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You're Lucky We're Giving You Food.

Coarse Language Warning.

I've niced a lot of my talk about this issue; perhaps I'll serve this one less nice, just in case Florida Department of Corrections actually crawls the Internet and reads what people think about them.

Wake up tired, as I often do, body not receiving any rest on a steel pad cushioned by a 1.5" thick sorta-foam cushion sleeved in unbreathable plastic. Listen to imbeciles screaming at 5 AM, "FOOD TRUCK HERE! HEY UH FOOD TRUCK HERE!" as I often do. Handle morning ablutions, ready up for breakfast, grousing that it is not a food truck, and at best, it's a roach coach. Get annoyed because he keeps doing it, and look up the definition of 'truck'... idiot savant. Young Yeller has an unfortunately acceptable usage of the word truck: it is technically correct, the best kind of correct. Still, he is a dim bulb, by all other conversation metrics.

Chow chow chow, Chow chow...

Go to collect my diet tra... WHAT IS THAT.

  • Oatmeal
  • Three Sausage Patties
  • Sliced Bread
    A graphic of a rubber stamped "REJECTED" in red text.

This tray does not match my diet: 2600 Calorie Regulated Diet, Alternate (No-Flesh) Entrée. In fact, it spits in my dietary needs' face, dares it to lose its temper, and laughs maniacally with undertones of animals suffering to make its point.

Yet all I can think right now is that I'm somehow lucky that the State is mandated to give me three meals per day.

It's noisome and rude that a simple request that falls within Florida Administrative Code, Title 33-204.003, one that reads in part that the alternate entrée and vegan meal patterns are to be sufficient for religious dietary needs, give or take a few words, is consistently ignored. I've invited Tallahassee into Food Service's lives numerous times over this after getting no gains from local staff, and for a short period, their collective asses pucker, their cheeks clench, and suddenly I'm served what I am supposed to get. But the moment they think no-one is looking? We're back on the bullshit: meat, air trays, or spoiled food, pick at least one.

I'm asking for simple damned things: the master menu includes an alternate entrée at every meal that contains a flesh-based entrée. This is by design, to comply with laws. I'm asking for that listed alternate entrée. I'm asking for it in a timely manner so that I can take meals with the rest of my cohort, not 30-180 minutes after they do, IFF Food Service decides to send me a meal.

I get to make a choice: miss breakfast so I can make the much needed soil amendments in my garden plot today, or actually eat, and miss out on my one chance to get the soil help I really have got to have.

I had to work light today; my garden needed help, and all I ate was my diabetic snack that was left over from last night. Still, lucky, because I at least had that to eat at breakfast time in a world where there are people who don't even get a mouthful of tepid water to break their fast.
Is it right? Nope, not at all.

But I can survive this.