I was scrolling through Facebook or Instagram or one of those (sometimes) waste-of-time sites the other day. Actually, I was waiting for my mini-bagel to toast without burning. I’d put one in the toaster and then walked away for a minute to start the washing machine. When I came back, the bagel was burned so badly that when I put the two sides together, it resembled a hockey puck.
Not exactly appetizing.
If I had been my mother (or still living with her when she
was paying the grocery bill), I would have scraped all the burned bits off
until it was semi-edible and my hands, knife and the kitchen sink were covered
in black ash. But I’m not my mother and I’m responsible for my own grocery bill,
so I tossed an entire mini-bagel into the trash can and dropped a second bagel
into the toaster.
I knew I couldn’t be distracted again so I stood rooted by the toaster. Meanwhile, my technological brain had to be entertained for that nanosecond, so I started scrolling. (What has happened to us that we must constantly scroll social media? It’s mind-boggling. And it is a topic for another day…)
Anyway, there I was scrolling. I happened to have my air pod
in because I’d been on the phone with my brother earlier, so a video started
playing. At this point, I was mostly listening to whatever audio popped up so I
could keep my eye on the toaster.
Naturally, it was an ad. Hey, once we eliminated ads on many
streaming services, the ads had to show up somewhere, right? Seriously, though,
it’s kind of out of control. Most of the time, I can scroll on by. But there I
was, waiting for the perfectly toasted bagel to pop out of the toaster without
incinerating, so I was a captive audience.
And what I heard made me scramble for the pause button.
It started off okay. The male voice asked me if I was
single. (I know where your mind is headed – but you can turn back around. It
wasn’t one of those kinds of ads!)
Turns out, it was for a food service. Their “master chefs”
prepare these delicious meals for one – and they ship them to you at your
convenience. No dirty pots and pans. No messy kitchens. No food waste.
No burned bagels as a meal, perhaps?
When I glanced at the meal he was talking about, it was a perfectly prepared delicious-looking meal. In 2025, we call it food prepared by a master chef. In the ‘60s, we called them TV dinners.
Nevertheless, it did spark my interest. I’m terrible at food
preparation these days. I shamefully toss half-filled containers of mushy strawberries,
blueberries and brown lettuce into the trash because I didn’t plan better – or
I couldn’t bear to wash and chop and slice and mix up a salad. If the salad is
the meal, I rarely think ahead to defrost the chicken in time to add to that freshly
prepared salad – so I, oh, I don’t know, toast a bagel and call it a day.
I have a friend who calls those dinners her Raisin Bran
meals.
Are meal kit delivery companies expensive? Sure, they are.
But if we factor in the cost of the food I’m already wasting, then they might
just be a little more affordable.
Vince and I had tried a few different meal prep companies in
years’ past. We liked some of them and weren’t crazy about others. Eventually,
we stopped them all. Mostly because it was hard to know ahead of time what our
schedule was going to be like for the upcoming weeks. And we’d end up having a
stockpile of food that started going bad before we could prepare the meals.
After Vince passed, I knew I didn’t want to subscribe to one
of these food service companies because they are portioned for two. At a
minimum of three meals per week, I knew I wouldn’t eat six of those meals.
I know of several other single women who have tried these
meal prep companies and they had the same complaint. Too much food for one
person, resulting in guilty waste.
So this ad had me a bit intrigued. Maybe there is a
company that caters to a single person.
Once I tossed my slightly under-toasted bagel onto the plate,
I turned my attention back to the ad. I pressed “play” again.
The narrator was talking about convenience. About carefully
crafted meals with fresh ingredients. And then I heard…
…“Designed to be ate anywhere…”
WHAT??
Immediately, I dismissed this food service company.
Look, I know I’m not the most proper writer. I frequently use
“And” and “But” to start a sentence. I’m fully aware that’s not proper sentence
structure.
I can never remember what a conjunction or an interjection is,
and I seriously doubt I could diagram a sentence with any level of confidence.
I am, however, pretty good with most of the basic
rules of grammar. The use of past, present and future tense with the
correlating verb is a pretty basic grammatical rule. One, I’m guessing, I
learned in grade school.
So to have a company ad selling what I imagine are pricey
food meal kits with such a glaring error in its ad? Well, that is simply shoddy
marketing.
How difficult would it have been for someone to check their
sentence structure? They would easily have discovered that “Designed to be ate
anywhere” is incorrect and should instead be, “Designed to be eaten anywhere.”
Arrrggh!
One of my biggest pet peeves is whenever I hear, “I seen…”
Doesn’t matter what he or she saw by that point. I don’t care to continue
listening.
My friend Sue was driving behind a truck in Florida advertising Yacht Management. You figure anyone who owns a yacht probably has a pretty good grip on, oh, grammar and spelling - right? The first service they offered was providing a captain to steer the yacht. Only they spelled "captain" wrong. On the truck advertising their services. (Insert eye rolling emoji here.)
Wonder how many clients they've lost without even realizing it?
Other things that drive me a little bonkers are apostrophes
in the wrong place (or shouldn’t be used at all), the whole they’re/their/there
and your/you’re errors. I try really hard to ignore them, though, because
grammar, punctuation and spelling don’t seem to be as important in our text-to-speech
and AI Brave New World.
I’m trying to be a little more understanding, lest someone toss
the derogatory, “Hey Boomer” insult my way.
In the meantime, I’m going to toast another bagel for dinner. After all, it’s designed to be ate anywhere.
Isn’t it?!
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