I’m a fairly tolerant person but I also have very high moral standards. For example at the deli counter at the supermarket, I make a mental note of the order of the people waiting to be served and I’ll inform the staff of who was there before me. If someone tries to butt in ahead of me or someone else, I’ll totally dob. I’ll be all ‘Um… excuse me, but that lady over there was next and then I’m after her.‘ And then That Lady Over There always gives me a mental fist pump and we silently celebrate our mini victory over Butt Head. I’m like a social vigilante. Only way less subtle and heaps more annoying.
So anyway, about a year ago I was out for dinner for a friend’s birthday and one of my friend’s friends brought her new girlfriend. New Girlfriend was lactose intolerant. No biggie. We were eating at a tapas place where we all shared the dishes so she asked if we could order things that didn’t have cheese. That’s cool. There’s plenty of other stuff that we ordered. The evening went well, we all drank wine, talked a lot of shite and then went for a walk down the street. We stumbled across a gelato bar and a few of us decided to get a little frozen sweet treat to cap off the evening. So we were all walking around eating our little tubs of frozen goodness when friend’s friend offered New Girlfriend a bite of her double chocolate, super creamy, unmistakably dairy poison filled gelato. New Girlfriend said ‘Oh, I really shouldn’t…‘ and then proceeded to devour half the gelato.
What. The. Fuck.
I stared at her, totally slack jawed while she scraped the bottom of the gelato cup to scoop up every last morsel of the substance that she was supposed to be allergic to. Hells no. Not on my watch. I know I’m sounding a teeny bit unhinged about this but just hear me out.
If New Girlfriend wants to eat soy cheese all day and have rice milk in her coffee, that’s fine. If she then wants to face plant into a vat of cream, then that’s fine too. Perhaps she can tolerate a little bit of dairy here and there. Whatever. I have little to no interest in her bowels. However on this particular evening, she put her own enjoyment above the enjoyment of ten other people who ate tapas, notoriously cheesy food, without cheese for the benefit of her supposed allergy. Then did a giant dairy eating dance 20 minutes later. Supreme douche baggery. This kind of behavior gives people with actual allergies a bad reputation because these dickheads go around making tables of ten order everything dairy and gluten free and then they sit there and hoe into a giant piece of cake with whipped cream and peanuts. No.
I have several friends who are lactose sensitive or try not to eat too much wheat and they’re really respectful. They’ll order a separate dish or save that meal out as a ‘cheat meal’ for the small amount of wheat or dairy that they’re able to consume. I’m simply suggesting that perhaps New Girlfriend should have used her dairy quota of the day on the shared meal rather than selfishly making a table of people change their orders for her so she could have dessert.
Is it just me? Or does this kind of behavior annoy everyone?
38 Comments
-
I don’t eat dairy so I am often “that person”, but I don’t have secret gelato binges afterward so yes, I would be annoyed on principle. But honestly, with tapas you could order a few non-dairy things for everybody to share and a few cheesetastic things for everybody except her! I wouldn’t be offended if everybody else was eating cheese as long as there was something good for me to eat.
-
Author
I’m totally fine for people to have allergies or intollerances and I’m really accomodating. It’s just the height of rudeness to ask a restaurant or a table of people to accomodate an allergy and then eat the exact thing you claimed to be allergic to 20 minutes later.
-
-
Shits me to tears. Happens far too frequently
-
It really does, that’s why we need to write about these things!
-
-
Hear Bloody Hear! I abhor being held socially hostage by google-diagnosed dietary compulsive obsessives! I understand that there are people out there who see food merely as fuel but I simply can abide people who think so little of ‘sustenance’ that they have to make it their own little psycho gimp slave!
Now I admit to liking all my clothes pegs to match and I could never where odd socks…but these things I practice in the privacy of my own home…or shoes.-
Ah the old Google diagnosis. And yes. if you’re going to be ‘gluten intolerant’ while eating breadsticks all day, do it in your own damn home.
-
-
I have the opposite experience- I have insulin resistance and try to avoid sugar and alcohol, and the number of times I have been bullied and humiliated (amongst grown adults) for refusing to eat or drink something that makes me feel awful is absurd. That being said I don’t go around making demands or bitching about the lack of diet Sprite at an event. One young man refused to speak to me for an entire week long holiday because I declined to pay for fifty dollars worth or groceries I would not be touching with a ten foot pole.
-
That’s rude, I wouldn’t ask someone to pay for food they weren’t going to eat. I periodically go for a month at a time and not drink alcohol and people are REALLY funny about it. It’s like they need a person to validate their drinking.
-
I’m weirdly relieved that you agree man because I always feel like a judgemental bumface. A lot of people demand to know intimate medical details, or they say “Unless you actually have diabetes Maud stop being precious”
-
I don’t drink alcohol at all, and often people have trouble getting their head around it. I don’t drink because I don’t want to – one guy said there was “something seriously wrong with me” becasue I didn’t drink.
