OTTAWA – Health Canada has released a study indicating that indoor restaurant dining, particularly in high COVID infection areas, substantially increases the likelihood of servers hocking a big fat loogie right in your food.
“While results are preliminary,” head researcher Dr. Andrew Prel, “Our tests conclusively show that customers who choose to eat indoors rather than dine outside or get takeout are at a 57% higher risk of getting a real drool tsunami up in their business.”
The study examined the impact of a variety of factors, asking the server to take off their mask, “forgetting” to wear a mask to the washroom, and casually mentioning how happy the server must be to be back working in an indoor poorly ventilated area.
“We had one participant blow on soup and ask the server to try it. We got a 68% result on that one,” Dr. Prel told reporters.
The study found that other behaviours in isolation or in combination may increase the chances of your food getting a good, gooey dribble hoiked into it, including snapping at the server to get their attention, returning to a restaurant after not tipping, and interrupting the list of specials to ask why the washroom is so far away.
“Our study also found a spectrum of variation in the kinds of drizzle that was gobbed up into participants’ food,” Dr. Prel explained. “For instance, individuals who got up, unmasked, to walk across the restaurant and grab their server by the arm, were much more likely to get a gentle misting of spittle on a dish such as an appetizer or a salad. However, individuals who went on at length about how silly mask requirements are since “we’re all going to have to die anyway someday” were far more likely to get a colossal glob of phlegm hidden under chocolate sauce at the bottom of a dessert dish.”
Although the study’s creators acknowledged that we are all making calculated risks, they urge safer alternatives to working up a mouthful of spit and letting it rip. These include “accidentally” dropping soup in their lap, or even just lightly farting on meals before serving.
“While we’re all making calculated risks, we all have to work together to prevent the spread of this disease, and that should explore safer methods of letting it out than hacking up a real good sploot, as satisfying as that can be.”
