This is the most upsetting of all. I worked a combined 4 years at various restaurants in the 90s (from styrofoam packaging to ‘queueing’ micro-wave eras), the last part while in college and needing a place where I could get long shifts and legal free food – hint: Cool Runnings. It was maligned often, even then, but it was honest food, still – it was mass-cooked, but it was beef and actual pickles and actual onions and real ketchup and such. People complain about it being oily or bland, and that’s a taste thing we can’t refute; but it was beef and bread and cheese, and that job and a bus pass got me most of the way through where rice and beans couldn’t.