Editor’s note: This article is a humor column.
Before my third year of college, I never would have called myself an investigator, as I could barely stay on top of my work as it was. But in making my third return to Grounds, I was forced to push classes to the side to seek justice — not for students, but for food.
As the semester began, I enjoyed the many aspects of the University experience that I missed dearly over the summer — getting all of my news from YikYak, Veoing and spending a full 55 minutes looking for a study spot in Shannon. But there was nothing I missed more than the delectable taste of food truck — fruck, if you will — food. My parents’ home-cooked meals couldn’t hold a candle to the greasy goodness of Sombrero nachos or the deep-fried delectability of a Got Dumplings tray.
On the first day of classes, I excitedly opened up my GrubHub app instead of paying attention to the nonsensical syllabus lecture going on, only to be met with a blank screen. Confused, I pulled up my Outlook, only to see that GrubHub had been abandoned in favor of a half-baked app, that the food trucks had disappeared and that the new app, dubbed “WahooEats,” hadn’t even come out yet.
Not one to overreact, I stood up, screamed, fell to my knees, got back up and left the class. I promptly dropped the class, as well as the rest of my classes — I had an investigation to get to. Who was responsible for the destruction of the GrubHub I knew and loved? Where were they? How could I make them pay?
My investigation led me first to Clark Hall — I honestly really just needed to go to the bathroom to have a quick mourning session over my dear frucks, and Clark has a wonderful secret bathroom at a location that I can’t describe, as it’s a secret. But, as I wandered around a dark hallway in Clark an abandoned computer — still lit up — alerted my detective senses. I investigated further and saw that this mysterious laptop had two Google search tabs that its user had forgotten to close. “How make app” and “Why my app terrible” were the search queries left behind.
I immediately knew whoever left this laptop behind was responsible for my turmoil. I posted a picture of it on the U.Va. 2027 Snapchat story — dedicated solely to lost items — and bided my time. A short 15 minutes later, the laptop’s apparent owner sent me their location to drop it off.
The directions the user had sent me led me to another small, abandoned room in the basement of Newcomb. Immediately, the sweet, sweet smell of a Got-Dumplings-Meal-That-I-Didn’t-TECHNICALLY-Have-To-Pay-For filled the air, and I had to investigate further.
I busted the door open. The room was filled with stacks upon stacks of compostable containers of what smelled like Sombreros tacos and the Otto Turkish Street Food chicken pasta platter. There were four students in the room, all huddled around a singular computer. They didn’t react at all to my dramatic entrance, and as I moved closer to them, I saw that they were all extremely focused on multitasking between dodging emails about their horrible app and leaking users’ personal financial information.
Feeling a little awkward and uncomfortable about the group’s lack of reaction to my suave detective persona, I politely tapped one of them on the shoulder. They spun around while the other three remained hard at work.
“ARE YOU HERE ABOUT THE APP, TOO?” they asked.
I nodded.
“GAAAAHHHH,” they moaned in despair and put their face in their hands. After about three minutes, their faces emerged from their hands, checking if I was still there, and then went back down.
A few minutes after that, they turned to the rest of the group.
“Guys, the jig is up,” they said. “We haven’t even been eating all the food we’ve been storing. It’s kind of just been sitting here while we try to improve our terrible app. None of this was even worth it.”
“Who are you guys? Are you… WahooEats?” I asked.
“Yeah, we’re fourth-years, and we wanted to soak up the last year of food truck food by just having all of it — a sketchy U.Va. admin reached out to us and offered us free trashcans from Virg for life. But honestly, I’d rather just be out drinking right now, this is way too much work.”
Once their speech was seemingly finished, a member of the group of fourth-years closed the computer, procured a hammer out of nowhere and smashed it into pieces. Then, the whole group silently filed out.
The next day, the announcement came out that WahooEats had been cancelled and that GrubHub — and the food trucks — would be making their triumphant return. But I would always be the only one who knew what truly was behind the scenes of WahooEats.
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