This morning I thought I would treat myself to a nice diner breakfast before work. Unfortunately the server was the jocular type. He had a flower in his ear, zany sunglasses, called everyone 'young sir' or 'young lady', was obviously up on multiple cups of coffee, and was bantering with the rest of the staff in the kitchen.
Fine fine fine and fine. He was fine. And if it was lunchtime, he wouldn't have ruined my meal. I am a morning person, but they are a time of quiet introspection, and short communication. I repeat, I love the mornings, but if I had to give my waitron a swing-thought for dealing with me, it would be 'Silent Commiseration". If I am in such a good mood that a smile sneaks out, the swing-thought should then be "ironic commiseration". You know, make some comment when refilling my coffee like , "things are turning around, here is some joe that was actually made today." If you can't do irony, treat me like a pitcher 7 innings into a no-hitter.
Also, The Flying Biscuits' biscuits are lousy. They always have been. (This reminds me of a running joke corrie and I had. When I expressed surprise to our server that my pancakes came with a biscuit, he said, "all or meals do, hence the name flying biscuit". Oh.)
Anyhow, so my morning didn't go as well as I hoped. A moment ago I checked in on Lileks, and he improved it:
Before the meal came we amused ourselves with the games on the kid’s menu. One had mixed-up overlapping line-drawings of sharks, and you had to count the number of sharks. Shark jumble! The answer was ten, but there was also a fully-realized picture of a shark in the tank. So technically, the answer was eleven. Daughter was vaguely amused. I said I would point this out to the waitress. Daughter was slightly alarmed. “I’ll get a free meal out of this,” I said. Daughter was now seriously alarmed. Dad don’t.
Well, that’s all the inducement I need. “Waitress?” She came over. I pointed out that the answer said ten sharks, but if you include this one, the answer was eleven.
“It could be a dolphin,” she said.
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
She left. Daughter: “Dad why did you DO that?”
“Waitresses love funny customers! It brightens up their day. The ones that tell jokes, make puns, think they’re the life of the party – waitresses can’t wait for those.”
I got a skeptical expression.
“No, really, they fight over ‘em, even thought they usually are bad tippers because they think they’ve tipped enough just by being so entertaining.”
She wasn’t buying it. I told her no, that wasn’t true, but the waitress seemed the type who’d enjoy a little banter, and since her section wasn’t full at all there wasn’t any harm.
Actually, waiters don’t like ha-ha funny customers, the ones with routines, accents, stock phrases, and three other people who find them hilarious. (Or not.) These are performers. Waiters don’t like people whose humor has an aggressive undertone – I’ll have the horsemeat. Don’t tell me you don’t serve it, I’ve eaten here before. Banter is fine. Banter is a social lubricant. But it’s my experience lately that half of the waiters do not listen to most of what you say, and my strongest evidence is my stock request for Coffee, Black, as if I’m tugging down the front of my uniform and commanding the Enterprise replicator. Half the time it’s met with “Cream or sugar?” To which you want to say well, I think I’ll just have my black coffee black, thanks. Then the coffee arrives, and the waiter sets down cream and sugar. When I ask them to take it away, there’s confusion – no cream? No sugar? Seriously? The last time we went out the waitress seemed peeved I didn’t want the cream, as if I’d just sprung this on her at the last moment. You could have told me. ,mmmm
