I had to go to a lunch presentation for work the other day. Everyone loves a free lunch, right? Wrong.

I could barely recognize the stuff that filled my plate as a proper lunch. I should have expected as much when I saw the “salad” that started the meal – a bunch of spinach leaves and a few stray onions. I don’t eat many salads, but I don’t know how that can qualify as food. First off, it’s not a salad unless it has croutons. And spinach can’t ever serve as the primary attraction in any food.

Anyway, it turned out that the lunch consisted of salmon, mashed sweet potatoes and some strange strawberry-looking sauce on the side. Hate the first, like the second OK and have no idea what the third was doing on a lunch plate since strawberry sauce only belongs on ice cream.

Needless to say, I didn’t eat a whole lot. I’m sure some of you are laughing at me and telling me to just suck it up and eat what I get.

But this was a lunch with several hundred people. I can’t be the only one who didn’t like salmon, which is the most polarizing fish out there. I have had salmon before and don’t like it.

Besides, fancy lunches with impressive presentation are overrated. I sat at my place, picking at my food and silently cursing myself for skipping the chicken salad on a potato roll with macaroni salad on the side I passed up at another part of the gathering. They had chips and cookies too. What was I thinking?

I need to take advantage of opportunities like this in the future to strike a blow for simple people all across the land. Instead of suffering through some frou-frou lunch without complaining, I need to stand on my chair and demand a reasonable alternative.

I work with the people who planned the lunch, and I know they had good intentions, but I wish they would have tried to cater to the common folk instead of aiming to impress the crowd. Don’t they know some of us are impressed by simplicity?

I shouldn’t have to suffer for my humble tastes. Impressing people with fancy food is overrated in my book.

I don’t think the lunch menu needed to aim for the lowest common denominator, although I could have gone for a PB&J on toast. They just needed to put something on the plate that everyone could recognize at first glance. I had no idea I was served, salmon, chicken or mystery fish until I had a taste. That’s just not right.

The problem is that simplicity in a business setting doesn’t always fly. I have pretty much given up seriously hoping to change things for those of us suffering silently. I already take enough ribbing for my simple tastes as it is. I don’t need to draw attention to myself anymore.

I’ll just have to believe that I wasn’t the only one looking for some real food to munch on the rest of the afternoon. The cookies went awful fast during the afternoon break.