Follow the herd to the Golden Corral

I want to clarify right at the beginning that I don't consider myself better than the people I am going to tell you about. I guess I am making a bit of fun, but I am also keenly aware of how close I come to joining their ranks.

I, totally honest and trustworthy, had never eaten at a Golden Corral until September of last year. I have saddled up to quite a few buffets in my food driven life, but never the GC. I liked it. As my debit card receipts will bear out, I often have a hankerin' for it. It is not a fancy spot with menus. This is the kind of place that toothpicks are offered after the meal. It is a place of value for the buck.

I usually only eat here at lunch times. I join the ranks of other hungry workers who want to share a dollop of mashed potatoes, fight for the last piece of chicken, and enjoy some ice cream out of the machine. These are my people. We communicate without words to form single file lines and obtain our selected meals without harm or danger to others. We fill our plates high like mountains that need to be conquered. We might get mighty portions, but, perhaps due to time constraints more than will, we usually only get two helpings.

Tonight, I went for dinner. These are not my people. These folks are professionals. They are the reason that it costs more to eat buffets at night versus lunch. I watched as three heavy hitters all sat on one side of a table so they could fill the other side with piles of plates. It looked like their imaginary equals were filling the chairs opposite them and devouring plates while they were eating only a normal portion. They sat in silence, staring ahead, and just ate. It didn't even look like they enjoyed it. They just ate.

One row up was a similar group. I don't know how many plates they knocked out before I got there because they were on dessert by the time I arrived. Picture yourself going to a local bakery and pointing to the entire showcase of desserts and saying, "I will take that, please." To make it worse, I could almost testify that I heard them talk about diabetes. These are true warriors. Not even the threat of amputation slows them down.

Looking around the "corral", I couldn't help but to notice more of the night crowd. They were easy to pick out due to their uniforms (sweatpants and loose shirts). It reminded me of the Friends episode where Joey wears maternity pants.

I sat there looking at all of these night people when it all started to connect in my head. Just as Bruce Willis realized he had been dead the whole time in Sixth Sense, I realized that the night crowd must be my people also. I am here with them. I am a threat to the buffet's existence.

I will pick up my uniform at Wal-mart tomorrow.