Eating at Restaurants Shouldn’t Be Deadly
Eating out is a treat in our house, because we are trying hard to be healthier. We enjoy going out once a week as a couple (sometimes as a family but usually our restaurant adventures are just me and my husband), not having to worry about cooking or doing dishes and just enjoying each other’s company. Not to mention, we enjoy trying new foods and new places and there were a lot of new places that opened up in a nearby town over the past six months. Yet we also have our favorites: Cracker Barrel, Chinese, and the Waffle House. Our first hand full of dates were at these three places so we are regulars there.
The last bad experience I wrote about happened at CB. It was no fault of theirs and they can’t control what other patrons do, especially when it is busy and these people are trying (but failing) at being discreet. I have no doubt the manager at our local CB would not have tolerated the behavior if we had made her aware of it, but I didn’t because I have more class than that.
However, the latest of disasters happened at Waffle House. I always order Diet Coke with my meals and DH always orders regular. He usually tastes mine to make sure it is diet but he has been drinking diet at home lately. This makes him less able to notice the difference between the two so he didn’t realize his was diet. I drank over half of mine before I realized it wasn’t. This was confirmed by the waitress asking my husband if he needed a refill on his Diet Coke. Crap. I dosed for what I figured was at least 30 extra carbs, maybe more cause their classes are a little tall, but it was too late. My sugar was 500 when we left and climbing and I spent all day sick and trying to battle it back down.
Listen. I worked in fast food for 10 years. I get that sometimes things are busy and you can’t keep up. But pouring drinks is not rocket science. I do not know the amount of times I had to lecture coworkers that it wasn’t okay to give people sugar in their coffee if they asked for Splenda or use regular vanilla syrup if they asked for sugar free or pour sweetened tea when they asked for unsweetened. It isn’t just the matter of you making a mistake and slightly inconveniencing a customer. Your simple, minimum wage job done incorrectly can become life threatening to a diabetic, at worst, and make us sick at the best. There is no doubt in my mind that if you we hadn’t realized what happened and I hadn’t taken extra insulin immediately to try to cover it that I would have been in the hospital within an hour or so.
It takes zero effort to pay attention to this small detail. It makes a good dining experience stay good and not turn fatal and deadly. It makes you look competent and like you actually care about your job (and if you don’t, at least care about not killing someone or making them ill).
You may read this and think it’s an exaggeration or that I am making a big deal over nothing but what people don’t understand that is that we are literally acting as the pancreas for our bodies. A working pancreas can produce the appropriate amount of insulin for whatever amount of sugar you consume. I have to manually inject mine into my fat. Too much insulin can kill me. Too little insulin can kill me. Not knowing how much sugar I am consuming and giving too little or too much insulin can kill me. And I am not alone, this isn’t a strange phenomenon that only happens sometimes. There are a lot of diabetics in the world.
Just do your job, and do it right. You never know the negative effects of your mistakes but my body does and it ain’t fun.
The last bad experience I wrote about happened at CB. It was no fault of theirs and they can’t control what other patrons do, especially when it is busy and these people are trying (but failing) at being discreet. I have no doubt the manager at our local CB would not have tolerated the behavior if we had made her aware of it, but I didn’t because I have more class than that.
However, the latest of disasters happened at Waffle House. I always order Diet Coke with my meals and DH always orders regular. He usually tastes mine to make sure it is diet but he has been drinking diet at home lately. This makes him less able to notice the difference between the two so he didn’t realize his was diet. I drank over half of mine before I realized it wasn’t. This was confirmed by the waitress asking my husband if he needed a refill on his Diet Coke. Crap. I dosed for what I figured was at least 30 extra carbs, maybe more cause their classes are a little tall, but it was too late. My sugar was 500 when we left and climbing and I spent all day sick and trying to battle it back down.
Listen. I worked in fast food for 10 years. I get that sometimes things are busy and you can’t keep up. But pouring drinks is not rocket science. I do not know the amount of times I had to lecture coworkers that it wasn’t okay to give people sugar in their coffee if they asked for Splenda or use regular vanilla syrup if they asked for sugar free or pour sweetened tea when they asked for unsweetened. It isn’t just the matter of you making a mistake and slightly inconveniencing a customer. Your simple, minimum wage job done incorrectly can become life threatening to a diabetic, at worst, and make us sick at the best. There is no doubt in my mind that if you we hadn’t realized what happened and I hadn’t taken extra insulin immediately to try to cover it that I would have been in the hospital within an hour or so.
It takes zero effort to pay attention to this small detail. It makes a good dining experience stay good and not turn fatal and deadly. It makes you look competent and like you actually care about your job (and if you don’t, at least care about not killing someone or making them ill).
You may read this and think it’s an exaggeration or that I am making a big deal over nothing but what people don’t understand that is that we are literally acting as the pancreas for our bodies. A working pancreas can produce the appropriate amount of insulin for whatever amount of sugar you consume. I have to manually inject mine into my fat. Too much insulin can kill me. Too little insulin can kill me. Not knowing how much sugar I am consuming and giving too little or too much insulin can kill me. And I am not alone, this isn’t a strange phenomenon that only happens sometimes. There are a lot of diabetics in the world.
Just do your job, and do it right. You never know the negative effects of your mistakes but my body does and it ain’t fun.
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