Re: Crowd Outskirts: Conner/Donna
The menu thing made perfect sense, especially since this buffet had to be made by an army of chefs. There would have been a plan, then dishes would have been micro-managed out to other cooks. Kitchens were clearly run with Waterfall process instead of Scrum. A Scrum kitchen would have had each of the dishes labeled out here from the get-go, probably with cards detailing every single step of the recipe and notes on what went wrong. Or Donna could stop equating everything to some sort of computer process and try to be normal. "It's probably in the kitchen then. Should we try to go inside and talk to the staff?"
Conner's smile made that logical mind of hers falter. It didn't matter how he did it, really. Maybe she'd try to concentrate on food smells later and see if she could do it, but right now Donna was more concerned with making sure she was still breathing. Yeah. She was, but her pulse couldn't seem to be calmed unless she turned away, which she didn't want to do. Eyes shining and her own grin mimicking the earnestness he had shown before, she added, "It's really awesome. We don't even need a menu."
Donna's nose squinched up at the little breaded rings he pointed at, "Squid?" The extent of her experience with tubular and tentacled ocean creatures came from the underwater levels in video games, or at the aquarium. It was never on a plate in front of her. Squid never looked like something that should be eaten. It looked like something that escaped from a nose via sneeze, with big black eyes attached. She was honestly glad for the information, no matter if he thought he could smell it or not, because she would have assumed they were small onion rings. That's what they looked like. She brushed up against him to grab a plate from the other side of Conner, then raised her eyebrows with a bright genuine smile. Tonight, she was trying out new experiences. "Should we try it? Or skip it and go to that salmon-looking stuff?"