Whereas I will eat italian, chinese and subs, I also like middle eastern, and again, there is NO middle eastern place within 50 miles of my home.
Others in the group EXCEPT FOR ONE PERSON will eat middle eastern foods in addition to all of the above, they opted to listen to her whinge that she doesn’t want to order middle eastern because of everybody in my old job/department it gives her the shits. Despite the fact they also carry standard american style sub sandwiches and salads, that are made exactly the same as at the pizza place that they do order from almost daily. They also make pizza at the middle eastern place [go figure]
Any other delivery food place has a minimal delivery order of $10, which is essentially one lunch. The middle eastern place has a delivery minimum of $25. Which is 3 meals.
Since I had to drive in the 50 miles ONE DAY PER MONTH, and there is NO middle eastern food within the entire distance between east asscrack ct where I live, and Hartford, and it is ONE DAY PER MONTH, one might consider it reasonable to request a food that I HAVE NO WAY TO GET AT HOME OTHER THAN MAKE IT MYSELF as a treat …
Now, is that more understandable? I was requesting ONCE PER MONTH a treat of a food that I have NO WAY TO GET AT HOME on the ONE DAY PER MONTH THAT I HAD TO DRIVE IN as a change from the food they ORDER EVERY DAY OF THE WEEK OF THE MONTH AS THEY WORK IN A CITY.
Yeah, saying, “Hey, guys, can we eat at the Middle Eastern place? No? …sigh, OK, I’ll have a turkey sub on wheat” is not picky.
“I refuse to eat anything from the Middle Eastern place, ever, and will never agree to eat there not even once every few months, because I am just super picky and if you don’t go along with me I’ll bitch” is picky.
I understand why you couldn’t order in for lunch but after the first couple of months you knew this to be the case did you start picking up dinner from this place on your way home instead? Was this place close enough for you to drive for pick-up at lunch? I really am not understanding why everyone has to order from the same place for delivery if it isn’t a company sponsored event. If there were 3 or 4 other people who wanted middle eastern food why not group together with them so you meet the minimum? It seems like there are a lot of solutions to this problem that don’t involve making the woman who reacts badly to middle eastern food eat something she doesn’t like and still end with you eating what you wanted.
The place is across the river in Hartford itself, downtown with nothing but street parking, the opposite direction from work. I would not have had the time to drive in, find parking close enough [I am handicapped so it would literally have to be at the front door of the place] and it had limited hours [if memory serves it closes at 3 pm] so picking up food would not really be an option. The department was small [7 of us] and very clique driven. They literally would have had to listen to her whinge about having had to order from the middle eastern place for DAYS [the one time I did manage to get it done, she whinged about it for almost 2 weeks from what I understand] and the corporate culture of the place was that each department lunched together at the same time and ordered from the same place unless you brought in your own food [very uncommon. Very small fridge, one of the oversized cube fridges, undercounter type]
The damned bitch could have ordered a sub, pizza or salad from the place … they made them just like any other lunch place. The only thing that was different was that they also made middle eastern foods [they had a khefta that was amazing, and made their own hummus and pita…sigh the schwarma was to die for] The main issue was probably that I was able to telecommute [the only one in the department, it was FMLA mandated] and she wanted to but was told no. She did a very similar job to what I did and honestly there would have been no problem with being able to telecommute other than regular company policy. Passive aggressive much?
See, I have no idea about Middle Eastern food (though I’d be willing to go if I was in a group that wanted to) but does the stuff not reheat? If it only takes three orders to come up to the minimum: order your lunch, plus whatever reheats well for you and spouse to have for dinner the next day.
Since you’ve planned ahead to do this, bring along an insulated bag/cooler and some of those cooler thingies and you’re all set.
And, to be honest, I don’t blame the others in your office for siding with Picky Eater. They are faced with two people making non-compatible demands. One they see only once a month and EACH and EVERY time she wants the same thing. How picky is that? (Couldn’t she sometimes suggest Italian or chinese or something?) And the other person goes along (I’m assuming) with the regular rotation of a half dozen delivery options, she just doesn’t like ME.
So to them, I bet it looks likes SHE is the reasonable one and YOU are the one who always wants her choice. Plus, of course, if the other woman will pout for two weeks and you they only have to put up with for one day a month… Easy choice.
