Lesson Learned

A while ago I wrote about issues keeping kosher in my office. Well, I learned my lesson and figured out how to deal with this issue. Last week I had another lunch meeting, which I found out about two weeks ago via email. As soon as I got the email I immediately replied back asking politely that they let me know where they plan to get the food from as soon as they know. I figured this way I wasn’t asking them to do anything differently than they normally did just for me, but this way I could look up the restaurant before hand to see if it is kosher (which was part of the problem last time- I had never heard of the place they got food from).

A few seconds after I sent the email my phone rang and it was the woman who had sent out the email. “Why do you need to know where we’re getting food from?” she demanded. She is not usually the harsh type so I was surprised by her harsh tone, but I calmly responded, “Well, I would just like to make sure it’s kosher.”
“But we always get kosher!” she insisted. She sounded very confused. Oh boy. Here we go. Time to try to explain.

“Well, um, there are different standards/levels of Kosher and I just wanted to be sure since last time I didn’t know.” I answered. “Is that a problem?”

“No,” she said, “that’s fine. I’m not sure where we’re ordering from yet, but I’ll let you know when I do.”

“Thanks!” I replied, “I would really appreciate that.”

She was true to her word and got back to me a few days before the meeting. Luckily it was a kosher place that I had heard of and I really like their food. I thanked her again and breathed a sigh of relief. I attended the meeting and enjoyed the food along with my coworkers. I don’t know what I would have done if she had told me the name of a place that did not have reliable hashgacha, but I probably just would have said OK, and not eaten anything and brought my own lunch like I usually do. But then I would have been bombarded with questions during the meeting as to why I wasn’t eating. So it’s a good thing it all worked out OK! Lesson learned.