-
Yeah I hate that! I’m definitely a drinker but I like to ‘cleanse’ every now then and my friends act like I’ve cut their arms off.
-
-
-
-
-
It annoys the hell out of me. I’m allergic to seafood (vomiting, which is dramatic but not life threatening and generally occurs an hour or two later). But I don’t insist on others having to deny themselves. Best Beloved knows that if he is going to have a particularly fishy meal, he won’t get kisses for a while. And there’s a heap of things I shouldn’t be eating while the naturopath and I try to figure out a way of managing CFS. Which made being in Longreach interesting. I just tried to do the best I could and gave in gracefully the rest of the time. Definitely save these up as cheat meals!
-
Exactly. I’m a bit funny with super fatty foods so if I’m having a shared meal I just avoid the fried stuff. I don’t ask that everyone else not order fried food.
-
-
Totally annoys me, I can’t stand selfish behaviour like that.
-
I know, I honestly don’t care what people eat as long as they don’t inconvenience other people with fake allergies.
-
-
Why didn’t you just get a mixture of stuff so that she could eat her lactose free stuff and everyone else could eat cheesy food? That sounds like a good compromise- It doesn’t sound like she held you all hostage and demanded you do things her way.
She also might have been a bit more loose and relaxed after having a few wines and felt reckless. I know I’ve said that smoking is gross but have reached for a cig as soon as I’m a bit pissed.
This seems like a bit of a passive-aggressive overreation. I really hope your friend’s girlfriend does read this.-
She did request that we order things without cheese in them and none of us wanted to be assholes and tell her to get stuffed, because we all thought she had an actual allergy. If she had of just quietly ordered her own lactose free meal and then ate ice cream, I wouldn’t have cared. It’s the fact that she dictated what everyone else had to eat and then when it suited her, she ditched her requirements that she forced on everyone else. That’s rude in my book.
-
-
Oh you and I have been seperated at birth. On my tombstone it shall say ” Oh she was alway FAIR”…. ( I have to divide evenly, pay my share, make sure everyone gets a turn, get served in the right order yada yada.
-
Oh I am the fairness Queen. It’s a teacher thing I think. I also don’t mind asserting myself in public. Another teacher thing.
-
-
That is so annoying. I wonder if she gets off a bit on the power? Making everyone eat what she wants? Anyway, I have another horror dining out story to share that might make her behaviour pale in comparison. Years ago I went to a birthday dinner with a group of people I Iargely didn’t know. We’d been pretty rowdy, calling out whenever it pleased us for another Bintang, lots of vegans making alterations to dishes, that kind of thing. When it came time to tally the bill it worked out at $22 a head, but we collectively agreed to round up to $25 to tip the staff who so graciously accommodated this unruly mob. The guy who tallied the amount and the guy collected the money to pay were different people. The guy who took our money ended up not handing over our tip, in fact he was FIVE CENTS SHORT (a fact he laughed about afterwards). He came outside where we were all waiting and triumphantly presented the $60 tip to the birthday boy as “a present from all of us”. I was livid. This was years ago when $20 was money I couldn’t throw away on a tip, but to this day I regret not marching back into the restaurant and tipping them myself. PEOPLE.
-
Oh my god, my blood just starting boiling. What a turd! Mr Smaggle once went out for dinner with two friends who ordered the same dish. The dish arrived while one friend was in the toilet and the other guy looked at the two plates, mumbled ‘His is bigger…’ AND SWAPPED THE PLATES!!!! How ridiculous is THAT????
-
-
Here’s the thing.
Cheese doesn’t have lactose in it.
Icecream does.
What she has is a…..wait for it…..an EATING DISORDER.-
hmmm not true actually. More aged cheeses can have next to no lactose, but relatively fresh cheeses like ricotta and mozarella are full of it. I am a lactard, I know my limits wrt cheeses and I won’t say no to a sprinkling of parmesan but anything soft and forget it! Having said that, I never enforce my dietary requirements on other people sometimes I just suck it up and eat the god damned cheese and pay for it later. It’s just a matter of weighing up whether it’s worth it or not… I’ll usually go for sorbet but sometimes gelato is totally worth it imo 😉
-
Yeah, I’m with Gem – sorry, cheese totally has lactose in it. I’ve recently become a severe lactard (even a scone keeps me on the loo all day with stabbing pains) and I could never eat cheese without the help of special pills that only work… occasionally. But yeah, if I was going to try my luck with the pills, it would totally be on the shared meal, not on the dessert afterwards!
-
-
I wouldn’t say she has an eating disorder, I think it was just an attention seeking thing or power trip thing.
-
An eating disorder must be diagnosed by a medical professional.
Eating disorders are very serious and we shouldn’t make jokes about them or just a label a person.
