Not In The Slightest Bit Unsanitary

• Posted on July 30, 2015
• by Jamie Stahl
• in Restaurants
• 2 Comments.

I went out to dinner last night with my parents.  We were in New Jersey together, specifically in Paramus, at the Garden State Plaza mall.  There was a bit of debating about what restaurant we should eat at, but we all agreed pretty quickly.  Both of my parents had to do errands at the mall before we ate dinner, so by the time we were ready to eat, I was starving.  For some reason, the restaurant we chose happened to have been on the complete opposite side of the mall.  We began the 500 mile trek and for a Tuesday night, the mall was surprisingly crowded.

The first thing I had to deal with was being stopped by someone at a kiosk asking me to try some kind of product.  Let me give you a piece of advice, if you want my attention in a positive way, don’t call me “ma’am.”  I’m twenty-eight years old and still sleep with a Blankie.  I’m not a “ma’am.”  Since I’m sometimes a nice person, I smiled and shook my head and kept walking.  Mumbled under my breath I responded with, “no I don’t want to try your fucking shit.”  My parents laughed at me.

We are rounding the corner to get to the restaurant and my dad mentions that he hopes there isn’t a long wait to be seated.  I’d like to take a quick moment to point out that this is a common statement people seem to make and I’d just like to know if anyone ever hopes for a long wait.  Do you think anyone is walking into a restaurant with their fingers crossed, thinking, “I hope we have to wait forty-five minutes even though we have a reservation.  That would be great.”  But, it’s something we say anyway, and I’m guilty of it too.  We walk into the restaurant and there couldn’t have been more than fifteen people in the whole place.

Super excited, we follow the hostess over to a booth and proceed to sit down.  My parents sat on one side while I sat down across from them.  As I was sliding into the seat, I noticed that there were some ketchup splatters across one of the place settings.  The hostess must have seen it just as I did, because she grabbed the napkin faster than The Flash.  At the same time this “over the table ketchup siting” occurred, I felt something really squishy and cold rub across the back of my left calf.  Apparently there was a gigantic glob of ketchup on the bench of the booth that I smeared with my leg.  Oh, and just so you know, I was wearing shorts so I felt this directly on my skin.

I must have had some kind of face on because both of my parents looked at me extremely confused.  I told them what was happening over on my side of the booth and I began rubbing my leg against a dry section in order to get the ketchup off.  I’m not really sure why I didn’t take the napkin to clean up.  That really first occurred to me right now.  Obviously we weren’t going to continue sitting at the ketchup covered booth, no matter how much I love ketchup, so we changed tables and sat down in normal chairs.  Well, in doing that, we noticed that one of the shopping bags we had was nicely coated in it’s own ketchup mounds.  What could have possibly gone on at that table that caused ketchup to streak across a place setting, rub onto my leg, and smush all over the shopping bag?

After the third ketchup encounter, I felt my stomach churn and knew there wasn’t a chance in hell that I would be swallowing any food from this restaurant.  I insisted we leave and my parents were all too happy to oblige.  Feeling extremely dirty and famished at this point, we now need to figure out where to eat dinner and I need to wash my leg.  I quickly attempted to rectify the situation by suggesting we eat at Shake Shack because why wouldn’t you want to eat at Shake Shack?

We started to walk over while I held the contaminated shopping bag and dragged my sticky leg.  Shake Shack is located in the exact opposite side of the mall from where we were, so we decided to take a shortcut through JCPenny where I was able to stop in the bathroom and clean off.  Forever and a year later, we made it to Shake Shack and were able to sit down to eat dinner.  Between the three of us, we had two burgers, two hot dogs, two regular french fries, and an order of cheese fries.  I’d call that a pretty successful evening.  My food was delicious and I was completely stuffed when we were done.  It all worked out in the end because I didn’t have to waste Shake Shack’s ketchup.  All I had to do was dip my fries across my the back of my leg.  It was really convenient and not in the slightest bit unsanitary.

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