Thursday, April 28, 2011

A Short Piece of Fiction about Hamburgers


I used to work at a burger place. The restaurant came about because this really big company with a really big name wanted to get into the burger business because they felt their patrons were burger people who would buy...you guessed it...their burgers.

We made very good burgers. We weren't the biggest or best burger place in the country, but we were pretty good. We were set up to provide burgers to burger-eaters. Nuf said.

Well, of course, times being as they are, we also had some salads on the menu. You know, even burger eaters, occasionally want some salad before they dig into their burgers. Not too much, mind you, but a little taste of something different can be nice.

The guy in charge of salad was not a burger eater. He was a salad guy through and through. Wore a beret, spoke in a language the burger people couldn't understand. A smart guy, but a salad guy.

Salad guy got good reviews from the folks in charge of the bigger company, and it started to go to his head. Suddenly, salad guy had opinions on burgers, even though he didn't like or know much about burgers. I mean, the guy never made a burger and rarely bit into a burger. How much could he know about burgers?

So anyway, the day came when the folks upstairs thought, "Hey, Salad Guy is smart and full of fresh ideas. I mean, he comes up with new salads all the time. Did you taste that Mango-Thai thing? Maybe Salad Guy should run the burger restaurant."

And so Salad Guy got his chance to run the show and what did he do? He turned a good burger place into a salad place. He'd have Avocado Mondays and Caesar Sunday. Some people thought the salad was great, but the people who loved the burgers, the people who were the reason for the restaurant in the first place, they didn't get it.

Some of the burger-makers became pretty good salad makers, but not me. My heart was still into ground beef and cheese and sesame seed buns.

And so I was told I wasn't needed or wanted any more.

The End.