I agree with re the attention.
-
-
I agree it is annoying. Slightly different perspective from someone probs a bit guilty of it – I am a celiac who, for the first three years of diagnosis, managed it really badly because I liked food too much. I totally know the feeling of ‘fuck I want that thing so bad I am just gonna EAT IT’. Especially when drunk.
It has become a problem (well, no one has ever said anything but I am not retarded so I am sure people have found it a problem), when word would get around that I am a celiac, and some lovely people of their own volition would go to all kinds of crazy lengths to accommodate me at parties or whatever, and I would be so grateful (esp because I didn’t ask for it)…but no doubt they would catch me eating a burger from time to time, because I just wanted one and would (stupidly) sacrifice 12 hours of the runs for it…and I am sure they thought I was a douche. I guess they have every right to think that, since they spent 12 dollars on crackers for me for the New Years Eve cheese plate. Makes it hard to know ‘how the fuck do I cook for this person, is she even for real?’
For ages I just didn’t want to have to tell people or talk about it cos I knew how silly and inconsistent I was and I just didn’t want to deal with the judgement…and I knew I was being judged for it.
These days (5 years post-diagnosis), it’s kinda unavoidable and gotten to a point where I really can’t tolerate any gluten without some severe intestinal and immune payback, so for the last couple of years I’ve been very strict and am more firm in saying, ‘I’m celiac, I’ll order something separate’ (to avoid the ‘but you’re celiac, why are you eating the group pizza?!’ screechers) or ‘no thanks’ to the cake, and it’s much easier now, and i don’t crave it.
I guess your mate is different in that she wanted everyone to know and adjust, and then ate dairy anyway. That’s silly. But I understand the craving for it.
While we’re talking about it, I will add that while I am managing celiac really well now, I am getting so sick of people frickin’ lecturing me about it – when I say things like, ‘I had some awesome pasta last night’ – and they sternly say, I hope it was gluten free’, and I’m like of course it was you dick, stop bossin’ me around! Don’t know why I have such a dumb reaction to it, but my brain instantly goes ‘fuck oooooooffff’.
Or people who are NOT celiac doing stupid shit like, ‘I can’t toast my bread in the same toaster, because I’m gluten intolerant’, and then telling me off because I don’t do ‘separate toasters’ and I am celiac. Stop judging me, you sanctimonious fake allergy person! I know I am still far from perfect, and people tell me off for having the soy sauce or whatever…but hey, it’s a big improvement from being the dick who would eat a schnitzel burger in front of a nice person who made me gluten free food out of the goodness of their heart one time! Even though I have been semi guilty of this, I would probably still think that girl was a bit of a dick…-
It’s nice to hear that people with intolerance are aware of it too! I also think it’s different if you’re amongst close friends. This chick had JUST MET US so it made it heaps worse.
-
-
I’m with you on this one. As a lactard myself, sometimes eating out is tricky but hell no do I ever selfishly make all the lucky folk able to ingest cheese not eat it. I either order my own thing, ask for maybe a couple of cheese free options, or just fall on my sword and eat the cheese. Girlfriend needs to familiarise herself with Lacteeze!
-
Oh what’s lacteeze?
-
-
I’ve also recently become “that person” as I’ve developed food intolerances that are not allergies, but not very pleasant either. I completely agree with you though that it’s incredibly rude to stop others enjoying cheese just because you can’t have it. Especially with an ice cream chaser. Am I right in assuming New Girlfriend is no longer a permanent fixture on the scene?
-
Nah she didn’t last long at all.
-
-
Not just you at all! Being super lactose intolerant myself, I hate people like that giving us a bad name! I really appreciate people being willing to order differently for me and hate putting people out during a shared meal, so it always makes me feel super awkward in those situations. That’s why I always offer to buy my own separate meal so people don’t have to be put out.
I think it’s about the power and attention – all the meal suddenly has to revolve around her, and not be the shared event it should be. Bullcrap.
-
You’re very consistant though, because you’re vegan right? I’ve never seen you demand something vegan and renig later when you’re tempted.
-
-
I have food allergies so I just order a separate meal. Even in shared restaurants, the kitchen and chef are more than willing to accommodate if you ask nicely.
I investigate the menu first – my friends always ask if it is ok with me first before booking, bless them. Sometimes I will say I’ll sit this one out or I will just join you for dessert.
My food allergies inconvenience me more than enough. No reason for it to inconvenience my friends too!
-
Exactly! It also annoys when people get finniky at restaurant staff about lactose in their food and then slam a chocolate bar later. Idiots.
-
-
I am totally with you on this!
-
OMFG!!! that is just completely and utterly rude!! That is a massive pet hate of mine and to have someone do that right infront of you is just not on, especially if you have had TO MISS OUT ON DELICIOUS CHEESE ALL NIGHT LONG! haha great post carly love it 🙂
