By Chensiyuan Welcome back to Off The Menu, where we bring you the best and strangest food stories from my email inbox. This week, we bring you stories for which the only appropriate reaction is "what the fuck?" As always, these are real emails from real readers.
A girl I worked with in a call center complained to HR that I argued against her belief that pickles were a different entity than cucumbers. She screamed at me for lying about making refrigerator pickles. She did not know that pickles are pickled cucumbers.
I can honestly see the bear costume thing being real, having been a former Chuck E. Cheese employee who had to wear the rat costume. 10 minutes in that thing and you'll punch your own grandfather if it means you never have to do it again.
I had a roommate who worked as a dealer at a casino for a while. He had to show his hands palms up to the overhead, not-so-secret cameras in the ceiling at regular intervals to prove he wasn't palming cards. Watching him do the dishes was entertaining.
My parents ran a plumbing company out of the house when I was a kid. One evening, my mom stuck her head out the door to call the cat and yelled "Bla Bla Bla Plumbing and Heating!" (where bla bla bla is the name that has been changed to protect the innocent, and that is how they answered the phones...) Yep. That made us laugh.
Once I went to a local (chain) pet store to get some cat litter. I was with a friend. Whenever we went, we also spent some time hanging out in the fish/small animal area because they're cute.
We ended up standing there looking at the feeder rat enclosures for less than a minute. These were the 'jumbos', so large live rats most people bought to feed their snakes, but also suitable for cheap pet rats. These enclosures were plexiglass with holes for circulation.
In this enclosure was 3 large rats; 2 were totally sleeping, the third was chilling lazily in a corner. There was a fly buzzing around inside. How he got in is probably pure luck, but not for him. The chillin' rat in the corner sat there like it didn't notice, then suddenly he sprung forward and goddamm Mr. Miagi-ed the fly. Caught it in his front paws right out of the air. Then the rat proceeded to eat the fly alive, starting with its back end. Fly freaked out for a second, but then was gone. Rat went right back to being lazy in the corner.
All this went down in about 20 seconds. My friend and I stood there silently staring until I said, "Uh... Did that just happen?". She was like, "Yep. Let's go". One of the most unsettling things I've witnessed to date.
Pigeons. chocolate. wrong. funny.
used to work at Panera, making sandwiches. I still like Panera. It's one of the few fast food chains that I like. S
tiny hamster babies have tiny amounts of blood.
that's what I always called 'em in Chicago. that or Flying rats.
A girl I worked with in a call center complained to HR that I argued against her belief that pickles were a different entity than cucumbers. She screamed at me for lying about making refrigerator pickles. She did not know that pickles are pickled cucumbers.
MMMM. Chocolate pigeon sundae.
I can honestly see the bear costume thing being real, having been a former Chuck E. Cheese employee who had to wear the rat costume. 10 minutes in that thing and you'll punch your own grandfather if it means you never have to do it again.
I was the A&W Bear once; I convinced them to let me fix up the costume instead of ever wearing it again.
One of my then coworkers had to wear the thing in a 4th of July parade. I think he almost died of heat exhaustion.
I worked for one from 2001-2009, and I still don't really buy theater popcorn. I do buy the flavored stuff from 7/11, though.
I had a roommate who worked as a dealer at a casino for a while. He had to show his hands palms up to the overhead, not-so-secret cameras in the ceiling at regular intervals to prove he wasn't palming cards. Watching him do the dishes was entertaining.
My parents ran a plumbing company out of the house when I was a kid. One evening, my mom stuck her head out the door to call the cat and yelled "Bla Bla Bla Plumbing and Heating!" (where bla bla bla is the name that has been changed to protect the innocent, and that is how they answered the phones...) Yep. That made us laugh.
Once I went to a local (chain) pet store to get some cat litter. I was with a friend. Whenever we went, we also spent some time hanging out in the fish/small animal area because they're cute.
We ended up standing there looking at the feeder rat enclosures for less than a minute. These were the 'jumbos', so large live rats most people bought to feed their snakes, but also suitable for cheap pet rats. These enclosures were plexiglass with holes for circulation.
In this enclosure was 3 large rats; 2 were totally sleeping, the third was chilling lazily in a corner. There was a fly buzzing around inside. How he got in is probably pure luck, but not for him. The chillin' rat in the corner sat there like it didn't notice, then suddenly he sprung forward and goddamm Mr. Miagi-ed the fly. Caught it in his front paws right out of the air. Then the rat proceeded to eat the fly alive, starting with its back end. Fly freaked out for a second, but then was gone. Rat went right back to being lazy in the corner.
All this went down in about 20 seconds. My friend and I stood there silently staring until I said, "Uh... Did that just happen?". She was like, "Yep. Let's go". One of the most unsettling things I've witnessed to date.
Fun fact: Both rats and pigeons lack a gallbladder. So they have at least one weird anatomical thing in common.
Horses don't, either. But horses are weird in all sorts of ways.
No matter what, I bet it's in some gross cookbook from the 50s. Only there's probably gelatin involved, too.
Replace "suicide" with "kamikaze" and you're on point. "Oooo 'kamikaze'! That must be Italian for 'tender'!"
bonus points