People just plain don’t get what allergies are. In my brief tenure working in hospital food service, people have variously reported to have been allergic to:
- A particular product- but only at certain times of day.
- Onions, except in onion rings.
- Fish, except for fried fish.
- Water. I shit you not. But, my personal favorite is still:
- Cheetos, but only the hot ones, because they made this person’s throat burn.
Then there are the idiots who say they’re allergic to everything they don’t like, and then complain when we send them an unseasoned piece of chicken and bland white rice. That’s when these allergies suddenly become, “intolerances”. God how I hate that word. People think that they feel the slightest bit scratchy or have a little diarrhea after eating something that they will die if they eat it again. Look, there are many real allergies and there are in fact people out there with an immense number of allergies. But when a friend of mine’s grandmother claims she feels congested because her granddaughter got a flu shot- we’re getting out of bounds.
The worst part is that it endangers people with real allergies. It makes people less cautious and more cavalier about handling the food of a person who reports an allergy. I’ve seen it happen. There’s no malice behind it, it’s just the inevitable result of having too many “DANGER!” signs without much corresponding danger. It’s similar to the effect of a certain color coded, terrorism alert system. If it never changes color, it ceases to be useful.