Well then, she’s an immature self centered bitch. I suspect that she is on some sort of power trip that has nothing to do with food. It happens I guess. Why must you always eat together? I would hate hate hate that. Order $25 of the ME food for yourself and take leftovers home? Doesn’t sound like a big deal to me. Especially once a month. Perhaps a few of your co-workers would see that you don’t all always have to eat together. YMMV.
What is going on in this thread? I have a hard time believing most of it.
I don’t think I have ever met such a picky or needy asshole as they are described in this thread. I don’t doubt that they exist, but they are rare and I just don’t think they are a big problem. They are assholes and can easily be eliminated from a group.
‘Picky’ eaters that DEMAND that everyone go to the restaurant of their choice? Huh? You’re kidding me. Do you folks not eat with adults? Why invite or accept an invitation from such a person.
Or the ‘non’ picky eater that thinks a little bit of planning and forethought is not necessary and you WILL like the restaurant that I choose? These people actually have friends that will eat with them? Such an attitude allows them to have friends at all?
All of the above would be kicked out of any social circle I’ve been in so fast they had better be running when they hit the ground.
Handicapped, I cant lug stuff around in your sense of the term. I would have to get someone in the morning to lug the stuff in, and lug it out after work. With no desk, I never knew where I would be sitting, and having a cooler cluttering up the miniscule cube isnt that great a solution. No refrigeration space, and I really didnt have the $25 to waste on 3 days worth of food … the specific meal I liked was $5.75. And actually lots of different foods don’t reheat for shit … and I could eat italian or chinese or subs at home, hubby could pick them up on the way home, so why would I want something I could get at home? the whole reason for wanting middle eastern is because I COULDNT get it at home.
She wasn’t my social circle, she was in my department. Corporate culture essentially mandated that we all eat together. With the exception of ONE FUCKING TIME, I was the one that acted mature and ate the same generic american chinese garbage, or the same generic american pizza or the same generic coldcut and veggies suboid. I really wanted something fucking different. I was the one that acted like an adult and ate what THEY wanted instead of acting like the bitch and DEMANDING that I eat the same old garbage. She was the one that whinged about eating anywhere but one of 3 delivery places despite the fact that the middle eastern place ALSO had pizza, salads and subs made from exactly the same generic american recipes as the italian place and the sub place. When the bitch was on vacation, the others happily ate foods from the middle eastern place [the felafel was amazingly popular]
I didn’t realize until I read this thread how blessed I am to be self-employed and working from home! Thank the gods I don’t have to eat with any of you people.
No, it’s not “you will like the restaurant I choose.” It’s “Occasionally you do something you don’t like in order to please someone else.” Seriously, this never comes up in your life?
I’m not sure why you’re replying to the same post twice rather than acknowledging the second post I wrote to you, but I’m beginning to understand why I never encounter these supposed horrible picky people who ruin everyone else’s fun. It’s because I’m not obsessed with having my own way when it comes to food and I would never expect other people to order lunch from a restaurant they didn’t like just so I could get what I most wanted. Your post above leads me to believe you didn’t actually deal with this situation with good grace. Did you start shouting at your coworkers about how YOU COULDN’T GET MIDDLE EASTERN FOOD AT HOME and they were SO CRUEL for not going along with what you wanted ONE DAY PER MONTH?
It was no concern of your coworkers if you couldn’t get Middle Eastern food in your home town. It also wasn’t their fault that this restaurant required a large minimum order for delivery. It was inappropriate for you to expect others to go along with your preference just because you didn’t have the money for the minimum order by yourself. Despite your obvious sense of entitlement, they were under no obligation to subsidize your lunch plans. And by your own account they actually DID agree to get Middle Eastern food with you once, so it’s not true that they never went along with your preferences. They just didn’t do it every single time you came in, which is apparently what was required for your satisfaction.
I do not believe for a minute than one person was really ruling over lunch plans with an iron fist. If you had a hard time getting your coworkers to agree to order from this Middle Eastern place other times then it was because they didn’t like it that much, or (and this is seeming increasingly likely to me) they thought you were being obnoxious about it.
