so, wait... what?

- the menu at a restaurant is not an ingredient list you can use to create new dishes we could hypothetically make for you instead of the choices on the menu

- we do not have omelets on the menu because we do not make or serve omelets

- yes, i know we have eggs on the menu, but we still do not have omelets.

- yes, i realize omelets are eggs, but not all eggs are omelets, and the eggs we serve are not omelets.

- you cannot out-logic me so that i cave in and ring in an omelet for you. i am better at arguing than you are.

- there are no omelets here. there have not been, and will not be, omelets here. if you want an omelet you will need to go somewhere else.

- i can also promise that you do not want an omelet cooked by line cooks who have not been trained how to make omelets. because we don't sell omelets.

- no, i am not going to single-handedly put service on pause for the next twenty minutes while three cooks google how to make an omelet and then proceed to fuck up multiple omelets that our kitchen is not set up to prepare, so you can have an omelet.

-and we both know you'd bitch if it takes longer than six minutes to come out anyway.

- no, you may not just go back into the kitchen and make yourself an omelet. the line cooks do not take kindly to trespassing. also, what the hell.

- i hear that you want an omelet. that does not change the fact that we do not offer omelets. if you want to eat an omelet, you will need to go to another restaurant that does have omelets on the menu. this is not negotiable.

- i am the manager.

Dream Clouds

Phil Greenwood

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.