Extraordinary Influence

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For several years in college, I washed dishes at a cafeteria on the edge of our campus. Most of the employees were students, and the head guy, Mr. Benson, ran the place without a hitch. Mr. Benson, noted for being laid back, created a very pleasant lunch getaway for the university's students, faculty, and staff.

After eating, everyone left their trays at a pass-through window, and I scraped the leftover food into some buckets. We then placed the dishes into a large commercial grade dishwasher. Every day, two farmers who were brothers, Joe and Sam, came by around 2:00 P.M. to pick up the buckets, which were full of a not so appetizing looking mixture of food I had emptied into the buckets over the course of several hours. The farmers used the buckets to slop their hogs. I sometimes today use the phrase a pig's breakfast to describe a messy problem, and I know of what I speak.

My job was not intellectually stimulating, so some of the other workers and I bantered with each other to pass the time. Being a clever college student, I hadn't quite mastered the social grace to pay attention to other's feelings when joking about something. Every Wednesday, the cafeteria served ham as the entrée. I scrapped ample portions of the baked ham into the slop buckets. That day was particularly boring, so I decided to tease the farmers. When they came in, I acted very concerned and said, “Guys, I've been thinking about what we're ...