Rusty Saber: Business, eating combine to provide food for thought

Joe McAdoo, former chairman of the communication department at Drury University, is on vacation, basking on the beaches in Hawaii. The following column is reprinted from SBJ archives.

We Americans have a thing about eating. We can't seem to do anything unless it centers around food. If you are planning a meeting, you can mess up on about anything as long as the food is good.

More business is conducted over half-eaten food and dirty dishes than over desks and conference tables. There are breakfast business meetings, luncheon business meetings and dinner business meetings.

Corporations spend thousand of dollars outfitting executives' offices, and they do their work in restaurants. The number of gravy stains on neckties and blouses is probably the most accurate way to tell who is working the hardest.

In the effort to squeeze more opportunities to eat into our lives, the buffet has emerged. Buffets are a lot cheaper than sit-down dinners, and a lot more business can be conducted because everybody can talk to everybody else. At a buffet, you can chomp away on hors d'oeuvres while talking to dozens of people.

"Grazing" is the name I give to the social phenomenon of gathering around a hors d'oeuvres table.

Cattle are better suited for grazing than are humans.

Human beings complicate the process. They try to do too many things at one time. Human grazing consists of holding a glass, a plate full of hors d'oeuvres and two napkins one for the drink and another for the food and a fork. Women often add a purse to the balancing act. Smokers have the option of adding a cigarette. All of this is accomplished while talking a mile a minute.

Since many hors d'oeuvres come with toothpicks, there is the problem of what to do with the used ones. Every suit coat I own has toothpicks in the pockets.

You have both hands completely full and you need to shake hands with someone. What do you do?

An even worse problem occurs when there is a program planned for the event you are attending. A speaker is introduced. You need to applaud. What do you do?

You have a smear of onion dip on your chin. There's a napkin stuck between two fingers, but you can't get it up to your chin without spilling a drink or a plate of food all over you. What do you do?

If buffets continue long enough, humankind will adapt. I predict that within a couple of hundred years, people will begin to grow a third arm. It will probably evolve out of the shoulder.

The new arm, known by its proper name, "Stubus Flatus," will be short and have a flat surface at the end. It will have an elbow so it can be turned upward in front of the face, enabling a buffet grazer to hold a small dinner plate with a glass on it. The other two hands will be free.

I told a friend about this and she agreed that it was coming, but she allowed as how women will develop a thumb-like growth out of one side of the appendage for hanging a purse on. Makes sense to me.

Whether it is for business or just an excuse for friends getting together, grazing is here to stay.