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A few nights ago, I went to one of those fancy five-star Italian restaurants and ordered noodles with butter.
The dinner was part of this big once-a-year two-day company conference in Dallas, Texas, where us employees are expected to hype up our products and wear the suits and build the relationships and pretend we're happy to be there and wake up at like six in the morning because sessions start at seven and end at four at which point everyone goes out to wine and dine customers before sneaking off to seedy dive bars to get totally debauched, all at the company’s expense.
It was one of those four-star hotel slash convention center tech conferences with keynote speakers and customer panels and announcers saying stuff like “now presenting, the chief technology officer of the best software company in the world, John Smith” over poorly chosen alternative college rock with lyrics that are probably critical of corporate stuff like this if you actually bother to read them and of course there’s breakout sessions and customer-appreciation parties and raffles and long hallways with lots of double doors each opening to identical-looking people behind podiums presenting criminally boring PowerPoints on massive pull-down projector screens, PowerPoints about product roadmaps and industry best practices and return-on-investment case studies, all to an audience of middle-aged middle-management people jotting down notes in cheap little company-branded notebooks between taking iPhone photos of the slides themselves and occasionally burying their heads into their laptops because they're so whipped by work that they’re double-tasking work shit while attending the conference itself. And of course I’m tasked to sit in on all these presentations, mostly to fill out seats, so I’m just sitting in the back row, bored as hell, people-watching, counting the number of laptops in each room for some reason, and, by my count, there must have been at least like a million dollars’ worth of ThinkPads and MacBook Pros in that hotel conference center over the course of those two days, the future e-waste potential kind of mind-boggling to think about.
Anyway. I went to the Italian restaurant on the first night of the conference. About twenty customers were there. My boss was there, too. I was business casual in a gray short-sleeved collared shirt and some long khakis and I had taken my little silver-hoop earring out the night before, because for some reason people still raise eyebrows at men wearing earrings, and I was sitting opposite my boss between two clients, one of whom was a conservative woman who kept going on about her five-year-old son being like totally gifted and having a killer six-pack, for whatever reason, and I knew she was conservative because, after a few glasses of wine, she was not shy about telling me, plainly, that she was a conservative, and that the recent news shattered her faith in humanity, but only in humanity on the left-leaning side of the political spectrum, who, according to her, were irrationally violent and trying to start a civil war and must be stopped at all costs, so of course I was nodding along and smiling and just going with the flow, not wanting to get into some stupid meaningless political debate with a middle-aged wino mom who doesn’t know what the word “objectivity” means. The second customer sitting next to me was this younger African American woman who worked for an online school and kept going on about how she’ll never send her kids to college because it’s a scam and they don’t teach you anything there that you can’t learn online, which I thought was just a little ironic. So of course I hate these dinners with a fucking passion because not only do I not fit in with most of the people who attend these things, but also, despite being surrounded by people on all sides, I always feel this expectation to be host-like, because technically the company I work for is the one hosting, so I always feel like I should be making banal small talk and cracking little jokes and schmoozing everyone, so that’s what I was doing, making banal small talk and whatnot, asking about peoples’ days and their flights and their kids and like what sort of stuff do you like to do in your free time, oh play pickleball? nice, very cool, all while pretending that I don’t think pickleball is just a pussified version of tennis.
The whole dinner made me feel very fake, as these things always do, so I decided to be daring and, instead of coming up with some sort of lie to get out of eating the food, because I’m very picky, having the diet of like a literal toddler, that being like pizza and Kraft Mac and Cheese and fucking white rice, I decided to be true to myself and just order what I wanted to order, which was noodles with butter, the only thing on the menu that seemed remotely appetizing, and it wasn’t even on the main menu, it was on the children’s menu, so I was ordering from the fucking children’s menu at the five-star Italian restaurant, and instead of alcohol, I just got some water, because I hadn’t drunk alcohol in like a year, which was another thing that kind of separated me from all my peers here, all of whom liberally drink alcohol as a sort of social lubricant, which is something I just cannot do because I have serious addiction problems that can only be avoided if I just do not partake in the things I enjoy, otherwise I will partake in those things until I literally die.
So, again, there I was, at the upscale and very sophisticated Italian restaurant, sitting at a lavishly decorated table with candles and bread baskets and shit, surrounded by clients, my boss sitting right across from me, me ordering noodles with fucking butter and a glass of water please, somehow having convinced my toddler-ass self that this whole ordering-off-the-children's-menu thing was a good idea.
