We each looked at our menus and scanned the lunch items. The four of us had the dining area to ourselves, save for an elderly couple who was paying their check. Everything on the menu looked decent, but paled in comparison to the crab sandwich lunch special the waiter had just described.

One by one we went around the table giving our selections. We all ordered the special. It was a reasonably funny scene, but within the setting of a stuffy work lunch, it qualified as hilarious. The collective chuckles and one-liners had grown with each additional order. When I requested the fourth and final crab sandwich, it sent the table over the top.

Once the food arrived, we revisited the same stupid jokes that had been made while ordering. They were still lame. We each scanned the table and nodded to one another, signaling the ‘all clear’ to eat.

The first to act was the Harmon. Harmon was of Haitian descent, but had been raised in the US. His undergraduate and graduate degrees were from Ivy League schools and he was a managing partner at a mid-sized private equity firm. He was also the client.

My colleague and I were meeting with Harmon and the owner of a portfolio company because we were lending them money. Today was the final tire-kicking round of the process and the closing of our deal was imminent.

As he prepared to eat, Harmon picked up his fork and knife and cut into his sandwich. He then stabbed the cut piece with his fork and ate. I found this odd because it was a sandwich.

To my right, Harmon’s colleague, Jeff, followed suit and began eating his sandwich with a fork and knife. To my left, my co-worker did the same thing. This was weird. And, wrong. But, as I watched the three of them eat, the herd mentality was too strong to reject, so I grabbed my utensils and began to eat.

All four of us ate our sandwiches with a fork and knife. We even used them for our french fries. The sandwich was hard to cut and getting the appropriate mix of meat and bread on the fork was nearly impossible. Nonetheless, we all stuck with this strategy.

The notion of what we were doing consumed me. Was I ignorant to something? Was this the correct way to eat a crab sandwich? I remained silent on the issue, yet it bothered me for the duration of the meal.

When lunch had concluded and we were back in the car, I asked my co-worker if he’d found the situation as weird as I had. “Yes,” he replied, “but I just went with it because Harmon did”.

That’s what I’d thought. We’d all just gone with it because the person deemed most important in the transaction had done something completely ridiculous.  Why did we all feel the pressure to follow suit? Had he chosen to eat with his feet, would we have all tried that as well? Why did I give in to this obscure instance of social pressure and insecurity?  It bothered me the rest of the day.  It still bothers me.