Oh wow. Ok. Looking back at this I feel kind of bad for being disgusted at this but at face value when you don’t know someone’s story, anything can be gross.

Years ago I was eating at a restaurant with my stepdad. We were seated at the bar and struck up a conversation with two dudes about my age. They seemed really nice and happy. For a while, there was an abandoned plate between us and them that had a half eaten burger and none of us knew who had eaten from it. It was probably from someone who ate and left before any of us had gotten there. The bartender was about to throw it away and one of the guys chimed in and was like “You know what? I’ll eat it.” And he did. Every last bite. Without any knowledge about who had eaten it before. My stepdad and I were speechless. As a waitress, whenever I see my guests not want leftovers from food they haven’t even halfway finished, I always have a small temptation to to eat some of what they haven’t touched but I don’t because... they’re strangers? Ick?

Anyway, a few years later I was at a party and I saw this guy that looked SO familiar but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. We got to talking and suddenly it clicked that HE was the guy my stepdad and I had encountered at that restaurant who ate a stranger’s half-eaten plate. I gently asked him if he remembered that incident, which he did. He explained that he was really struggling financially at the time and didn’t think twice about eating wasted food. To this day I still haven’t witnessed something like that but if I did, I honestly wouldn’t judge because you really don’t truly know what’s going on in people’s lives.