Sorry, I’m still going to have to say that the person who expresses a preference for one restaurant but is ultimately willing to eat at any restaurant is not picky. The person who will only eat from their small selection of preferred restaurants is picky.
Although nobody has actually responded to any of the other posts I’ve made in this thread, so I’m sure this one will be no different.
Well that’s horse shit right there and you should run far and fast from that company. You have to eat with your co-workers? What?
You’re going to get discriminated against if you don’t? That blows me away. Unless you work in a bee hive or an ants nest you need to be a bit more asertive and do what you want.
Maybe “picky” isn’t the best description, but what do you call a person who “expresses a preference for one restaurant but is ultimately willing to eat at any restaurant”, but calls food from these other restaurants “garbage”, calls the person who didn’t like her preferred restaurant a “damned bitch”, and continues to rant long after the fact about how her coworkers wouldn’t go along with her food preferences often enough to suit her? “Picky” is a lot kinder than the other terms that are springing to mind.
Well, her original posts on this topic indicated that she expressed her preference rather politely, and her ensuing posts calling the person a “bitch” and referring to the food as “garbage” were made after people here started picking on her for being “the picky one,” so I just assumed that all of that stuff was a defensive reaction to this specific thread, and not how she was acting in real life.
I doubt that someone who flies off the handle over being called picky on a message board is going to deal well with not getting the lunch she wanted in real life. I was initially willing to believe that aruvqan had, as she claimed, been mature about not always getting the Middle Eastern food she preferred, but her subsequent posts certainly did nothing to support this belief. I’m sure all the “bad picky” people described in this thread thought their own behavior was perfectly reasonable too.
And perhaps it was. As I said before, I’m inclined to believe that the reason why some posters here claim to have such frequent problems with “bad picky” people is because of their own behavior. I’ve known people who had rather narrow preferences but I’ve never met one of these “bad picky” people. I think this is because I’m not demanding or controlling when it comes to other people’s food choices. I really don’t care what other people eat. Although I might ask, I would never expect my coworkers to go in on a lunch order with me, no matter how long my commute was (currently 30 miles each way every day, FWIW) or how rarely I got to eat my preferred cuisine. Either I’d get the food I most wanted by myself, or I’d accept eating other food that wasn’t my absolute favorite. Big deal. I doubt I’d even remember such a “disappointment” a few days later. I sure wouldn’t be ranting on a message board about how I was forced to eat garbage by a damned bitch.
So my advice to everyone out there who feels they have a problem with “bad picky” people is to look at your own behavior with regard to food. Maybe you’re not as pleasant, accommodating, or flexible as you think. Maybe the “bad picky” people are resisting you because you’re trying to impose your food preferences on them.
In my experience, most people, myself included, are much more likely to vent spleen and get inappropriately bent out of shape when posting on an anonymous message board, than they are with real-life friends and co-workers.
As for the rest of your post, yeah, in a situation where two people want to eat at different places, one of them is going to be “imposing their food preferences on the other person.” What becomes annoying is when one of the people is never willing to compromise and eat where the other person wants to. And while not common, I have run into a couple of these people over the years. The behavior is obnoxious and frustrating enough that it sticks in your memory even though most people aren’t like that.
Sure it does. More often than I would like to admit. I am of the ‘whatever’ variety of person. I told my Wife that she can name the kids (we don’t have any) as long as I can pick out the paint for the house.
I take both my Wife and Mom to seafood restaurants (as one example). I went to a sushi restaurant with coworkers just a few weeks ago (as another example). Since I knew where we where going beforehand, I was able to look up the menu and decide to attend the lunch. No big deal.
BUT I like the option to choose to not attend. That you don’t think any type of planning or forethought is necessary seems ridiculous and can put people in awkward positions.
The ‘picky’ eater or person with dietary restrictions is welcome to stay behind IMHO. BUT they need a little info to be able to do this. Like begburt2 said “I feel like Mexican”. This should not be a difficult piece of information to share BEFORE everyone is committed. Otherwise it really does look like you are trying to force your preferences on people in some sort of silly passive aggressive game.
There really are people in the world that do not like the things that you do. As adults, we should be able to choose to go with the flow, or paddle up a different stream.
