2012-06-20
Explanation
The comic shows a man gleefully declaring victory over a salad bar's pay-by-weight pricing system. He announces to the clerk that he has outsmarted them by filling his bowl with nothing but the most expensive, calorie-dense items: cheeses, expensive dressings, cashews, and olives. He proudly declares the "net loss" to the restaurant to be "several dollars." The clerk responds with an unfazed "Cool. Cash or credit?" Then, in a final panel labeled "Later...," the man is at home forcing himself to eat his awful concoction, thinking "Must... enjoy... terrible... taste..."
The humor targets the "engineer mindset" -- the tendency to optimize systems on paper without considering whether the optimized outcome is actually desirable. The man has technically maximized the dollar value per pound of food he's getting, but he's ended up with a disgusting meal of nothing but rich toppings with no actual salad. The joke also highlights how the "savings" are trivially small ("several dollars") relative to the suffering involved in eating a bowl of straight cashews, olives, and dressing. It's a commentary on the false economy of gaming a system at the expense of the actual purpose the system serves -- in this case, having an enjoyable meal.