I was eating at the DC the other day, by myself, as usual. Across the table and one seat over was an employee taking his dinner break. We pretty much had the same food on our plates: eggs, a pancake, bacon, among others. The theme that night was "Breakfast for Dinner," apparently. As I was reading a column in The California Aggie, my peace was interrupted by his voice.

"I can't believe you pay $7 for this."

Then came a confused look on my face, at first assuming he was crazy for working at the DC, so talking to himself would not be out of the question. But it turns out he was looking at me with an expression desiring a return comment. He continued:

"You know the reason they're serving breakfast food. They had too much and needed to get rid of it."

To which I replied:
"Yeah, we can tell the food is recycled throughout the week."

He went on:
"I can barely eat this stuff and it's free. I can't understand why you pay $7 a meal for this. For that much money, you really should be getting high quality food."

Interesting. I never thought about that. I knew we're paying a lot more than the $2 they give back per swipe, and $7 seems like a reasonably large rip-off quantity. That's about how much you have to pay to eat there. But they attach the DC bill as a rider to the Student Housing bill, so you never know exactly how much you're paying.

But the line that really got me:
"Don't tell anyone, but in the back, we have a serious rat problem."

Somehow, my pancakes and eggs remained untouched.