And then there are the folks who insist on filling up their soda to the brim. Even if that means waiting for the foam to settle down, add a little more, and repeat ad nauseum. Here’s a hint, tilt it to the side so it overflows a bit to give you more pop in less time.
/Yes, I used both terms: pop and soda. I refuse to call it generically “coke”
Man, do I hate this idea. People use it to defend letting all their food mix on their plate, and to ridicule my need to keep things separate. Yes, it all ends up in my stomach, but I don’t have to taste it once it gets there.
And yes, if I am trying to eat more healthfully and arranging the salad as I go is the way I can manage to eat salad, I will do it. I think I would probably move out of the way of someone breathing over my shoulder though, so no worries.
The problem is the artists start clogging at the fucking lettuce bowl. I need Lettuce, Onion, Eggs, Shrooms and HM Dressing. Let me trowel it onto my plate so I can get on with my life.
gigi, you won’t catch me breathing over your neck because I’m polite and keep my distance and disgust to myself. If you were polite you would pile your shit on your plate and sort it out at the table. Salad anyway, which is all I’m talking about here.
I often take a while to make up my mind, so I stand way back to let other people go ahead of me. No way in the world anyone could imagine that I could be in line ready to order. I am 10 feet away from the order window. Yet the clerks keep asking me “May I take your order?” Not yet. I know I’m slow to decide, that’s why I’m standing back here. OUT OF THE WAY of An Arky. Slow don’t mean stupid – I’m sure many of your customers are dumbshits, but so dumb they place their orders from WAY BACK HERE?
No soup for you !
At the place where I usually get lunch, I’ll stand way back after I’ve paid but before my sandwich is made. I mean way, way back. People constantly ask me if I’m in line. One of these days I’m just going to say yes and make them stand behind me.
I hate when you are standing far back trying to decide and the counter person yells out “What would you like to order?” because then I get nervous and my mouth spits out the first thing I see and I’m left with a breakfast of fried mushrooms or something. I’m not ready yet, that’s why I’m way back here! If there are no other customers to go ahead of you, the counter person will then usually stare at you until you do order. Hate that.
At the salad bar, I just go around those people. What I hate there is the fact that any bacon or cheese is almost all gone, and you look around and some people have about five pounds of Bacon Bits on their salad. Way to go, being all healthy there, ladies that are talking too loudly about their diets the whole lunch break. You’re not doing it right.
ETA: This also goes for the soup things being full of broth, as all the goods have already been taken. I eat lunch at 11:30, the thing shouldn’t be completely empty. This is all why I rarely go to the salad bar around here.
Hmm. So, take two plates and re-organize everything when I get to the table? So I have to take my dressing on the side so I can evenly distribute that after rearranging my salad?
Can I just be attuned to your need to go around me instead, and take the time I want at the salad bar?
As long as you get out of the way of the lettuce bowl we’re cool. 
Sure, as soon as I’m finished sneezing. 
This might be a cue to ask the restaurant where you’re eating to do a little better about preparing their lettuce so that the patrons aren’t left standing there trying to find something that isn’t bitter and inedible to pick out of the bowl.
A clue. >click<
Helpful hint: There’s a bit of a new trend at the salad bar at work. People will throw all their stuff they want into the salad container, close the lid, and shake the hell out of it. That way the dressing gets evenly distributed over everything. Works great. Y’all should try it.
Not a salad bar but I had a similar experience yesterday. I was buying something at Target and got in the checkout line. There was one woman in front of me and she was just finishing her purchase as I walked up so I expected to get through quickly.
But then she just moved ahead two feet and stopped. She was doing something involving her pocketbook and her wallet and the register slip. I didn’t know and I didn’t care. But it was not some dispute about the purchase and there was no apparent reason she couldn’t have stepped away from the checkout line.
So the cashier rings up my items but I can’t pay for them because this woman is still standing there doing whatever it was she was doing. And she’s standing in front of the credit card reader. So the cashier looks at her with the bag full of my purchases. And I look at her with my credit card in hand. And she just keeps puttering away, still less than two feet away from where she started. Finally I say “excuse me, I have to get to the machine so I can check out and leave.” And she slowly raises her head, blinks a couple of times, and says “Sorrry … ifff … I’mmm … nottt … movvvinnng … fassst … enoughhh” in a voice like Cleveland on Family Guy.
No, you’re not grasping the problem. It’s not an issue of you not moving fast enough. Because you’re not moving at all. You’re stationary and show no sign of becoming mobile.
That one sounds a little more like a health problem than being inconsiderate.
Either way, it sounds like the time to smile and say cheerfully “That’s okay, but do you mind if I just reach past you to swipe my credit card here so I can finish up and get out of your way?” And then reach past her and do it.
We need to be polite to the infirm and/or clueless, but we don’t have to wait for their geological-time convenience if there’s a way to politely maneuver around them.
I do that, too.
Honestly, I’m not really that annoyed; just ranting in hyperbolese.
I think that people simply taking the time to decide/serve themselves isn’t the issue; there’s a deeper trend of people that are oblivious or passive-aggressive about holding up others, whether it be at the salad bar, the checkout line, in a car, in the crosswalk, at work - whatever. That’s some kind of mental thing, along with being overly deliberate in motion, that must fall on the spectrum of something somewhere, though maybe not DSM-worthy. (And, of course, I’m not talking about people with physical infirmities.)
I thought bacon bits were made of soy, not bacon.
Some are, but some are real bacon. (Both probably have a truckload of sodium in them, which may not be the best thing to consume.)
Sometimes it’s one, sometimes it’s another. My husband is oblivious to other people who might want to get by him in a grocery store. I have to give him the stink eye and tell him to move. He will startle, and then apologize to the person trying to get by. And then in the next aisle, he’ll again position his cart so that he will block everyone trying to get by.
I’ve talked to him about it, and while he acknowledges that others have a right to move about the store, he just doesn’t see them. I think I need to start tazing him. Or at least hitting him upside the head with my walking staff. His mother used to hit him over the head with a broom, and I guess that’s the only way to get his attention.