For those of you who don’t know me, I must say I consider myself extremely health conscious and eco-sensitive. For those reasons I have, for the most part, stopped eating meat, eliminated fast and fatty foods and survive largely on fruits, vegetables, whole grain carbohydrates and protein rich nuts and beans. For more in depth reasoning behind my food consumption, read Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma or rent Food Inc.

I need to tell you this because my Craigslist life and pre-Craigslist self identity are at a crossroad. Working at Denny’s is obviously against so many of the values I hold dearly—conservation, sustainability and health and fitness, to name a few. They have all been put in jeopardy. It goes beyond my unwillingness to eat a meal at Denny’s.

I’m the guy who hadn’t, until a few days ago, walked into a McDonalds and bought something, and even then I only bought coffee. I am the guy who chooses granola over French fries. I am the guy who asks annoying questions in restaurants like, “Who is your yogurt supplier?”

And now I have to ask already overweight costumers if they want a side of pancakes? What?

On the bottom of our menu, and yes I say our—I am a Denny’s team member after all—the dessert section is not just called “Desserts.” No, we take it one step further by telling our customer, “You still have room.” Quite ridiculous when you consider one of our most popular items, a Lumberjack Slam (1170 calories), is a Man V. Food challenge in and of it self. But no, my job is to get you to buy more, spend more, and eat more. And I am surprised to find out, people actually buy desserts.

Look, I’ll be honest, it’s not enough to quit over—this shows how shallow I am—plus the story is too good, but I do have a problem with it. Especially when I am supposed to sample all of the food. So today, as I ate hash browns and egg—I am not eating the meat—I couldn’t help but think how emblematic Denny’s menu is of America’s health epidemic.

I must say, after reflecting on such a heavy issue, pun intended, the physical and mental stress of actually working in a restaurant becomes absurd. I mean, remembering which ingredients go in which entrees is so very unimportant when cast in the very large shadow of American obesity. Of course all of this is made even more ridiculous when you consider Denny’s menu is as simple as a test you took in third-grade.

Fill in the blank please. 20 questions with your 10-item word bank. Go!

It’s pretty safe to assume all of the breakfast menu items are prepared with one or ten of the following: Eggs, bacon, sausage, toast, grits, cheese, ham, pancakes, waffles, onions or green peppers. Just add butter, lots of butter.

Even still, I need to learn that a French Toast Slam does not come with pancakes, while the Meat Lovers Scramble does.

Before I end this rant, let me touch on two other issues.

First, all of the food that was prepared today, and there was a lot—every breakfast item once by every cook—was either eaten or thrown away. Not so uplifting considering a study published in 1997 found 96.4 billion pounds of the 356 billion pounds of edible food in the United States was never eaten. I can only imagine the number has gone up.

Finally, I leave you with this. While working for Environment California, I campaigned to ban Styrofoam. Now, at Denny’s I am supplying take-out containers made of the very product I once worked to destroy. If I worked two months for Environment California and I work two months for Denny’s, is my net impact zero?

it IS ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests -- that's what this is all about!

PostingID: 1283901814