Swedish cuisine

You may not know this, but IKEA actually has three restaurants. There's the Bistro by the registers where they sell the hotdogs and cinnamon buns (a winning combination), the full restaraunt up in the showroom (aka the swedish meatball buffet), and the staff cafe behind the scenes. They restaurant and bistro have a pretty fixed menu, but the staff cafe dish changes everyday, just to give us a little variety in the workplace. I'd say it's on par with your typical high school cafeteria - various deep-fried animal parts, steamed vegetables, and an assortment of sugary drinks, all for the low low price of $3. What a treat!

Occasionally, though, something particularly unrecognizable or unedible will show up in the staff cafe. Today was one of those noteworthy occasions. In honor of Kristofer's visit (I'm sure that's about the third different way I've spelled Kristofer at this point), the chef wanted to make something extra special, so of course he settled on meatloaf. Fancy, I know. Well, from what
I could tell, it was just last week's leftover taco meat with some ketchup squeezed on it. The story I got from other coworkers was that the meatloaf somehow fell apart in the oven, and the beefy mess that they served was the unfortunate result. I wouldn't normally be so bothered by it, since I can easily just go to the customer restaurant if I don't like what's in the staff cafe, but given the frantic praparations leading up to Kristofer's semiannual visit, I figured that the cafe would want to reflect the false pride that the rest of the store was putting on. Honestly, if that pile of cow came out of my oven, I'd toss it right back and microwave some chicken fingers and call it a day. But they decided to serve it, nonetheless. Apparently Kristofer (Christofer, as you may remember) ate it, probably to be polite and experience the finest in American cuisine, but it just strikes me that since I had to sit in a closet building doors for an hour to impress our visiting Swedish prince, the least they could do is serve something reasonable for lunch.

Anyhow, regarding Kristofer's visit, it was pretty uneventful. In fact, I never actually laid eyes on him this time around. I kept getting updates via the grapevine as to where he was in the store all day, but by the time he actually made it into my department to admire my various arts and crafts projects, I was off at lunch, deaperately avoiding the meatloaf surprise. I can't decide if I'm relieved that I didn't have to deal with him, or annoyed that I didn't get any credit for the work that I put in to prepare. Either way, I managed to avoid the meatloaf, so I guess I win in the end.