Usless Advice Mondays: Be Careful What You Order

Sometimes, when travelling abroad, I start to miss regular-old American food. Usually, this happens at about 1:20am, so my dining options are limited. I always reach out for the hotel's room service menu, as most places seem to have some sort of American fare on their late night listings. One common choice is the Hamburger. Hamburgers are simple, and it doesn't require much to make one that's at least edible, so this is usually a fairly safe choice. However there are some places where this can backfire, as I recently experienced.

As usual, my late night craving hit. And, as usual, the menu did indeed include a Hamburger option. Fries too. Perfect. I grabbed the phone, ordered the delicious taste treat and prepared myself for the enjoyment that would commence with the arrival of my menu selection in 15-20 minutes. Upon arrival, and gracious tipping, I sat down to enjoy this delicacy of the western world when I noticed something slightly disturbing: My hamburger had an egg on it. A fried egg, it appeared after further inspection. In my confusion, I rechecked the menu. There was not an Egg McMuffin option. Yet here, in front of my eyes, stood something that more closely resembeled just that than a juicy ham-burger.

But I'm an open-minded individual. I'm up for a little experimentation here and there. So I figured, what the hell......I'll try it. The logic here being that, since it was just a fried egg, and if I didn't enjoy this spin on the classic burger, I could just remove it. This was clearly the plan of the devious entity that had set the soon-to-be-sprung trap before me. I reached out and picked up the seemingly innocent treat and was immediately horrified that the egg was actually NOT fried, but over-easy. This resulted in a yolk explosion the minute I picked up the burger. I immediately thought of how a bank robber feels when that little dye bomb goes off in his bag of loot, ruining it completly. What I now had in my hands was a yolk-soaked meat sandwich, not a Ham Burger. But I wanted a Ham Burger. The bastards got me.

This reminded me of the time I was in Australia. This time, I thought I would be more safe, since I was actually at a small dining establishment during the day, where ordering a Hamburger would be safe. Since they were making it right there, I'd have a little more control over the assembly process. I walked up to the counter, and ordered a hamburger. The person taking my order asked me "Do you want everything on that?" Now, coming from the US, "everything" can have a fairly broad interpretation, but most of this list would be reasonable. When I said "Yes", the chap must have figured out that I was NOT Australian and decided that he better clarify this somewhat. The next question he asked me has been burned into memory and will haunt me to my death. He asked "You want a beet too?"

Wait
WTF?
Did that guy just ask me if I wanted a god-damned BEET on my burger?
Who the fuck puts a BEET on a hamburger?
A BEET!

I answered the only possible way I could...."Umm.....no?" Now some people might think that this went well....I mean this little conversation resulted in the absence of a god-damned shit-eating BEET on my hamburger, but no....you'd be wrong. There was no BEET on my burger, but the thought of such a horrible thing had been lodged into my brain so that, now, my burger (sans- BEET) seemed wretched and vile. Like it was just sitting there, laughing, saying "You know I could have had a beet on me. Nothing like a beet burger. MMMMMMM BEET-Y." As horrible as a talking burger might be, a talking burger that had BEET potential is much worse.

I ate him anyway.....mostly just to shut it up.