HOLD THE MAYO

One of the small but significant "perks" (if you want to think of it as that) of travelling half way around a couple of countries in order to attend a business meeting, is that, if you're very lucky, lunch of some sort might be provided.

And so it indeed was for me last Monday. In fact, lunch was considered to be such an important part of the whole thing, that it actually got its very own mention on the agenda, where it was described as an "informal lunch", so I decided to leave the tuxedo at home that day.

In reality this meant that pots of coffee and tea, bottles of fruit juice, a jug of water, a bowl of fruit, various packets of crisps, and a platter of sandwiches were delivered (which was all very nice), although, when I politely mentioned to the person on sandwich delivery duty that their caterers were far better than ours (mostly because in this instance "ours" is basically me putting my lunch together at some ungodly hour of the morning...), they muttered something about "Tesco" in reply...

Still, in so far as anything approaching a "free lunch" goes (because we all know that there's no such thing), it was all rather nice and it managed to keep me going through the rigours of the afternoon, and kept my system fuelled until the "top-up" sandwich I bought later at the railway station on my way home.

However, as I stood hopefully in line with my little plate, wondering whether all the "cheese and onion" ones would have vanished before it was my turn to take not enough sandwiches so that I would appear greedy, I heard what has become a rather familiar complaint in recent times...

"I bet they've all got mayo on..."

Now, I've heard this quite often before. Whenever I've been at a "catered" event with a self-service buffet, or when former colleagues at places where I used to work returned disappointed from the canteen, or when I've been on a train, or even listening to other customers when I've just been standing by the sandwich counter in a supermarket, and I do find myself wondering why, if it is so unpopular, sandwich suppliers still insist upon adding it to almost every option they make...?

Mind you, I've worked in offices where the "young people" have regularly dissected the sandwiches that they've just bought to remove even the slightest trace of vegetable matter from it, perhaps revealing the lie in the belief that everyone younger than me is "health-obsessed" to the point of insanity, so what do I know?

Even in cafeterias where people can order a freshly-made sandwich, you'll hear people asking for theirs without mayonnaise, which seems to cause an "eye-roll" or three when the order is passed on to the sandwich-making chef du jour...

So, why do people seem to dislike mayonnaise with such vehemence...?

More to the point, when did mayonnaise become so ubiquitous in bought sandwiches?

There I was, in a boardroom (I know! Even I think that sounds more than a little ridiculous...) having this "informal lunch" which had actually turned out to be far more than I expected it to be, and yet there was somebody finding themselves to be disappointed by the range that was on offer to them, which seems a shame given that, for most of us lowly employees at the bottom end of the greasy pole, such "treats"don't come our way all that regularly.

Now, of course, whilst I no longer object to it personally, I know that some people simply don't like the stuff - I myself was always more of a "salad cream" person in the past - and there are probably an awful lot of people out there in the world  who are intolerant of the stuff and, to be honest, if I was making myself a cheese and onion sandwich at home, I wouldn't necessarily be putting any mayonnaise on it either, so I suppose that it would be nice to have the choice when you go out to buy yourself a bit of lunch.

After all, in the supermarkets, there are often options like "tuna and cucumber", or "ham and cheese", which mention that they are "without mayonnaise" but there always seem to be far fewer of those available and they appear to get snapped up pretty sharpish, so they must be popular, and you'd imagine that the people selling them would have picked up on this by now.

Maybe the huge numbers of "hold the mayo" customers need to make themselves heard, get a campaign going, and get the "mayo/non-mayo" ratio back to acceptable levels and help keep everyone happy.

Either that, or we'll all just have to get used to the stuff...