Alain M. Lafon

Due to “current events” in in-house restaurant “the headquarters“, I felt an obligation to write a little something and send it to the responsible people. For those of you who won’t be able to read the German text, let me sum up what’s in it.

Normally, I am very satisfied with service and quality of “the headquarters”. They offer a great lot of different, rich and tasty foods – they even include a vegetarian section and while they are offering plenty of salads, at least some of them are not marked as containing animals. But yesterday in combination with today changed my mind, because I bought my share of salad which was not labeled as containing meat – and today I even bought something from the dedicated vegetarian area and found bacon therein while eating it.

Well, the non-labeled salad I could live with – everyone does mistakes once in a while. But offering fake vegetarian food is something I do not fancy too much. My opinion is that if somebody labels something as dedicated vegetarian, they have to stick to this requirement. I understand that we are responsible only for a small amount of the overall turnover, but if they can’t keep up with their quality assurance, it would be better not to label anything as vegetarian, because I could and would ask the chef myself if the ingredients are not obvious.

Because I believe in free information and informing the public about misinformation, I am posting my letter as open letter. It is not, because I want to harm the company – as I said before: I liked the location so far.

But as much as I believe in the economic rights of a company not wanting to be blamed for “tiny mistakes”, my believe in the rights of each and every animal exceeds those by far – and as much as it’s worth, I raise my voice in this matter openly.

Thank you for reading.

Update: Only 1.5h after sending my mail to “the headquarters”, I already received an answer. I’m not going to publish it here, because I think it would violate the privacy rights of the writer. But what I can say is that I am very pleased with how they responded – the answer is very detailed and written using friendly wording.

The answer is directly from the manager in charge who took the blame on herself – normally she would be the one to control each salad for ingredients and change the labels if needed. She said she was very sorry and wanted to improve on her performance. As far as I remember there were lots more people yesterday in the restaurant than normally – so maybe it was a very stressfull day for everyone working there and mistakes will happen in such an environment. At least I have learned that not the cooks write the labels themselves, which I find peculiar and interesting and leads me to the conclusion that I will doublecheck for myself in the future.
Concerning lunch today, there has been a mistake by the guys doing the replenishment. They also offerend “Quiche Lorraine” which is incredibly similar to a Swiss “Kaesewaehe” – and they missed up on the opportunity to declare the optically not distinguishable product which might also have caused the person refilling some trouble.

Finally I received an invitation for coffee if I have any further suggestions or feedback. Lucky me that I already have access to great and free coffee in the bureau – or else I would have to think of something now.

She probably did the best job possible to comfort me while also referring to the importance of my mail as well as their will to further improve their service. As I thought the mistakes were only human error which can and will happen. But still – these kind of errors result in harm that I cannot dismiss that easily.

Just couldn’t resist. I saw them, I needed them. All!

Actually I only went shopping after lunch, because the former CD-case ice scraper of my dear friend Falko just wasn’t up to the job of repeatedly removing the Arctic Swiss nights remainder from his car and he wanted to buy a new one. Accidentally Migros isn’t the place to go for such needs, but the time spent wasn’t in vain after all.

While standing in line on the cashpoint, I realized that my former habits of buying gum wouldn’t concur with my habitual habitual consumption thereof.

For your better understanding I included all needed information in a gum-flow-chart:

Not to forget the decadence-factor: Swiss prices(25CHF for gum)

Update: a co-worker and friend of mine wrote a spontaneous nice poem using all colorful flavors of Skai gum and gave me permission to publish it here. What I really like most about is that I just recently learned about the stylistic device Homeoteleuton – and she’s using it all the time. Incredible.

"Spearmint, coolmint or peppermint could all be a hint..
the detail might be found in the Fruit cocktail,
cinnamon is too common,
and if you feel like a bird
you might want to roost with the air boost,
let's chew Fantastic Berry and Cherry
and we will feel merry:-)"

Lately I have come to realize that a great many people are very different than me in somewhat fundamental ways. There are people who claim they cannot and will not understand that there is another person whose primary goal in life is to comfort them, to make them feel special and needed. They say it is imperative to have greater goals in life than only a decent partnership, which is grossly unsophisticated and simply not enough.

How can one say they don’t want their special someone to be happy just because they are together? I’m inclined to say that I am sorry for these people, because I believe that they lack self-assurance, but that would be really patronising – and maybe I’m just plain wrong, so I won’t say it. Still, I say it is the small things that make the world a nice and warm place to be and that this new-age “I have to grow beyond my biological programming” only leads to a lack thereof and therefore to loneliness. I don’t deny that I myself am trying to be leave an impact – I try to be honest, decent and helpful to someone in need. But of uttermost importance is the fact that I know that I am just a man; and therefore will not change the world entirely(at least most likely not), but what a man can do is give himself in – to a relationship – and make it work by investing his resources in what is most dear to him.

Besides, I find it ignorant and selfish to claim one of the greatest goals like world peace, world hunger and alike for oneself, because the only effect that is established is a metaphysical and transcendental touch on the person claiming it – probably without being or behaving any different than us normal dull and unsophisticated people. All it does in reality is help them distinguish themselves in their own minds from the crowd – and they need this feeling, because they want to be special and don’t want to be hurt; not by others – and not by their own psyche.