noise to signal

My version of a work anxiety dream

A new cafeteria has opened at work, so I wander over to check it out. It's a low building, vaguely mediterranean with pink stucco and vine-covered columns framing the approach. The setting sun is turning it all rosy and beautiful, and I pause to watch a family playing on the lawn.

As I come through the front door, I'm assaulted with noise and confusion: two people in chef's jackets are shouting at each other; there's a jet of steam off to my right, and the din from dishes and pans and knives on boards is tremendous. As I am swept through the turnstile by the press of the crowd I notice a small sign fly by to my left; it says something about being charged even if I don't buy anything, as a kitchen fee.

There are posters hanging everywhere, in the middle of the aisle, with enormous closeups of bad food photos: meats swimming in a pool of glycerin, lettuce already turning brown and soft from the lights. The text splashed across the posters seems to have nothing to do with the photos: "Freshness IS forever!"; "Nice hottie COFFEE the cup!"

There are only a few stations here, and though I can't see what they're serving I'm already shuddering and weak with revulsion. From yards away I can taste the horrifying food coming out of the steamer trays: grade Z meat with a sauce of tar and mayonnaise; soups flecked with diced hair and gristle.

As I move on I realize that the corridor turns in on itself, so the cafeteria is longer than it seemed to be. After I drift out of the first section, there are long empty stretches, dark and echoing, broken up here and there by a bare, flickering fluorescent tube hanging over a tray of pale rolls or a rack of dusty cans of soda: brazil nut, barnacle fizz, cocobolo.

Someone appears out of the darkness ahead of me, pushing a cart with three working wheels loaded down with dirty pans. I can't see their face as they limp by, straining to keep the cart moving in a straight line.

As the slow squeaking of the cart disappears behind me, I come around a corner into a suddenly well-lit area. There's a smiling man standing behind a display case, with stacks of the most beautiful Chinese greens I've ever seen: choy sum, yin choy, gai lan, and others I'm sure I recognize but can't quite drag up the Cantonese phonemes for.

To my right I notice a stand selling various kinds of noodles in bowls. What they're making for other customers looks delicious, but I can't match anything they're serving with what's on the menu. I try to point to something someone else is getting, but the woman behind the counter smiles, and shakes her head, and gestures to the menu above her head. Finally I point to something on the menu, and without looking to see she begins assembling a bowl of greens, and chile oil, and some kind of delicious meat, over fat yellow noodles floating in a shimmering broth. The woman next to her, who is now taking my money, explains to me that they have to have a menu in order to fool the cafeteria -- which she refers to as though it were some kind of living thing, not a building, The Cafeteria not the cafeteria -- but that each customer gets the meal they need most based on the balance of their yin and yang.

I sit down to eat, near a window, nodding at the smiling man with the greens. I pick up my strangely heavy chopsticks and wake up.