It’s a Beautiful Day to Get Your Own Fucking Lunch

It's 76 degrees and sunny in New York City—meaning that conditions are ideal for many adults to either make or retrieve their own lunch.

Yes, the food-delivery app Grubhub is giving its users a free order up to $15. ("Real New Yorkers are joining us for free lunch," is the pitch.) And if you are unable to get or make yourself a midday meal, you may want to use this promotional offer.

But to everyone else: have you considered that you could just exit your apartment or place of business, travel a few blocks in the most densely populated city in North America, and find yourself something to eat?

You'd be missing out on $15 bucks, which doesn't even cover the cost of a Midtown salad dusted with a fistful of pomegranate seeds. But think about what you're losing when you smash that "FREELUNCH" code.

Instead of saying "turkey sandwich" to another human being and holding a tasty, filling meal in your hands moments later, you are now adding 300 additional steps to a problem that this city was literally built to solve in five minutes. Not to get all Jane Jacobs on you, but this is stupid.

"Oh, but I want a sushi burrito from that place that's a mile away."

Think of how delicious it will be once you go and forage for it yourself! How empowered you will feel, chomping down on a thing that you wanted enough to take action for—and you succeeded! Life is all about small victories like this.

Perhaps you want to stare impotently at your phone, waiting for another grown adult to come feed you so you can keep surviving; another grown adult with their own problems and memories and feelings, who almost certainly isn't getting paid enough for the job of literally keeping you alive, while the company that is paying for your meal, a $6 billion company built on this cheap labor, and these same dark and antisocial desires to be still and be fed, changes hands again and again.

Or, you could open your fridge and see what's there. Throw some chickpeas on it. Maybe an apple. Lunch is served.