And by uttering the words “penne pasta with only butter please,” I fear I may have unwittingly gaslighted my boss, because after ordering this very juvenile order at this very expensive Italian restaurant, my boss was looking at me with this what-the-fuck-is-wrong-with-you kind of expression on his face, you know the one where the eyes are narrowed and the hand is at the temple and the mouth is slightly agape and all that. So I can only imagine what he must have been thinking, surely something like “How could this child have come to be employed at my company? What was I smoking when I interviewed this guy? How could this toddler have slipped through the fucking cracks?” And then he just sat there silent for a few seconds, wearing the face of a man wrestling with some sort of serious personal crisis. He was probably rethinking all his life choices up to the very point where he witnessed an employee under his leadership and tutelage ordering noodles with fucking butter, probably questioning his entire ability to judge the character of others and his own effectiveness as a leader. So, needless to say, I was pretty worried about losing my job at that point.
But then, by the grace of God, the woman with the five-year-old with a six-pack said, “That’s exactly what my son eats when we go out,” at which point the conversation shifted to our children and their eating habits and the two women sitting next to me made many jokes at my expense, which kind of annoyed me, internally, like how come food is such a big deal and why can’t people just let others eat what they want without this sort of weird shame attached, like why is having a diverse palate some measure of a man in corporate America, nigh the entire fucking adult world, and how come I can’t just be myself and eat like a toddler and not get low-key ridiculed, and the more I thought about it, and the more jokes were made at my expense, the more I became flustered and annoyed, so, tired of being the butt of so many toddler-tinged jokes and tired of the woman next to me, who was at one point poking meat with a fork and holding it up real close to my face saying try it just try it, I said, “Look, I have a medical condition, so I can’t eat many foods,” which was of course a bold-faced lie, but at least it got everyone to shut up about my eating habits, because that’s when everyone’s demeanor shifted and the subject was changed and the dinner proceeded with its usual banal small talk, until eventually everyone finished their meals and my boss paid the egregiously expensive bill and we all exited the restaurant.
Later that night, at a seedy dive bar with my boss and some peers, after everyone, except me, was nice and debauched, I went up to my boss and I said, “do you want to hear something funny?” And he said, “yeah, sure, what?” And I said, “I don’t have a medical condition.”
And you know what he did, he literally burst out laughing. That’s it. And then he patted me on the back and said,
“You know what, Forrest, I like you.”
So I’m starting to think I overthought the whole thing.
The dinner was part of this big once-a-year two-day company conference in Dallas, Texas, where us employees are expected to hype up our products and wear the suits and build the relationships and pretend we're happy to be there and wake up at like six in the morning because sessions start at seven and end at four at which point everyone goes out to wine and dine customers before sneaking off to seedy dive bars to get totally debauched, all at the company’s expense.
It was one of those four-star hotel slash convention center tech conferences with keynote speakers and customer panels and announcers saying stuff like “now presenting, the chief technology officer of the best software company in the world, John Smith” over poorly chosen alternative college rock with lyrics that are probably critical of corporate stuff like this if you actually bother to read them and of course there’s breakout sessions and customer-appreciation parties and raffles and long hallways with lots of double doors each opening to identical-looking people behind podiums presenting criminally boring PowerPoints on massive pull-down projector screens, PowerPoints about product roadmaps and industry best practices and return-on-investment case studies, all to an audience of middle-aged middle-management people jotting down notes in cheap little company-branded notebooks between taking iPhone photos of the slides themselves and occasionally burying their heads into their laptops because they're so whipped by work that they’re double-tasking work shit while attending the conference itself. And of course I’m tasked to sit in on all these presentations, mostly to fill out seats, so I’m just sitting in the back row, bored as hell, people-watching, counting the number of laptops in each room for some reason, and, by my count, there must have been at least like a million dollars’ worth of ThinkPads and MacBook Pros in that hotel conference center over the course of those two days, the future e-waste potential kind of mind-boggling to think about.
