All day long, I had been thinking about a Greek salad. Maybe even all week long, if I’m being honest. It’s my favorite salad; I love the biting tang of the olives, dressing and especially the Feta cheese. I consider myself a connoisseur of Greek salads, so I like to get them from the places that really do them right.

There’s a Greek pizza shop not that far from the station, and they put out a fantastic Greek salad. I drove down to the shop to pick one up, but they were closed for vacation. Not even thinking, I instead went to the nearby supermarket to grab a cup of their pre-made soup instead, and maybe a sandwich.

As I scanned the sandwich area, there I saw it: a Greek salad, ready to go. I knew it wouldn’t be as good as the one from the actual Greek place, but I’d had some really decent salads there in the past, so I figured it was worth a shot. I gave it a once-over and saw all the necessary ingredients in place: lettuce, onions, peppers, cucumber, tomatoes, olives, and Feta cheese. The label even said it contained Greek dressing already. Perfect. I happily paid $5.99 for the salad and went back to my office.

Tim Weisberg/Townsquare Media
Tim Weisberg/Townsquare Media
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When I opened the salad at my desk, the first thing that threw me off was that I had to dig the plastic baggie of dressing out from the middle of the salad. Not that big of a deal, but still a little weird. I then began mixing all the ingredients together (these pre-made salads tend to bunch the ingredients up into little corners) and poured the dressing over the salad. I was a little unnerved by the appearance of the lettuce; some was dark green, some was bright white, and it was all chopped very, very fine. To me, it had the appearance of chopped cabbage more than the romaine lettuce mix that was promised on the label.

Upon the first bite, I knew immediately that I was unfortunately correct—it WAS chopped cabbage. In fact, it wasn’t as if the cabbage was part of the “romaine mix.” The entire salad was chopped cabbage, with very little (if any) actual lettuce.

I was a professional cook for over 20 years. I made coleslaw multiple times a week, finely chopping the cabbage, shredding the carrots, and tasting it multiple times as I tried to find the perfect blend of seasonings and dressing to create the ultimate slaw. I prided myself on my coleslaw, and it became famous among my customers because of the effort put into it. I’m not trying to brag, I’m just trying to explain I’ve tasted a lot of chopped cabbage in my life, so I know chopped cabbage when I taste it.

For the life of me, I can’t figure out how my Greek salad ended up entirely comprised of chopped cabbage. It’s a supermarket. It’s not as if they ran out of lettuce and had to improvise. And it couldn’t have just been a simple mistake, because romaine lettuce looks nothing like a head of cabbage. Maybe if they had confused cabbage for iceberg lettuce, I could understand. To top it off, the fact that the cabbage was chopped so finely makes me think they were trying to pull one over on me, or whoever else had purchased the salad.

I ate it anyway. I wasn’t going to bring it back since I had already poured dressing all over it; in fact, I found a bottle of Greek dressing in the office fridge (thanks, Kasey) and drowned the salad in it, just so I could fool myself into eating the raw cabbage. It didn’t work.

What would you have done?

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