Another day, another viral faux-hack to contend with.
Minnesota Senator and 2020 presidential nominee Amy Klobuchar was hungry one day, and, with no utensil in sight, used a comb to eat a salad on a plane, according to the New York Times.
what https://t.co/8fklETGeWb pic.twitter.com/fZQ5JLQBrE
— Max Tani (@maxwelltani) February 22, 2019
“Hungry, forkless and losing patience,” is also, incidentally, the title of my forthcoming memoir.
But you’re not here for middling jokes, are you? No, you’re here to suss out whether this utensil substitute could be construed as some sort of “hack.” As holder of the hacks, the onus is, of course, on us and us alone to make that determination. And I’ll be honest with you: Despite my typically uncanny ability to spot a hack in the wild, this is a difficult one to parse.
[referenced url=”https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2019/01/the-3-worst-types-of-hack/” thumb=”https://img.youtube.com/vi/-E-nzz1x2yw/0.jpg” title=”The 3 Worst Types Of Hack” excerpt=”Video: We love to test hacks and report whether they’re good or bad. But some hacks aren’t worth anyone’s time. And yet these bizarre and stupid hacks are spreading on Facebook and YouTube, getting millions of views.”]
We’ve all had experiences in which we’ve been hungry yet did not have the utensil needed (or any utensil, for that matter) to consume the food in front of us. In a situation such as that, you do what you have to do to get the food down your gullet. Were I in Sen. Klobuchar’s place, I likely would have opted to use my fingers to eat the salad. That seems like a simple solution.
However, we don’t know the extenuating circumstances: Maybe the salad was really something like tuna or egg salad, in which case I wouldn’t want to use my fingers either. Maybe it was your standard salad, but had lentils or some other sort of small grain that’s difficult to pick up with your fingers. The truth is we just don’t know the answer to those questions. Assuming it’s a fairly clean comb, I do admire her industriousness in this situation. She was hungry, and she ate. So far, it’s looking like a hack.
That is, until you consider the entirety of the situation. Where this hack runs off the rails is the reported mistreatment of her staff. While I find the intent of this genre of stories w/r/t Klobuchar questionable overall, I also think we can agree that it’s … inappropriate to make your staffer clean your salad comb. It’s a unique situation, I know, and I’m no etiquette expert, but it seems like something you should clean yourself.
Maybe the hack was the staffers she hired along the way? In any case:
Verdict: Not a hack. Therefore, wack.
This has been Hack or Wack. Sound off in the comments.
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