If you know me at all, you will know I absolutely hate picky eaters. As a child of a certain age, it’s passable because you’re a child and your taste buds are still developing, but an adult, it is not. You maybe get 3-5 different things you’re allowed to hate and can refuse to eat, and then after that, your tastes in food are pretty much just dead to me; I could never take you seriously for any food advice, opinions, or recommendations. Because as an adult, it is a choice to be picky. It is a choice to be close minded to new things, new ideas, new foods, new cultures’ foods that you’ve never had before. Unless you have serious food allergies or a disease that prevents you from trying new things, it’s just a childish choice to me.

So I was sitting at the lunch table today, listening to a new colleague go on and on about how picky of an eater he is, that picky eating is a “personality trait” and that he can’t stand ground meat, but he’d happily eat a burger or a meatball “because in one, it’s all put together, and in the other, it’s just all crumbled all over the place.” I could feel my blood pressure go up. He was literally sitting there, thriving on all this attention he was getting, this grown white man, having nearly every person around the lunch table poke and prod, ask him “what about this?” and “will you eat that?” His face was truly priceless. I don’t know what made him more excited: the attention he was getting from his pickiness or his actual pickiness not being completely shat on by someone like me.

I’m an adult. And part of being an adult is remembering to think before we speak. So, instead of saying anything, I chose to simply leave the lunch table. I can’t be around ignorant talk, nor can I be around reinforcement of ignorance. This is the exact kind of person I really do not want to spend any time around at all.