A terrible person named Ann A. Crane is upset! In the L.A. Times! About charity! Ms. Crane runs a catering company and she is not happy about a proposal by David Lazarus that a clearing house be set up for the 1.5 million tons of food that California hotels, restaurants, and caterers throw away every year. Anne A. Crane thinks this is an undue burden for her:
When a client and I plan to donate food, it costs me money. Let’s imagine I have taken all the leftover food back to our kitchen. I then have to have someone transfer the food to disposable containers (I pay for the containers). I spend my time calling around to find out which local agency can take the food (this is often not an insignificant step). Then one of my staff has to drive the food over, in my van with my gas, and then drive back (the biggest challenge for many of these charitable organizations is transportation, as they often do not have trucks, volunteers or sufficient demand to be able to come and pick up the food). At every step of the way, I am paying an employee.
HOMG that sounds almost as hard as recycling! Also, weird that she is against Lazarus’s proposal, because if the clearing house he envisioned came into being, she wouldn’t have to do all of the things she listed that are so hard. Phone calls! I picture Ms. Crane, a single tear running down her cheek, as she lights a hundred dollar bill and burns it while not throwing away food.
This is a woman whose company will get you a camel or a kangaroo if you want one at your party. Or a mime. A MIME. Which I am definitely looking into if Meatball gets married. And yet she cannot fathom joining with others in her industry to see that less food gets thrown away and more goes to those who might, you know, eat it. You, Ms. Ann A. Crane, definitely need to shut up.