Who knew

There is apparently a pita bread shortage in the greater Boston area. Or maybe it’s just that the lunch nazi in my building’s Rebecca’s Café just hates everyone, because pita bread was denied in a very emphatic way.

My officemate and I went downstairs for lunch. Not feeling terribly hungry (which hopefully means my body is burning up all the M&M cookies I ate last week), I headed for the salad bar and helped myself to some lovely greens. Feeling the need for some bread, I reached for a piece of the single serving, plastic-wrapped pita bread that is usually kept in a basket on the salad bar. The basket, however, was empty.

Just then, the lady we’ve dubbed the lunch nazi walked by. She’s short and squat and incredibly moody. One day she’ll be magnanimous and say, “Go ahead, have a cookie on the house,” and the next she’ll snap my head off in a very officious way, sort of like the soup nazi on Seinfeld. Also, on days when the sandwich line gets unmanageably long, she sometimes comes in to pinch hit. Her sandwich-making skills leave a lot to be desired and she seems to dislike the task almost as much as her patrons dislike her sandwiches.

Anyhoo.

I tried to flag her down politely.

“Hi! Sorry to bother you, but I was wondering if there might be any more pita bread. The basket at the salad bar is tapped out.”

“Oh, I know,” she replied, officously. “Someone came by earlier and took four whole slices.”

Her face closed. End of story.

“And that’s it?” I asked. Rebecca’s must get a couple of hundred people during the lunch rush—I couldn’t imagine that they’d budget so little pita bread for the hordes.

“That’s it.”

No pita for me.