My husband invited his boss over at the last minute. He called and said they’d be here in five minutes, and they were hungry. He asked me to make the roast I made for lunch two weeks ago. I told him that dish can’t be made in five minutes, but he insisted. I asked if they could wait want at least an hour. He said that was too long and I should do it faster. Oh, alright, I thought. So when they arrived and sat down at the table, I…
… walked out of the kitchen with a large, heavy silver platter and placed it in the center of the dining table with a flourish.
On the platter sat a cold, bloody, raw 3-pound slab of beef. Surrounding it were whole, unpeeled carrots, dirty potatoes, and a whole onion with the skin still on.
The silence was deafening. My husband’s face turned a deep, horrified shade of crimson.
“What… what is this?” he stammered, looking between me and his boss.
“It’s the roast you asked for,” I said with a sweet, customer-service smile. “You said you wanted it in five minutes. This is exactly what a roast looks like after five minutes of preparation. Unless you have a time machine in your pocket, this is dinner.”
I turned to his boss, who was staring at the raw meat with wide eyes. “I tried to explain to Mark that heat and physics don’t work that way, but he insisted I ‘do it faster.’ Would you like a knife, or should Mark order a pizza?”
To my surprise, the boss threw his head back and burst out laughing. He clapped my husband on the shoulder, nearly knocking him over. “She’s got you there, son! You can’t manage a project if you don’t understand the timeline. Pizza sounds great.”
Mark ordered Domino’s in shame, and oddly enough, he never asked me to cook a “fast” dinner again.
