person who can’t get over this disability is going to piss people off.
As many of the picky-eater defenders keep saying, “It’s just a meal.” It shouldn’t necessarily require extensive planning, and setting this kind of a bar for a routine social interaction interferes with the smooth operations of casual or professional relationships.
No, the key here is that everyone else takes turns having meals at restaurants they don’t like or having food they don’t like in social situations in order to keep things moving without going apeshit or without going on a hunger strike at the common table.
You are intolerably picky if you expect that this limitation will be acceded to every damn single time that other people want to share a meal with you.
Is your stomachache perpetual? Well, you’re going to find that it creates a handicap for you in social relationships.
Again, everybody routinely takes turns eating food that they don’t particularly like, without throwing a fit about it.
“Where shall we go?” or, “we are going to X, do you want to come?” is extensive planning? The question must be asked at some point. Asking it BEFORE people are in the car and commited smooths the operation. Not to many vegans are going to be pleased with the Steak and Rib joint.
And it seems to me that the folks that will eat anything are the ones saying “suck it up, eat it, it’s just a meal”.
Sometimes such planning takes place, sometimes it doesn’t. Having the ability to handle such normal variations in human interaction is part if being an adult member of society. Again, enforcing a regime in which everyone else always must order their routine interactions in a particular way is going to push you yo the edge of society.
Again the point is that if you’re the one who everyone else always has to make accommodations fir or think in advance for every single time then you are a social problem. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a food issue, but that happens to be the subject at hand.
Everyone haspersonal preferences. The point is that they are personal. They should not become a social issue. As soon as your personal preference rises to the level that everyone in the group must always reconsider their options for then you are failing to he a full member of the society you live in.
I don’t know about you, but I rarely get together with a group of friends without having to do some sort of planning, usually by email, just to coordinate schedules. We still run into the issue of where do we go. Someone may express a preference for Vietnamese food, one guy wants anything but Indian since he eats that at home all the time. If you have to coordinate schedules, you might as well figure out the restaurant as well.
And those are the only circumstances in which you find yourself sharing a meal with other people? Really? If so then you’ll just have to believe me when I tell you that very often it’s a case of the guy down the hall walking up to you’d desk and saying, you guys feel like getting lunch? Yeah okay let’s go.
And even if the circumstances are as you describe, this is not fundamentally an issue of coordination. It’s an issue of reciprocation. No matter which restaurant you pick, I expect that in any group there will be varying degrees of enthusiasm. One guy loves it. One guy just likes it. Another guy finds it mildly unsppealing. Another guy hates it. But that’s okay because the next tome around the distributions will be different.
This is something we all learn as children. Tonight we’re going to watch the Princesses, Elves,and MagicLollipop Bunnies movie together, even though it makes you vomit, because your sister likes it. Next time we’ll watch Magic Wizard Robot Jet Bicyclists even though your sister doesn’t care for it.
It was a basic human social ritual when people had to hunt in groups to survive and had to eat whatever they could find. We’ve come a long way since then. We’ve developed language, for instance - so the basic human social ritual is the conversation, not the meal - meals actually get in the way of conversation, because mouths tend to be full while eating.