Monday, I ordered a salad for lunch, because I wanted to eat something healthy.

I know when I do this, there are choices. I can ask for light dressing or dressing on the side, in order to combat the otherwise nearly inevitable flooding. That’s what most civilized people are forced to do.

Every so often, however, I test the better angels of my nature and order a salad without any specifics on the dressing, to see if a place can achieve what should be a simple equilibrium on its own. Monday was another try. Sure enough, the salad came with so much dressing that not only was each piece within just soaked, there was a thin liquid layer at the bottom of the To Go container. (Carry-out places should be particularly wary of this issue.)

But why do I have to do this? Why do stores and restaurants err so often on the side of too much, when you can’t remove dressing, instead of too little, when you can always add dressing?

While slurping my leafy lunch, I put a poll on Twitter: For salad orders where you don’t give instructions on the dressing, which is more common?

  • Too much dressing
  • Not enough dressing

I expect the results to rally America into solving this problem in the food services industry once and for all. Instead came this abomination …

Fifty-fifty? Half of you think there isn’t enough dressing on your salad? What on earth is going on with you?

It’s like you’ve confused salad with soup. Soup is supposed to be a liquid dish with ingredients. Salad is not.

I thought the salad drenching problem was with the restaurants. But it turns out once again that half our citizenry is pitted against each other, and polarization continues to undermine the very fabric of society.