free lunch, not free of indigestion

Granted, I didn't have to pay anything. And no one made me eat it. But when the best part of your lunch is the bag of Sun Chips that came with it, I think you have a strong case for concluding you've just been served a crappy meal.

To publicize one of our books, radio station XXXX hosted a luncheon at the China Club for one hundred "lucky" listeners to dine with the author. Several of my coworkers and I agreed to attend. After I entered and my eyes adjusted to the sad horror that is China Club in the daytime, I realized that a suspicious number of people were carrying paper plates and plastic cups back to their seats. With a sinking heart, I went to investigate what was on the platters lined up along the bar:

+ Ham and cheese on croissant
+ Roast beef and cheese on croissant
+ Potato salad
+ Sugar, oatmeal raisin, and chocolate chip cookies
+ Sun Chips (assorted flavors)
+ Miss Vickie's potato chips (assorted flavors)

I went with a roast beef croissant, an oatmeal cookie, a spoonful of potato salad, and a bag of Sun Chips. The croissant was soggy, pale, and cold; inside, two small gray slices of roast beef were clumped up against a single slice of pale, waxy cheese. I added a dollop of mustard, hoping that by the time the combination reached my mouth it would have somehow transformed into a delicious sandwich. 'Course, we all know how that one went.

I only needed to place one experimental forkful of potato salad in my mouth to conclude that it wasn't worth eating; it could have (and probably did) come straight out of some industrial-sized plastic tub with a foil seal. The cookie was okay, though very sweet and heavy. I called it quits and opened up my bag of Sun Chips. There's one thing to be said for processed snack food, and it's that the stuff is at least generally tasty. And when you're stuck sitting at a table in a club way past its prime, trying to resign yourself to the queasiness you'll feel later from eating a meal that doesn't contain a single fresh ingredient, it somehow turns into the only saving grace of a truly terrible lunch.