Chicken or barf?
Having spent more time than most traveling by air, you have to find little ways of amusing yourself on long, boring flights.
“Chicken or barf?” was one of my favorites. I’m convinced that air hostesses actually used to say that every few rows, rather than what was actually available as the two hot “meal” options on their little wheeled roach coach in the sky.
You know: I miss those days. Long, long gone are the days (in the United States, at least) where airline food was something to look forward to. I thought it was just me getting older – preparing for my retirement in becoming more discerning, grumpy and picky – but a brief google reveals that airlines spend $2 less per passenger meal today than they did 15 years ago. If you actually get a meal, rest assured that a whopping three dollars and forty whole cents has gone into preparing the gastronomic delight sitting there on the coffee-stained fold-down tray in front of you.
Most domestic airlines don’t even serve a meal any more though. At least, not a free one on a little compartmentalized tray with a limp salad in the top left, the tiniest piece of cake top center, the roasting hot chicken with mystery sauce in the middle, and a plastic cup containing 1.5 fluid ounces of spring water on the right. And of course, the clay pigeon of a bread roll accompanied by a butter portion that takes the rest of the flight to thaw.
Nope – if you didn’t bring food with you, there are “a limited number of meals available as part of our in-flight cafe program for seven dollars, or a snack box for five dollars”.
There is a school of thought that hungry people will eat anything. And you know what I think? US domestic airlines have been conducting an experiment to prove this theory since they took away the “chicken or beef”. People seem quite willing nowadays to hand over $7 to receive a box of inedible crap to gnaw on. You can see them yipping like hyenas, waving their cash when the trolley of boxed crap comes trundling down the aisle. This has got to be one of the best marketing ploys ever. “How on earth do we make people pay for this shit?” was the question in the airline’s marketing department meeting room. Then they came up with the simple answer: “tell them there are a limited number available”. Brilliant!
Needless to say, I carry a lot of peanuts and cliff bars with me these days …
