Turkey

Today at lunch, as I was standing in line behind the "smoked turkey" sign, the server got the next meat-hunk out of the warmer and began slicing it. Someone came up to ask a question:

Person: Is there going to be any more turkey?
Server: This is turkey.
Person: (Looks confused.) It is? Really.
Server: Yes. It's smoked turkey.
Person: (Still incredulous. Leaves.)

I looked at the meat being cut, and it didn't really look like turkey either. It was in the shape that lunchmeat turkey usually arrived in when I worked in a deli, but it was a little pinker than I'm used to seeing turkey, and the shell around it was the color of smoked ham, not smoked turkey. Also, I could smell ham from across the counter.

A few moments after I arrived at the table with my coworkers, I was asked about my meal.

Jon: Have you tried your "turkey" yet?
Me: Not yet, no.
Jon: Try it and see if you still think it's turkey.
Me: (I try it. It tastes like ham.)
Jon: It tastes like ham. It looks like ham. It smells like ham. It has the consistency of ham. I think... it's ham.

I tried a few more bites, and I'm quite certain that I was eating ham, not turkey. But the server, who is our cafeteria's Sous Chef—whatever that's supposed to mean in the context of a cafeteria—was insistent that it was turkey.

After that, the table focused its energies on trying to think of a person who they could find to be religiously offended by buying ham that was pretending to be turkey. I think that the best that anyone came up with was that "they looked kind of Jewish."

I just ate my ham and wished that it was turkey.