Anyway. I went to the Italian restaurant on the first night of the conference. About twenty customers were there. My boss was there, too. I was business casual in a gray short-sleeved collared shirt and some long khakis and I had taken my little silver-hoop earring out the night before, because for some reason people still raise eyebrows at men wearing earrings, and I was sitting opposite my boss between two clients, one of whom was a conservative woman who kept going on about her five-year-old son being like totally gifted and having a killer six-pack, for whatever reason, and I knew she was conservative because, after a few glasses of wine, she was not shy about telling me, plainly, that she was a conservative, and that the recent news shattered her faith in humanity, but only in humanity on the left-leaning side of the political spectrum, who, according to her, were irrationally violent and trying to start a civil war and must be stopped at all costs, so of course I was nodding along and smiling and just going with the flow, not wanting to get into some stupid meaningless political debate with a middle-aged wino mom who doesn’t know what the word “objectivity” means. The second customer sitting next to me was this younger African American woman who worked for an online school and kept going on about how she’ll never send her kids to college because it’s a scam and they don’t teach you anything there that you can’t learn online, which I thought was just a little ironic. So of course I hate these dinners with a fucking passion because not only do I not fit in with most of the people who attend these things, but also, despite being surrounded by people on all sides, I always feel this expectation to be host-like, because technically the company I work for is the one hosting, so I always feel like I should be making banal small talk and cracking little jokes and schmoozing everyone, so that’s what I was doing, making banal small talk and whatnot, asking about peoples’ days and their flights and their kids and like what sort of stuff do you like to do in your free time, oh play pickleball? nice, very cool, all while pretending that I don’t think pickleball is just a pussified version of tennis.
The whole dinner made me feel very fake, as these things always do, so I decided to be daring and, instead of coming up with some sort of lie to get out of eating the food, because I’m very picky, having the diet of like a literal toddler, that being like pizza and Kraft Mac and Cheese and fucking white rice, I decided to be true to myself and just order what I wanted to order, which was noodles with butter, the only thing on the menu that seemed remotely appetizing, and it wasn’t even on the main menu, it was on the children’s menu, so I was ordering from the fucking children’s menu at the five-star Italian restaurant, and instead of alcohol, I just got some water, because I hadn’t drunk alcohol in like a year, which was another thing that kind of separated me from all my peers here, all of whom liberally drink alcohol as a sort of social lubricant, which is something I just cannot do because I have serious addiction problems that can only be avoided if I just do not partake in the things I enjoy, otherwise I will partake in those things until I literally die.
So, again, there I was, at the upscale and very sophisticated Italian restaurant, sitting at a lavishly decorated table with candles and bread baskets and shit, surrounded by clients, my boss sitting right across from me, me ordering noodles with fucking butter and a glass of water please, somehow having convinced my toddler-ass self that this whole ordering-off-the-children's-menu thing was a good idea.
And by uttering the words “penne pasta with only butter please,” I fear I may have unwittingly gaslighted my boss, because after ordering this very juvenile order at this very expensive Italian restaurant, my boss was looking at me with this what-the-fuck-is-wrong-with-you kind of expression on his face, you know the one where the eyes are narrowed and the hand is at the temple and the mouth is slightly agape and all that. So I can only imagine what he must have been thinking, surely something like “How could this child have come to be employed at my company? What was I smoking when I interviewed this guy? How could this toddler have slipped through the fucking cracks?” And then he just sat there silent for a few seconds, wearing the face of a man wrestling with some sort of serious personal crisis. He was probably rethinking all his life choices up to the very point where he witnessed an employee under his leadership and tutelage ordering noodles with fucking butter, probably questioning his entire ability to judge the character of others and his own effectiveness as a leader. So, needless to say, I was pretty worried about losing my job at that point.
But then, by the grace of God, the woman with the five-year-old with a six-pack said, “That’s exactly what my son eats when we go out,” at which point the conversation shifted to our children and their eating habits and the two women sitting next to me made many jokes at my expense, which kind of annoyed me, internally, like how come food is such a big deal and why can’t people just let others eat what they want without this sort of weird shame attached, like why is having a diverse palate some measure of a man in corporate America, nigh the entire fucking adult world, and how come I can’t just be myself and eat like a toddler and not get low-key ridiculed, and the more I thought about it, and the more jokes were made at my expense, the more I became flustered and annoyed, so, tired of being the butt of so many toddler-tinged jokes and tired of the woman next to me, who was at one point poking meat with a fork and holding it up real close to my face saying try it just try it, I said, “Look, I have a medical condition, so I can’t eat many foods,” which was of course a bold-faced lie, but at least it got everyone to shut up about my eating habits, because that’s when everyone’s demeanor shifted and the subject was changed and the dinner proceeded with its usual banal small talk, until eventually everyone finished their meals and my boss paid the egregiously expensive bill and we all exited the restaurant.
Later that night, at a seedy dive bar with my boss and some peers, after everyone, except me, was nice and debauched, I went up to my boss and I said, “do you want to hear something funny?” And he said, “yeah, sure, what?” And I said, “I don’t have a medical condition.”
And you know what he did, he literally burst out laughing. That’s it. And then he patted me on the back and said,
“You know what, Forrest, I like you.”
So I’m starting to think I overthought the whole thing.
