I Love Captain's Wafers and I Don't Care What You Say...So Do You!

Alright, if I've said it once, I've said it a gazbillion times: sanitation is a NECESSITY, people!! Grief!

Tonight, I was seated at the illustrious King's Restaurant in my hometown of Four Oaks and enjoying myself a great deal. My mom, dad, sister, and her husband (who shall remain nameless) were with me and we were talking incessantly and giggling like we always do. The time came to shut up and order and I found myself staring at the dry-erase board up on the wall that displayed the specials. I decided on the chef salad with (gulp) ranch dressing. Therin lay my mistake.
My mom, bless her, ordered the same thing, again with the ranch dressing. After joking her in the necessary manner about being a "copycat", we began the joyous wait for our food in the midst of cigarette smoke and jovial bursts of redneck laughter. Okay fine, they weren't all rednecks laughing. Some of them were Craig.
Anyway, I do have a point.
The food came (very eventually) and two chef salads of admirable size were plunked down unceremoniously in front of my mother and I. No dressing. Speaking around her toothpick, our somewhat brusque waitress barked (in an endearing tone), "what kinna dressin' you wont?"
"Ranch," I replied with a lovely smile. I'm good at those.
I wasn't prepared for the horror which followed.
Plunked (yes, same as the salads) down on the table between my mother and I was a....uh....how do I say this? Well, I named it "community ranch". It was a bottle of ranch dressing, the likes of which a single family would keep in their refrigerator for their own personal use. Not a packet or tiny, single-serving plastic cup to be seen anywhere. I looked up at the waitresses' retreating back incredulously. Surely she couldn't mean that we were to use this, ahem, used bottle of community ranch? There's no telling how many people had used this bottle! The label was slightly translucent and yellowed from the oil of...something i'd rather not think of, and (this is the best part) underneath the cap, there was a yellow-ish, clear-ish ring of congealed salad dressing, speckled with pepper or whatever that blackish stuff is in ranch dressing. I couldn't use this dressing! I just COULDN'T!

Oh, but I did, my friends. Turns out it was either that dressing or no dressing and as my mom was brave enough to use it, well i just couldn't be shown up. So I took a deep breath, used a napkin in each hand, and poured the dressing, sniffing it first to make sure it wasn't absolutely spoiled. It smelled and looked fine. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I hate to say it but I ate that salad (well...mostly the accompanying Captain's Wafers) and I paid for it later. Sanitation.
That's the point of this whole blog post, people. Practice sanitation. I should've asked for my salad to go and just used the "clean", non-community dressing bottle that I had at home in my own personal refrigerator, I suppose. I know I would've enjoyed my salad consumption experience a lot more and I would've had the peace of mind of knowing that the bottle hadn't been handled by 25 other grubby-handed people. I could've insisted that they throw the less-than-appealing bottle out. But I did neither. And I wish I had.
Do you know that on an almost daily basis, I visit the ladies room at my office (but wait, there's more!) and I'll hear another woman (presumably...i mean, i'm not looking or anything) come in, do her "thing", flush, and LEAVE?? That's right, leave. No washing of the hands. None. Not even the effort of turning the water on for a few seconds to make it sound like they're washing their hands. They just leave, wiping their nasty hands on whatever they touch along the way. It's cold and flu season, people!! I don't want your nasty germs!!! I wash my hands, dry them, turn the water off with the paper towels, and then use those same paper towels to open the bathroom door and any subsequent doors on the way back to my office. No germs for me! I hope.

Sigh.

We live in a world full of crud. Let's share love, peace, joy, and more love. But please, for the love of Pete and all that's good and fuzzy, don't share your CRAP! Wash your hands!! Serve people clean salad dressing (or insert any kind of food, beverage, and/or condiment here. Yes, I said condiment. CONDIMENT!!) in your restaurants and don't ever, EVER put anything on their table that might activate their gag reflex. You have a RESPONSIBILITY!!

I'm finished. Pass the Pepto.