Grinding woes

Would it be wrong to ask the rotund sandwich maker in the basement canteen at my workplace to adjust her salt and pepper grinding skills? I am concerned that it may be a case of teaching one’s grandmother to suck eggs, or perhaps teaching an old dog new tricks, although I’m not sure which of those labels she would find more offensive. Either way, it is an issue that I may have to confront, given that she almost ruined my eagerly-awaited lunch today with a prime case of disastrous seasoning mismanagement.

Personally, I am of the opinion that, when offered ‘Salt and pepper?’, I can take that offer to mean ‘Would you like salt and pepper sprinkled liberally all over the contents of your lunchtime snack?’ Sadly, on this issue at least, the rotund sandwich maker and I have differing interpretations. For her, ‘Salt and pepper?’ means ‘Shall I put a large and deeply intensive sprinkling of black and white flavours on a microscopic fragment of your sandwich, leaving 94% of it unseasoned and 6% of it so over-seasoned as to render it inedible?’

Upon first witnessing said lady’s apparently insensitive and careless S&P distribution this afternoon, I soothed myself with the idea that my initial fears were caused by my own neuroses. What had in fact occurred, so I told myself, was that the seasoning had been applied evenly: my perception of its concentration on one area of my egg mayonnaise bap had been due to a freak optical distortion created by the sloping glass counter that separated me from the sandwich-creating area.

Sadly my attempts to give the rotund sandwich maker the benefit of the doubt were a waste of valuable brain time, for when I reached my sunny four square inches of the park across the road from my building, slotted myself between two other gently sweating office workers and commenced my nourishment, it quickly became apparent that my worst fears had materialised.

On this occasion, when asked, ‘Salt and pepper?’, I said, ‘Yes, please.’ In future, I may have to offer some further direction.

Needless to say, despite the misplaced flavouring, I somehow managed to consume the sandwich in its entirety, an act of bravery and derring-do that I am sure my readers will consider to be something rather special.