On the surface, it really was only a medium-quality hamburger. It was modestly decorated with rapidly drying lettuce, tomatoes from a can, and three pieces of American cheese. But the patty in my hands, when it entered my mouth, was immaculate. Instead of ketchup or mayonnaise, it was slathered with a sauce that no money can buy: self-satisfaction.

The smoke from the grill billowed out in clouds over my head as I sat dining on my loot in the courtyard outside the chemistry buildings. It truly was the perfect c-rime, and my burger was the ill-gotten gains of a well-engineered grift.

This was no job for an amateur. An amateur would have attended the Graduate School of Chemistry Chemical Fair, realized that he/she had to fill out an identification form, then get a checklist signed by 10 of the chemical company vendors whose booths surrounded the event, and then simply turned around. But not this con man.

It all went down yesterday after chemistry class. A friend and I, upon realizing from the smell of burgers that there was free food afoot, put on our best grad school voices and started talking about the wife and kids. We approached the registration table and I paused, halfway through a mock-explanation of the trials of potty-training, to reach for the identification form.

With unparalleled nonchalance, I informed the organizers of this event that my name was “Fakename Freefoodington” in the department of “Neurobiological Urology.” I professed an interest in “left-bound testicular femoral adhesion,” though my primary research was “scatology.” Thus part one of my quest for free food was complete. But there still remained the sticky problem of the ten signatures from chemical company vendors. I am proud to say that this was accomplished through skilled forgery, executed in the bushes beside the event, involving three different kinds of pens.

And from the moment I picked up that Styrofoam plate, I knew that I could not turn back. I was now the highest level of flim-flammer: the impostor. Of course I had dallied in this realm before, executing the slightly less refined manifestations of mountebankery. But this was truly something else entirely, something sublime.

Perhaps some of you are hosers yourselves. You’ve swiped cola from an iced keg bucket when no one was watching. You’ve taken from the snack trays that various Stanford departments abandon on the outskirts of the quad. You’ve attended majors dinners for majors you were barely considering, gone to a “professor’s lunch,” but taken out the “professor” portion by taking the lunch tray at the door. It seems that Stanford students on the whole will stop at no lengths to find free food. But few of you are among the elite ranks of the Con(fidence) Artist.

Being a true CA is not about skimming the surplus from the rapidly rotating trays of Stern dining. The key to true connery is not to be found at the bottom of a dumpster (or in the original James Bond films). It is to be found in the lapels of a suit and a business card. There is certainly a wealth of free food floating around campus. But do you want it all? We the “freegans” of the community at large need to develop standards. We need to raise our collective noses in the air as a sign that free food, easily gotten, is not free food at all.

Am I a shim-shammer? A fleecer? No. I am an artist. And requisite in this business is some degree of class.

Let my hamburger, and its surrounding ordeal, be your guide in this era of readily available free food. So put on those airs, take your acting skills off the hanger in your closet, and go out there and earn yourself a free meal.