I went out with a gal last night whom I met online. We had dinner at a fine restaurant in Lafayette. When our salads arrived she says to me “Oh my god, there’s a pubic hair in your salad.”

I inspect my salad and sure enough there was a little black curly hair on the side of the plate. So I plucked the hair out and let it float to the floor and then ate my salad.

Now, I have gone out with a few gals I have met online and been rejected by them all (obviously otherwise I wouldn’t have been going out with yet another one last night) for various reasons: I’m too skinny, I’m too bald, I don’t drive the right car… But when I got home last night there was a reject email from the gal I had dinner with. And her reason? Get this, she said “You and I are definitely not a match. I thought it was totally disgusting that you ate your salad after finding a pubic hair in it.”

I happen to be a Souse Chef and have worked at many very fine (and some not so fine) restaurants around the Bay Area for the last 15 years and let me tell you all right now that one hair in your salad is the least of your worries when you dine out.

First of all, I doubt very seriously that the hair in question was a pubic unless the guys in the back of the house (ie kitchen) were working in the nude. More likely, it was an arm hair.

Arm and head hairs fall into food all day long at restaurants. You just rarely see them. Chances are if you are an average person you have eaten more hairs than you want to know about.

And that’s not all. Food, from the time it is picked in the field to the time it is served at your table, is handled by human beings. That means that their body stuff is all over that tomato on your plate. Quickly rinsing in cold water does not remove the body oils and other sticky stuff.

Furthermore, not only are you eating hairs and oils but you are also eating a lot of sweat. Chefs sweat all over the food they prepare. If the sweat isn’t dripping off their face and onto your plate then it is coming off their sweaty palms. And a good chef fondles your food with his bare hands. The same hands he wipes the sweat off his forehead with; the same hands he scratches his balls with; the same hands he uses to…

And from my observations, about 80% of the guys I see in a men’s room don’t wash their hands even when they take a dump. Those signs that say “Employees must wash hands” aren’t going to change the poor hygiene habits of the kitchen staff.

I won’t even tell you about the bugs in your food.

So, my MC: people who freak out over one hair on the salad plate.