Eating Out with the Family, or How to Ruin a Meal

After work today Lisa and I took the family to Boston Market. The total for three kids meals and two adult versions?

$32.

"For $32 I should've gone to Olive Garden," I told the cashier. And I wasn't joking; our Mother's Day meal was $48, and a heck of a lot better.

Still, at least none of the money was burned on tips. The day before I'd taken YaYa out to a restaurant for a father/daughter 'moment' and wound up having one of my old customers - aka one of my old 3rd shift 'regulars' - as my waitress. No chance she didn't recognize me since she greeted me by name when I walked in the door.

Shi*.

Tardy service, a spilled soup, slow refills, and she never once looked me in the eyes, not even when she stopped at my table and chatted for a few minutes, but I still felt compelled to lay down a $5 tip on a $14 meal.

I didn't even have the pleasure of a relaxing meal, since YaYa was a pill. At one point she snapped her fingers at the girl to get her attention - WTF????

"Boy she's mad today," the waitress said.

"No she's not, she's being a brat," I said. "Apologize. Now!"

She did, and was ok the rest of the way, but what an impression to leave behind.

[BUT . . it's not like  I haven't seen the waitress in some of her worst-ever 'please let me forget this night' moments, enough to earn YaYa a pass just this once.]

Another awkward moment: the waitress asked about another regular from back in the day. He was murdered several years ago, taken out in the woods in Michigan and executed, to tell you the truth, but apparently she hadn't heard the news.

Yeah, you try answering the inevitable questions after your kid hears you say that at dinner.

* * * *

In answer to some of the comments:

1. Nope, I haven't seen The Best Man in Grass Creek. but I'll bounce over to Netflix shortly and see if I can't add it to my queue. UPDATE: Couldn't find it there, but the Milwaukee library system has a copy. I'll take a look for it over the weekend.

2. Thanks to FisherKristina for her help in fixing an AOL error that was prohibiting me from posting.

3. Nah, there was no Bluetooth involved at the mall, she was just a kook. I looked real hard for an earpiece but came up empty. But you're right, sometimes those phones lead to all kinds of misunderstandings.

 I once held a Fantasy Baseball draft for a league I ran, right around the birth of bluetooth/hands free technology.  After each selection my buddy Tre would politely intone "John selects Ken Griffey. Ken Griffey" and so on to another owner who couldn't make the physical draft.

 At the end of the draft Tre took out his bluetooth and phone and laid them on the table.

"Oh, thank God," one of the other guys said, honestly relieved. "The whole day I thought you were just some nut who talked to himself."

True story.