The New Nobu?

And I thought Britney going barefoot was bad.

I have noticed with alarming frequency the growing trend of eating in bathrooms. Although the words restroom and restaurant do bear noticeable similarities, I refuse to believe that anyone could confuse one for the other. Ever. That leads me to conclude that this is a deliberate movement.

I didn’t start to notice this new phenomenon until a friend regaled me with the tale of an urban legend circulating at his office. There is a woman who actually ate a Snickers while doing the business. An eyewitness confirmed that she exited the stall carrying only the wrapper.

Once this was on the brain, I started looking around and noticed that this wasn’t as out of the ordinary as I may have once thought. Just today I saw an empty potato chip bag in the bathroom garbage. I find it hard to believe that someone carried it all the way into the bathroom solely to dispose of the bag. Therefore, I have no choice but to conclude that they ate the chips in there.

After I finished my lunch (in the café like the rest of the civilized world) I saw a lady in the bathroom who brought her sandwich in with her and left it on the counter while she used the facilities. The wrap has been red flagged. Maybe I am weird but I try to plan my trips to the bathroom around my lunch so I will never be caught in front of the door sandwich in hand, doing the pee dance and contemplating “to enter or not to enter.” This should be an easy situation to avoid.

What could possibly be the reason for this noticeable outbreak of Bathroom Dining? I have two theories on how our society may be to blame because, let’s face it…when struggling to make sense of something, blame society:

THEORY ONE: It is an attempt to interject a little culture into American dining. As a society, we have no defining customs like using chopsticks or sitting barefoot on the floor to consume our food. “Bathroom Eaters” are just trying to change the perception of American dining by associating something other than McDonalds to it.

OR

THEORY TWO: We have become overly efficient at multi-tasking. Taking bathroom breaks and lunch/snack breaks are a waste of time separately. But if we put them together, the break time is cut in half. GENIUS! (I believe that this could be an evil plot by workplace management to keep the man down.)

Either way, I am still at a loss as to how and why this is becoming an acceptable occurrence which is seemingly spreading to epidemic proportions. Even if I subscribed to either of the two theories above, I still would not be compelled to pull up a toilet and gorge on a steak in the john. It is just plain gross.