Anna DeStefano's Blog

The Central New York Romance Writers are an amazing group. Michelle Grajkowski and I just had our best weekend workshop experience EVER with them. The travel thing is always bizarre, though. I hear the craziest things…

Did you know milk has more calories when you cross the California state line?

At the Subway where we grabbed lunch Friday on the way to our afternoon “meet and greet,” this sign on the sneeze guard in front of the sandwich counter of course caught my attention, if no one else’s.

 In case you can’t read it–it says 1% low fat milk has 160 calories everywhere but in California, where it magically increases to 180 calories.

I mean, really? I get what this might mean: a larger container of milk is used in the California region; the caloric definition of “1% low fat” might be gauged differently based on California FDA regulations; CA cow’s milk has given up worrying about how it looks in HD and has let itself go, and, really, what’s 20 extra calories when you’ve already hit 160…

Still as a tech writer, I read things no one else does (and I assure you, few have bothered to follow the asterisk and marveled at this ridiculous caveat with nearly as much attention to detail as I have…).

Which led me to start giggling like a loon in the middle of a Rochester Subway. And then once I explained, my agent and or conference coordinator (the even wackier-than-I Jenni Holbrook-Talty) were laughing, too, and then the guy behind the counter who just wanted to take our order and get on with his minimum-wage morning was frowning at us, so of course Michelle and Jenni had to explain, to which he said no one who works for Subway ever reads those things… Which is kind of my point. 

Why bother writing something if it makes no sense when it’s read? Why bother making no sense with your writing for so long that people block out what you’ve written on sight? Why post information for customers that is so unclear that your staff knows it’s better not to bother? Why confuse and mis-represent cows to everyone who orders milk from you, no doubt causing personality disorders and identity confusion and even further body image dysmorphia for our west coast bovine friends who already have to deal with their fat content being put on display for the entire world to ponder?

Did you ever wonder what goes through a Subway employee’s mind when you ask for a veggie sandwich?

While the sandwich guy watched us warily as we belittled his milk, I sobered enough to order my 6-inch veggie. To which he asked, not missing a beat, holding up his right hand, if I’d like for him to change his glove…

Um… I actually think I bit my lip at this point, to hold back the next giggle.

I stared at the thin plastic covering on his hand for a second, trying to keep it together. My mind veered in a totally inappropriate direction, regardless. The women with me must have sensed it, because they were holding their breath, waiting for me to say–

“I guess that depends. What have you been doing with your hand?”

“Handling meat,” the sandwich guy delivered with a straight face.

At which point everyone on my side of the counter dissolved into hysteria again, because of course he’d gotten the joke, after our earlier ridicule of the milk sign, and he was joining in the fun.

Except, no, as it turns out he was simply doing his job and offering the supposed vegetarian (me) the opportunity not to have him touch my food with the same glove with which he’d just made someone else’s non-vegan sandwich…

Poor kid. I think he was blushing. It was hard to tell with the tears streaming down my face.

Of course, he might have been teasing back after all. When we were finally done torturing him with our juvenile behavior and headed out the door with our to-go lunch, he asked Jenni if we were local. When she said no we were headed out of town to our workshop venue, he asked if she’d leave my agent and me there for the rest of the afternoon instead. Heh.

It’s good to know, in the end, that we might have lightened his morning burdens.

Did you ever see something so ridiculous on a menu that you knew instantly that no one’s ever ordered it with a straight face?

It was a great weekend where Michelle and I enjoyed teaching more than we ever have and the conference attendees were some of the best students we’ve ever worked with and there was a lot of wacky hotel stuff to warrant a future I Hear The Craziest Things post all its own.

But, after two days of travelling from here to there and back and unpacking and repacking and unpacking suitcases and talking in front of a room full of people until your brain’s fried, there’s not much functioning grey matter left. You’re barely capable of ordering your egg white omelet without drooling all over your menu. Then you see something like this (notice the NEW omelet option at the top of the list).

We were laughing so hard while the waitress tried to take our order, we had to repeat ourselves several times. Her eyes were rolling into the back of their sockets. We were no doubt the most disturbing booth she had to deal with all morning…

But, honest, it was one of the best moments of the weekend!

Tags: anna’s world, creativity & inspiration, travels and memories

This entry was posted on Monday, March 14th, 2011 at 10:58 am and is filed under What About Everything Else?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.