To the now famous snack hater emailer from Osgoode Hall Law school,
I understand you wrote a very patronizing, sarcastic e-mail, which now has "gone viral" after being posted on the gossip site Jezebel . Thank you for putting Toronto in the international spotlight, for (once again) all the right reasons.
You were angry with your fellow students for bringing food – such as "crunchy" pineapples – to class, and felt obliged to write a long, anonymous e-mail to tackle this very important issue.
You anonymously scolded all 72 of your classmates in your Administrative Law class, who, you wrote "have a complete lack of etiquette and common courtesy." You claim to have an understanding of the real world. The irony is not lost.
"You all suffer from a peculiar set of eating disorders that bisect with a thorough lack of courtesy to your fellow students," you wrote. " I assure you, no judge will allow you to gorge on your bag of chips because you couldn't sit still for two hours without eating."
Since you gave your colleagues a poignant list of things to remember, allow me to do the same:
1) People eat in public, at weird times, all the time. Have you ever taken the TTC? I have rarely taken a ride on the subway without someone eating something offensive. This is real life, and some people aren't very courteous to others.
2) People do far more annoying things in the real world than eat around you.
3) Believe me when I tell you people are busy and snack at their desks at work (this blog of sad desk lunches is wonderful, and very true. I have eaten colleague-donated rice cakes for lunch all week, and I'm not ashamed. Far more crunchy than pineapple, I might add.)
4) While it's lovely that you took bold action to do something about a very important issue, actually talking with people will get you much further in life than taking your anger to your keyboard behind an anonymous guise. Sending mass e-mails about snack offences will not change snacking behaviour. I predict the offences are going to get much, much worse – and you deserve that.
5) You write, "If I weren't being polite, I would say it's f***ing annoying and disrespectful and shows a complete lack of judgement and poor taste. But I'm being polite, so I won't say that." Before you graduate, you should learn what polite means.
6) Friends, you'll learn, are very important. Far more important than their offensive snack choices. I recommend bringing the chips tomorrow, and sharing (you can't make friends with salad, but you certainly can with the right bag of all-dressed).
Best of luck in your future endeavours, and getting through the odours coming your way in Administrative Law.
Amberly McAteer