Tonight, I had an eye-opening experience in the hot bar section of Whole Foods. Here’s the play-by-play:

8 pm:  I assume my regular Friday night position: Right hand shoveling $20 worth of vegan Mac-n-cheese and fried tofu cubes into the re-purposed-from-elephant-poop-take-out-container held by my left hand. I look up and see this very attractive guy heading in my direction with an expression of great purpose on his face.*

*Footnote: Normally, this would describe the billy-club-carrying store security guard coming over to order me to stop sampling the food before I buy it…

But, seeing as this guy is clearly a civilian with no outwardly apparent disfigurements, I carefully start to remove my own concealed weapon from its holster — aka, my deadly smile!

As he gets closer, however, I notice he’s looking a little too far to the left to be focused on me, unless he has a lazy eye, which by no means is a deal-breaker by the way.

8:07: Guy stands 1 inch away, with his back to me AND his face…

… TO the cute blonde on his other side.

So, I add another consolatory spoonful of Mac-n-cheese atop my organic (read: “healthy) mountain of food, slip my deadly smile back into its holster, and LUCKY ME proceed to overhear the happy new couple’s entire conversation. It goes as follows:

• 8:08.1, Guy: “Hey, my name is Sam. What’s your name?”
• 8:08.2, Girl: “Hey, I’m Amanda.”
• 8:08.3, Sam: “Cool Amanda. Do you have a boyfriend?”
• 8:08.4, Amanda: “Oh, um, hee hee, uh, yeah. Yeah I do actually.”
• 8:08.7, Sam:  “That sucks-and-a-half.  See ya, never.”  (Leaves)

8:09: Amanda (formerly of “Samanda”) turns to me with a vexed air and says,

“Wow! Did you just hear that? That guy was sooooo rude.”

To which I simply nod and shrug my shoulders in sympathetic wonder at the nerve of some people WHILE on the INSIDE, where my true voice lives, I am really emitting a high-pitched vitriol that sends dogs and bats cowering into the darkness. It goes as follows:

“First of all, it wasn’t ‘That Guy’; it was ‘Sam,’ or have you already forgotten. And secondly, no actually, if anyone’s the dillweed in this scenario, it’s you. Everyone knows that getting your dinner from the Whole Foods hot bar on a Friday night is a universal sign of singledom. To do so AND be in a relationship is a great offense and shall be perceived as one by any unsuspecting man/woman misled by such distortion.”

Seriously, though, in all seriousness I’m being serious. There are few (maybe NONE) exceptions to this unwritten code. Forget Whole Foods for a second and the fact remains:

If your FRIDAY night dinner involves a sneeze guard and is bought “BY THE POUND” — You Are Single.

Caveat 1: You are an ER surgeon – in which case you’d be wearing scrubs.

Caveat 2: You are in the middle of moving – in which case you’d be wearing dirt/paint covered sweatpants and a ratty t-shirt.

Neither of which exception applies here, as Amanda was dressed to the six’s in skinny jeans, an Urban Outfitters looking top, and black leather riding boots.

In the end, what Amanda did is not just a snow job, it’s also selfish. It’s like an airplane crashing onto a deserted island, and 2 weeks into the grisly ordeal, the fat guy who had to buy 2 seats just to be able to fly licks the very last plate of remaining food clean while everyone else watches on in starved horror.

CUE: Lord of the Flies, “‘Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!'”

Understand: While there may be an infinite resupply of warm dishes for the Whole Foods hot bar, the already slim pickings at the “Hottie” bar of eligible singles is dwindling at a famine-fearing rate.

To do my small part in reducing the number of future incidents of spoken-for-people-infiltrating-single-people-territory — I’ve created an easy, user-friendly guide to the Universal Signs of Singledom in Women & Men.

• Woman: Unplucked unibrow, chin hair
• Man: Listening to Nickelback (see also, Creed)
• Woman: Knitting circles
• Man: Having bookshelves in your home made out of cinder-blocks/milk crates
• Woman: Cat fur on your clothes
• Man: Having a liger avatar in Furcadia that you use to dreamweave and huggle
• Woman: Having a chinchilla avatar in “(see above)”
• Man: Using a chip-clip to hold up your sweatpants
• Woman: Keeping any kind of Entenmann’s Danish/coffee cake in your house when your grandmother is NOT visiting.
• Man/Woman: Buying your toilet paper at the nearby 711/convenience store
• Man/Woman: Not having a cellphone on your person
• Man/Woman: Unmanicured “bush”
• Woman: Having a strip of “Sticky Paws” (adhesive tape used to prevent cats from peeing on your furniture) stuck to the bottom of your shoes.

. Great minds… and all that!