COFFEE, TEA--WAS IT ME?

By CALVIN TRILLIN

Any number of airline flights now include no food service at all. Flying from Chicago to Buffalo on one of them last week, I had to face the fact that I might have somehow been responsible for this policy. In analyzing this matter, I was trying to be absolutely honest with myself, which isn't that easy to do if all you've had to eat since breakfast is 11 fat-free pretzels.

It's perfectly possible, I reminded myself, that at some point in my past air travels, as I poked at the sort of dinner that might have caused rioting in the mess hall of a Third World prison, I said, "If this is the sort of food they're going to serve on this airline, I'd just as soon they skip it altogether."

Could this remark have been made? Could a flight attendant, bending close to deposit a piece of spandex chicken on the tray of a nearby traveler, have overheard? Could she have passed the word along to her superiors? Could this have been used by the airline barons as an excuse for airlines to haul people from Philadelphia to Boston without a morsel?

If so, I had to face up to what I might have wrought. It was possible that some completely innocent sales rep, flying from New York to Chicago as part of an unsung but fundamentally noble effort to support his deserving family, was suffering agonizing hunger pangs because I had made an offhand remark in an uncharacteristic moment of revulsion.

"We are all responsible for our actions," I muttered, causing the man next to me to edge away a bit toward the window.

In my defense, I'd like to say that I don't specifically remember saying that I'd prefer no food at all to airline grub. I'd also like to say that these days a huge American corporation such as an airline would be expected to base its decisions on extensive customer surveys rather than an offhand remark by one disgruntled passenger--particularly a disgruntled passenger who has a history of complaining about the food served on airplanes.

Yes, I have a history. About 20 years ago, on a flight from O'Hare to LaGuardia, I absentmindedly poured my salad dressing into my coffee and doused my salad with nondairy creamer. What I later complained about publicly was that until a kindly regional auditor who was sitting next to me drew the mistake to my attention, I had been consuming my meal without noticing the difference.

Everybody does surveys now before making decisions of any importance at all, even if the answers could easily be predicted by an alert 10-year-old. Witness the recently concluded presidential campaign. In TIME's postelection campaign narrative, it was reported that the White House pollsters took a survey to determine what Bill Clinton should say he was building a bridge to--one option being "Building a Bridge to a Second Term."

People actually got paid, that is, for taking a survey to decide that "Building a Bridge to the 21st Century" has more of a ring to it than "Building a Bridge to a Second Term." When you think about that, it's a wonder those Indonesians didn't ask for their money back.

There's no reason to believe an airline would be less thorough than the Clinton campaign. The question that needed answering was essentially the same: How little can you give your core constituency without causing a squawk? I was definitely not surveyed. Someone else must have said that he'd be willing to lunch on 11 fat-free pretzels. I might be blameless after all.