The agony of lunch meetings As part of my work I have to go to lunch meetings and events reasonably often. I hate them because of many reasons: There's usually fats present and I can't stand seeing them eat or being in their blast radius of consumption. The way some of them shovel food into their maw is revolting. I can't see how they can be enjoying the textures or flavors of what they're eating, it looks more like a race to consume as much as possible as fast as possible. It turns out I eat quite slowly compared to many people so I'm usually last to finish. Fats always finish first and will then stare at me eating and examine my plate. I'll take a forkful and look up and find a fat staring. It's disconcerting. I sometimes wonder what's going on in their head: probably some Homer Simpson-like mantra about eating. I feel such utter contempt for the staring fats that it's even harder to keep eating. One time after finishing, an otherwise respectable businessman-fat was literally eating the crumbs and splodges off the restaurant tablecloth. I was completely stunned. I'm also often in the position where I'm the one who needs to do some of the talking. That means I'm even slower at finishing and need to start hurrying the meal. I hate having to purposely eat fast to catch up with others so whatever enjoyment I had in the meal is diminished again. I always get questioned if I don't clear the plate. I find that incredibly irritating and rude. Unfortunately being a work function I can't give the reply I want. What I have developed is the line that: "The food was great, but I like to decide how much to eat, not the restaurant". That always stuns them but is hard to take issue with. Often at lunchtime I'm not hungry. I usually only have one meal a day plus a snack of fruit or something like that. So many people are obsessed with having three full meals a day and claim all manner of terrible things will happen if they don't eat at the required time. I lose respect for these people because I regard them as food addicts, or at best weak-willed. But if I claim to be not hungry and order small then I'm interrogated as to why.  Work lunch meetings. Hate them.