Vegetarians get the stepmotherly treatment again!

Yet another office party come and gone, and vegetarians get step-motherly treatment again! By the time half the people at the party had taken the food, all the vegetarian appetizers were gone. The vegetarian entree was never ordered at all! The only things left for vegetarians were the salad and pita bread! In contrast, the non-vegetarian dishes not only lasted through the party, two trays of the non-veg entree were actually left-over!

I am not only unhappy because I am a vegetarian myself, I also feel guilty because I was in the organizing committee for the party. And I told the other committee members that vegetarian dishes are something that everyone consumes, where as, meat dishes are something which only the non-vegetarians will touch. So, although the number of vegetarians might actually be smaller than the number of non-vegetarians in absolute terms, we should order more vegetarian food than non-vegetarian food. Here are a couple of responses I got to my point:

1. From an American lady: Usually non-vegetarians eat only non-veg dishes. I have often seen that the vegetarians will want to try a little bit of a chicken dish or something. That is what usually happens.

2. From an Indian guy, who should have known better: Usually non-vegetarians take 75% non-veg items and 25% veg items. So, we should order 75% non-veg items and 25% veg items.

The person who finally placed the order reviewed the order with us. It all seemed good because the vegetarian appetizers were going to be ordered for everyone, and the vegetarian entree was also going to be ordered in sufficient quantity. But, when the order was delivered, for some reason, the number of vegetarian appetizers were half of what was expected, and the vegetarian entree was totally missing!

This party is not the first time that I have seen this. It happens all the time. If a group of us friends go out for dinner, and some non-vegetarian orders the food, he'd usually order non-veg and veg dishes in equal proportion. There would be enough non-veg dishes for the meat-eaters. The veg dishes would disappear fast because everyone eats them, not just the vegetarians. If someone orders pizza for a team of 10, out of which 3 are vegetarians, they order just 1 or 2 veg pizza thinking that is more than enough for the 3 vegetarians. Turns out that everyone, including the meat-eaters, like the veg pizza. So, at the end, there is meat pizza left-over, where as, the veg pizza is all gone, and the vegetarians might have gotten less slices than they wanted. For two years in a row, we have run out of the small number of veg burgers we took to the company picnic. Vegetarians who came in late had to spend the whole afternoon eating finger food like chips! In some meetings and gatherings, when the organizers pre-ordered food without checking/informing with the participants, they have totally missed ordering something for the vegetarians present. The vegetarians had to just sit around munching on chips, while others had "real" lunch.

I am convinced that non-vegetarians cannot get the food right (quality nor quantity) for vegetarians, unless they are really, really experienced, have that rare thing called common-sense, and an even more rare thing called consideration.