You’re at a family gathering and can’t seem to explain why you can’t eat the green beans with ham in them.
You’re at a work conference in the middle of nowhere and are forced to live on iceberg lettuce and coffee for days.
You spend an entire first date being exhaustively interrogated about your reasons for veg*nism.
Almost all of us have had moments such as these.
Submit your entries for worst veg*n moment in the comments. We will announce our favorite on twitter and facebook.
Is this still going on? Whatever, I’m going to post mine anyway: I was at a wedding in Iowa. There were over 200 people attending and there were three food options: main dish (steak), kids food (chicken nuggets) or vegetarian. I think I was the only one who ordered the vegetarian. An HOUR after everyone else was served I got a lukewarm bake potato, a small side of sour cream and a fruit cup. Man. Good thing I ate before the reception. Though, I don’t think I was alone in my disappointment, everyone else seemed very underwhelmed with their grey steaks and grey green beans with ham bits.
I am a meeting & event planner so I cater to my vegetarians/gluten free/vegans as much as possible because of my bad experiences! I had a similar issue where I was at an event professionals meeting (the irony of this is unbelievable) and they always put meat in front of me even though there is a bright orange card that says “Vegetarian” in front of me on the table. I then have to ask for my vegetarian meal, and half the time they bring out whatever the other people have, minus the meat. I have left many events starving or chomping down on bread and dessert. I was even in a wedding of a hotel friend (again the irony) who had no vegetarian options besides cornbread and cupcakes. To say the least, I ruffled through cabinets of the parents house looking for food and found cheese & crackers to soak up the champagne. Phew!
I work for a major retail grocery chain on the overnight shift. Quite frequently I eat my lunch and then do some shopping. I’ve just recently made the switch to vegetarian and needed to get a few things for some recipes that I had found online during the first part of my lunch. Obviously, on overnights we have a small staff and everyone always has to know everyone else business. I get to the checkout and the cashier looks at my first few items which included several different types of nuts to make a pesto sauce. She starts to tell me how strange my items seem. Then she gets to the Tofu and makes a frowning face and starts quizzing me on why I’m buying these items. When I politely tell her that I’ve made the switch she asks why I would want to go and do that. When I tell her for health reasons. She continues to complain about my strange food choices and my decision. It took her twice as long to check me out as it should have and I was late getting back from lunch because of it.
It’s Christmas Day with my mom’s side of the family. The anxiety sets in: it’s time to eat. I ALWAYS receive snarky remarks from someone at these gatherings, even though they’d been dealing with my picky eating (as my grandma calls it) for 12 or 13 years. Normally, I laugh sarcastically and blow it off. But not this time. So, we were all getting our food, and I asked who made a certain dish and then asked if there was meat in it. It was my aunt, and she initially said no, so I grabbed the serving spoon to get some, but then she realized she put lard in it (gross!!!), so I quickly put the spoon down. She then begins to yell at and chastise me saying things like: If you wouldn’t have asked, you would have never known it was there; It wouldn’t hurt you if you ate it; It’s unnatural to not eat meat; etc. My grandma decides to join in on the fun of chastising me, but I let that go because she’s old and slightly losing it. My aunt’s husband and my uncle realized what was going on and got them to chill out, and then I, being one who is incapable of defending myself when being verbally attacked, just shut down and went to the bathroom and cried. Merry Effin’ Christmas, right? I told my mom what happened when I started leaving early, she had no idea, I left, and then my mom verbally assaulted her sister for verbally assaulting me. My aunt continued saying mean things, one being that vegetarians are anorexics in disguise. My aunt never apologized, but she has been overly nice to me since, and she took a trip to Jerusalem where she was exposed to a ton of delicious vegetarian food, especially falafel, and she makes sure to tell me about all the delicious veg things she makes that she ate in Jerusalem. I think that’s her way of apologizing.