Hey Cucumber Guy: An Open Letter<\/p>\n
You, Cucumber Guy. Yes, you. The one in the restaurant kitchen adding the cucumbers to the salads. You did it again. You\u00a0served me an otherwise well-crafted salad with cucumber slices like hockey pucks. What am I supposed to do with these? Weight down important papers? Make cucumber water? Treat my crow\u2019s feet to some quick moisturizing therapy?<\/p>\n
Cucumber Guy, I propose your delegating the fine slicing to us\u00a0is no minor inconvenience. Consider the downstream effects on customer service, flavor ratios and personal safety.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s begin with why we came to your restaurant in the first place\u2013to get a damn salad. We could have made\u00a0a salad at home. We could have gotten out our own lettuce, carrots, and\u2013wait for it\u2013diced cucumber. We came to you instead, out of laziness or to celebrate. Perhaps we\u2019ve heard you make a particularly mean salad, worth the extra bucks. Regardless, we came with the expectation of a finished product, not a rough chop. Frankly, Cucumber Guy, it smacks of insensitivity. Come on,\u00a0show us you care.<\/p>\n
If we can\u2019t appeal to your emotions, there\u2019s always your professional reputation. You and everybody else back in the kitchen were in on the salad planning. You all carefully selected and proportioned the ingredients, but then you leave us to guess the intended cucumber-to-bite ratio. Frankly, all we know about your salad is what we\u2019ve read on the menu. We\u2019re going to screw it up. We\u2019ll be halfway through with a cucumber shortage, or we\u2019ll have nothing but a bowl of cucumber pucks at the end. The real loser is flavor.<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s the most practical concern\u2013safety. Left to its own devices, the cucumber\u00a0is among\u00a0the most potent choking hazard in saladdom. Sure, we can mitigate that by some knife work, but the average customer, no matter what they claim, lacks the knife skills of the average Cucumber Guy. This may not sound so dangerous with a side salad and butter knife. What about a grilled chicken cobb with a steak knife? Yikes. Do patients in surgical suites have to help on their own incisions? No, they don\u2019t, or at least hospitals ought not to allow it. You\u2019re the professional. Make the cut.<\/p>\n
Look, we know you\u2019re busy. There\u2019s a lot of salads to make and a lot of cucumbers to slice. Just half the cuc before you slice. You\u2019re done. The same solution works for those high-speed vegetable slicers. Some purists may\u00a0recoil in horror, insisting the slice method provides structural integrity for the seed. That underestimates if not ignores the inherent cohesive properties of the cucumber seeds. They are tough, sticky little buggers. If you lose a few, consider also how often you see someone chop the head off a cucumber and slurp down the seeds. Doesn\u2019t happen. A intact carrot has amazing structural properties as well, but that didn\u2019t stop you from shredding it.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a simple solution here, Cucumber Guy. The cucumber is right there on the chopping block, and the knife is right there in your hands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"