Woman Horrified When Lasagna Lunch Turns Out to Be Octopus Tentacles
Nothing smells or tastes quite the same as hot octopus meat
While working at Walmart, my mother experienced many funny incidents. Some of them had to do with the customers, and others had to do with her fellow employees.
On this one occasion, my mother was in the break room along with some other associates, as Walmart employees are called. So she saw this entire scene as it unfolded.
One of the cashiers walked into the break room. “I can’t wait for my lunch,” she said. “My friend brought me some of her delicious homemade lasagna.”
The woman walked over to the employee refrigerator. “She said she put it in the fridge for me. It’s in a green container.” She peered at the shelves, which were packed with brown paper lunch bags and plastic containers of every shape and size.
“Oh, there it is,” she exclaimed as she removed a large green container from the fridge. “It’s funny because she said she put it on the bottom left, but it was on the top right. Someone must have moved it to make room for their lunch.”
My mother’s coworker opened the top of the plastic container, and a strange smell wafted out. She crinkled her nose. “It smells different from the last time,” she said as she popped the container and its contents into the microwave.
The fishy aroma coming out of the microwave oven didn’t smell like lasagna, according to my mother. It smelled like something else entirely.
She removed the heated food from the microwave and sat across from my mother to eat her lunch. “This doesn’t look like lasagna,” the woman said morosely, picking at her food. “I have to attempt to eat it though because I don’t want my friend to feel bad.”
My mother watched her coworker gamely trying to chew bits of the food. The woman removed the tough and chewy bits from the container and set them aside on her napkin while eating the potatoes.
“This pasta is so chewy,” she complained, “and who puts potatoes in lasagna.” Still, she tried to eat the strange dish to avoid insulting her friend, who could walk into the break room at any moment since she worked at Walmart, too.
At this point, my mother had a pretty good idea of what it was, and it wasn’t lasagna.
My mother’s coworker had inadvertently removed the wrong plastic container from the fridge.
The “lasagna” was actually octopus tentacles stewed with potatoes, an ethnic dish my mother had prepared many times. It was a dish that her coworker had never imagined in her worst nightmares. Eating octopus isn’t for everyone.
My father loves eating octopus, but my mother barely tolerates it. As for me, I’d rather starve. I was raised on cheeseburgers and french fries, not exotic seafood.
That’s when the true owner of the partially eaten meal walked into the break room. She was a loud woman, and she started hollering as soon as she smelled the familiar aroma of stewed octopus tentacles. “Did somebody accidentally take my food out of the fridge?” she asked at full volume.
“It smells just like my lunch in here.” She walked to the microwave and opened it. The residual telltale odor of stewed octopus wafted out of the microwave. “I know someone heated up my lunch,” she said.
The new arrival pointed at the woman with the open container of octopus, who looked up at her quizzically. “You are eating the special lunch that my mother made me,” she said. “She makes it once a year. I love octopus and potatoes, but I couldn’t make it to her house for dinner last night. So she packed it up for me to bring to work today.”
Her coworker pushed the picked apart meal toward her. “You can have the rest of it,” she said. “I thought it was lasagna. It’s gross.”
“I am not eating food after you had your dirty fork in it,” the other woman shouted.
The woman who had taken her octopus set down her fork and looked in the fridge. “I can’t believe I ate octopus,” she muttered. “I think I’m going to be sick. That’s disgusting.” After moving aside several paper bags, she found the actual lasagna on the bottom left shelf exactly where her friend had said it would be. “Oops,” she said. “Here’s my lasagna. You can have it if you want it. I’ve lost my appetite.”
The rightful owner of the octopus shook her head. “I’ve lost my appetite, too,” she said.
According to my mother, she was furious about the incident for the better part of the next year.
Originally published at https://original.newsbreak.com.