“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”~ William Shakespeare
I think a better quotation for this blog post would be “What the hell were you thinking?”, but I have no idea who to give the credit to.
This afternoon I was conversing with neighbors. I was slightly hinting that we all should go as a small group out to eat this evening.
Come to find out that they were celebrating the sale of a vehicle. They had sold it for $800, but really wanted $2,500.
But they were not opposed to the idea of going out to eat as they did have that money now. I was happy for them. The vehicle was sold and now out of their hands.
So we went back and forth with each other in trying to choose where to go. The idea had come to go to a restaurant that we have been to before, but they wanted to go to a different location. Claiming it takes just as long to go south as it does north.
Same restaurant, different direction. Instead of traveling 16 miles north, they wanted to go 38 miles south.
I was unsure about making such a trip just to eat. So I came up with the following four questions about this OTHER location:
#1- Food quality?
#2- Service quality?
#3- Friendliness of staff?
#4- Eye candy factor [I am still single!]
I was met up with such a glowing rant about the first three questions, but the fourth question really didn’t get much of a response. Nothing but a grin. And that didn’t tell me anything.
So when it came close to the time when we had planned to leave, I called my neighbors. I wanted to make sure that this was THEIR celebration, a.k.a.- I wanted to make sure that they were paying for it, since they suddenly had the money and certainly could afford to do so.
I should have known better, but it was every man for himself. Something that I should have seen coming, with them in particular.
So we went, departing in the middle of the rush hour traffic. We weren’t even 10 miles away from home when the driver began to bitch and moan about how it was going to take forever to get there, and that we shouldn’t have made the decision to go so late and should have went for lunch and wondered if we should just turn around. Just full out ridiculous road rage. Except she wasn’t yelling at other drivers on the road, she was yelling at the passengers in the vehicle.
The driver was also annoyed that I was receiving text messages on my cell phone periodically. For some reason, that bothered her.
But a full hour, we arrived. We walked in, and all I could think about was how small it was in comparison to what we were used to. I had to remember that we were in a smaller town than the other as well.
So we sat down and ate. I noticed the subtle differences on the buffet. But for the most part, it was the same foods. It just took me a very long time to get over the fact that the building was smaller. I even had to laugh when I saw a sign on the wall in the back that said “SMOKING AREA”. Which, there is none of that here any more.
I laughed so much that I attempted to take a picture of it with my cell phone, but just as I was taking the picture, I got busted doing it. They asked what I was doing and I dodged them by saying, “I’m looking to see if I got a signal in here to make a call.” They didn’t say anything else.
But all in all, this dining experience failed so badly. And if you take into consideration the company that I was keeping, whom half of them had really poor behaviors and attitudes… it only made things more miserable.
By the end of the evening, I had only made myself full on mashed potatoes and gravy. Everything else just tasted so awful!!
And then when we were getting ready to leave, everyone pulled out their wallets to leave some kind of cash gratuity for our server. Our server was in fact nice. But she had no name tag. No label in which to call her by name. I didn’t understand what kind of a food business they were trying to run. How does anyone get any specific customer service when they don’t know who to call upon?
Then I grabbed the pile of dollar bills and said, “I’m going to personally hand it to her.”
The next thing that I heard was a remark that came from the company that I was with, that was so immature and so uncalled for.
“Just so you can make her think that it came all from you, huh?”.
Umm really? Was that necessary?? I mean, “thank you” for driving me an hour down there and 45 minutes back home and what not, but REALLY???
I did so, end up giving the server the gratuity. Her hands were full and she told me to slip the money in her apron. I felt like I was giving cash to a stripper. Minus the nudity. Those who were there as servers were probably all high school kids working their evenings away.
As we were driving home, the seat belt fit so snug on across my stomach and chest area that I wasn’t feeling that I had enough room for my body to begin the process of digestion. I was hurting so bad. And the radio station that we listened to while in the vehicle kept having this commercial about “food poisoning”. That wasn’t helping much either. And then the songs that were being played on the radio were only making me feel worse!
So with all of that, and including the piss poor attitudes of others in the vehicle with me: This truly was a pathetic and horrible experience. The four factors in which I had asked about? Fail, fail, fail, and fail.
This will change something. Either I will not go back to that particular restaurant, or I will not be keeping company with the same people when I have dining experiences away from home.
Dambreaker 