Weekly Whack: Half a Pound, Thin Please
Half a Pound, Thin Please
July 6, 1997

Well I think that it is about time that I finally wrote a whack about the one place where I have spent the vast majority of my waken hours thus far this summer: work. Work sucks, and working sucks. It is just that plain and simple. Unfortunately in a world that is run by money and that only treats kindly those who have money, working is necessary. So it wasn't too much longer after I came back from college that I was back working in the deli section of a ShopRite supermarket that I just can't escape from. And since the one thing that I have been doing a lot of this summer, besides working, has been complaining about work, I figured I would devote this week's Whack to just that: complaining about work.

I got an e-mail the other day from a friend of mine from school about his new summer job. He was telling me about how he gets to sit in an air conditioned room all day, listen to music, and break glass to see how strong it is. All that and he actually gets good pay for it. I can't really say that my job is as glamorous. Sure, I get to work in an air conditioned room all day, but the air conditioner is set to thirty-five degrees. Most p are out getting tans this summer, and I'm whiter than the crowd at the Grand Ol' Opry. And yeah, we have music where I work also, but it is all those soft-rock depressing love songs that they play throughout the whole store. I'm sorry, butly take it out of my paycheck. Talking about my paycheck, I can't really complain too much about it, I could be making more, I could be making less, but now that I have a good cash flow going, I don't have any time to do anything with it. I think the most lavish purchase I made with my money from work this summer has to be a case of orange Tic Tacs. I have to find some way to waste all of my money or I won't have a good reason to borrow money from my parents for books and stuff once I go back to school.

But back to my job, one thing that I noticed this time around, that kind of disturbed me, was the popularity of imported cold cuts. It seems everybody has been asking for imported cold cuts this summer. And we carry two main categories of difference between a ham from the US and a ham all the way from Belgium. That brings us to Olymel. Olymel imported ham comes to us all the way from Canada; Montreal to be more specific. Now somebody tell me what the hell the difference is between a ham from the US and a ham from Canada? Well one difference is that the ham from Canada is fifty cents a pound more expensive. Imagine that, people paying more money for a ham just because it comes from Canada. If anything I'd say that we know more about raising pigs and making ham than those damn Canadians. What the hell do they know about pork? Their bacon is freaking circular. I guess it is just common mind-set in America these days: If it is made somewhere else, it is better. Sadly that is the way most Americans think. We won't buy an American-made TV, VCR, microwave, car, or pound of ham.

Ok, now lets move our attention away from ham and towards Swiss cheese. I can definitely understand why people would buy imported Swiss cheese. Come on, it is called Swiss cheese, so who wouldn't expect a Switzerland Swiss to be a bit better than a domestic Swiss from the US? It's only common sense. But things get hairy when you start talking about Swiss cheeses from countries other than the US and Switzerland. We have Swiss cheeses from Denmark, Finland, France, and even an Irish Swiss. Now what gives these countries the right to make their own Swiss cheese, and sell for ridiculously high prices here? The whole idea of a Swiss cheese made in Ireland just boggles my mind. I could just imagine an Irish guy in a pub, drunk off his ass, saying to his friend, "You know Murphy, we should make our own brand of Swiss cheese, and then sell in the US for prices higher than Swiss cheese made in America or Switzerland itself." The sad thing is that is sells. But hey, as I mentioned before, Americans will buy anything that isn't made in America.

One last thing I want to talk about concerning imported cold cuts is the concept of imported cold cuts in other countries. It is one thing I always wondered about. Like do you think other countries have delis that sell imported cold cuts from the US? Maybe in Belgium the average customer would cringe at buying domestic Cameco ham, and buy the more expensive, imported ShopRite ham. It's neat to think about something like that, but for soa cheese, maybe the Swiss make an American cheese. Or even the Irish or the French could make their own American cheese. But once again, I really doubt it. Yet, I think it is a good thing that other countries don't make American cheese. Because the day I would quit working at a deli is the day that a customer asks me for a half pound, sliced thin, of imported American cheese. I think I would be forced to slap the oxymoron right out of the bastard's mouth.

Well I think I sliced enough ham for this week's Whack, so to conclude, cutting cold cuts wasn't `meant for me'; our pigs could take Canada's pigs any day of the week; and buy American (especially when dealing with your cold cuts).

Now for this week's very special feature, Feff's top ten countries that he would be leery about buying imported cold cuts from:

10. Mexico
9. Iceland
8. Bulgaria
7. Pakistan
6. Paraguay
5. Azerbaijan
4. Laos
3. Zaire
2. Guatemala
1. Iraq