Free lunch

I never pass up the chance at swiping some of the catered food at school, and I think I'd be hard pressed to find anyone else that doesn't. The way I justify it is that

a) the food has already been paid for, so it's not stealing
b) they're only going to throw the leftovers out anyways

Now, some people are pretty brazen about the way they do it. They'll just walk into the middle of a crowd and take stuff in the most inconspicuous way they can think of. Because I consider myself to be a fairly honest person, I wait for whoever is supposed to be eating the food to get first crack at it before I pick over the leftovers.

The caterers were uncharacteristically friendly to students today. Part of that had to do with the fact that the people who were supposed to be eating were no longer anywhere around and the fact that there was a shitload of food left over. Really good food. Really good food paid for by my tax dollars because it was for some sort of federal government event.

As a friend and I started picking over the leftovers, we were approached by a Japanese exchange student that asked if what we were doing was alright. How do you answer such a question? Well, technically it's not but we do it anyways, and I always make sure that any new students I know get a proper education.

But today without threat of being told to go away, and with such a large quantity of food, students collected like pigeons around the table. The exchange student was ecstatic that she didn't have to buy lunch and that she was meeting people because it can be super hard to do. She told me it was her lucky day.