Musashi's Dokkodo (The Way of Walking Alone)

Businessman:
Unless we‘re awful lucky in playing the lottery or some other game of
chance, or have inherited great wealth and fortune, we’re going to
need a job to pay the bills. Work is, well… work. We all know that we
must take work seriously while at the office, but we also know that
it’s unhealthy to live for work alone. Sometimes a simple reward, a
good meal or an excellent drink shared with a close friend, lover, or
even a professional colleague, is exactly the right thing to make our
day a little brighter. We certainly don’t want to be consumed by it,
obsession is never a good thing when it comes to dining or drinking,
but pursuing the taste of good food from time-to-time is not at all
bad. In fact, it can be an important part of conducting commerce too.

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Here’s the deal, business meals matter, especially in certain parts of
the world, so we need to be educated in the etiquette of dining
appropriately. There are obvious things such as validating the
reservation, arriving a little early, following the lead of our host, not
ordering the most expensive item on the menu, not consuming or at
least not overindulging in alcohol, turning off smartphones, being
courteous to those around us, not talking with our mouths full, and
the like, but it can go deeper than that. There’s a plethora of
protocols to consider. For instance, understanding which fork to use
with each course of the meal, knowing how to sniff the cork and test
the wine prior to accepting it from the sommelier, and similar
nuances of dining decorum can make us come across as
sophisticated and worldly or crude and naïve. These impressions
matter, particularly when these business meetings are with folks who
work for other companies such as during protracted contract
negotiations where off-hours get-togethers are part of the “dance.”
The same thing holds true for less pretentious things such as
interviewing for a new job or impressing a skill team or advancement
committee to earn a promotion.
For example, when the Nordstrom family was directly involved in
hiring executives back in the 80s through the mid-90s, they would
routinely take leading candidates to lunch or dinner as part of the
interview process. If the prospective executive put salt or pepper on
his or her food prior to tasting it that person was not hired under the
assumption that they made decisions by force of habit rather than
after prudently investigating the situation, whereas someone who
tasted their food first and then seasoned it had a chance to earn the
position. Many other companies include meals in the interview
process too, since working lunches, dinner meetings, and the like a
normal part of the routine while on the job. In fact, I once had an
interview where the search committee had the restaurant’s server
intentionally bring the wrong thing to observe how I reacted to his
errorOur approach to food even goes beyond the job, affecting our
everyday lives too. According to a recent study published in the

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journal 
Obesity
, people who eat an eclectic variety of foods, things
like 
kimchi
(a spicy, fermented Korean side dish made from
vegetables), beef tongue, and 
seitan
(a Japanese wheat “meat”
made from gluten), tend to be more physically active, interested in
nutrition, and healthier than their peers who partake in less
adventurous diets. Foodies tend to have a lower body mass index,
which is virtually always a good thing, and they tend to have a
greater love for cooking which implies that they eat a diet that is
simultaneously more wholesome and more cost-effective than that
consumed by their peers as well. Gluttony is clearly unhealthy, but
as this and other studies agree, there’s nothing wrong with caring
about food, knowing your way around the kitchen, and enjoying a
good meal.
I must disagree with Musashi about this precept. Pursuing the taste
of good food or drink can be highly rewarding. To give some
credence to his admonishment, however, we must not overdo it to
the point of obsession or gluttony.

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