Don't Be Hatin'

Previously, on This Is My Bar . . .

I took it upon myself to do the unthinkable: tell women how to dress.  You had it coming, ladies, after asking us since the beginning of time the unanswerable question "Does this make me look fat?"  (Sorry, I was legally obligated to incorporate that joke somewhere in here.)  Comeuppance, bitch.  Truthfully, this is kind of like community service, since I am doing everyone involved a favor, free of charge and for the benefit of society.  So, without further ado, let's resume the pain.  Hey, it can't be worse than menstrual cramps, am I right, girls?  Yeah?  What?  There's no turning back now anyway, I may as well push this as far as it can go.

Tights with Shorts

This is one of those iffy cases; yes, it can look okay under the right circumstances, on the right girl, with the right wardrobe.  But why risk it?  Like a straight man wearing pink, odds are some alternative is the better choice.  Because when this look goes wrong, it goes Titanic wrong.

No, like the actual ship sinking.
(Sidenote: why would they mention Cameron made Aliens, T2, and True Lies?  "If you liked those pseudo-intelligent action flicks, you'll love . . .  weepy historical disaster drama"?)

Remember when you were a little girl and liked to raid Mommy's closet?  Or, if your household was less-traditional, Daddy's?  You'd try on everything and anything, according to the order in which you found it, regardless of taste.  But you quit painting your face with cosmetics like Bozette the Hooker Clown years ago.  Time to do the same with the zany, anything-goes outfits, because, honestly, it mostly makes you resemble a little girl.

And we prefer to imagine you older.  Slightly.

Think of it another way: people make fun of superheroes' underpants-on-the-outside for a reason.

80s Stuff

I know I promised not to cover the glaringly obvious faux pas in this article, but then I turned around and immediately mentioned leg-warmers and shoulder-pads in the same sentence; why would you trust me?  Neon is dead.  The Pastel Plague is over.  Spandex resides in its proper circle of hell.  When you toy with such dangerous trends, you're like one of those cliched idiot scientists from the movies who decides to fuck around with an alien mutant zombie-producing super-virus for fun.  Fuck you.  What good could come of that?  Similarly, attempting to resurrect any element of 80s fashion is just asking for apocalyptic consequences.

On second thought, I'll take those alien zombies.

The vast majority of 80s garb makes a woman look frumpy, skanky, or mentally deranged, owing to the little-known fact that most designers of the time were senile slutty grandmothers.  Apparently.  That 80s Show failed because the decade in question wasn't even good for more than a few jokes.  What's that?  You don't recall That 80s Show?  Exactly.  More than anything else, it looks like you are (1) half-ironically emulating an era you weren't part of for humorous effect (fail), or (2) desperately trying to recapture the high days of your bygone youth (epic fail).  Either way, it's a major turn-off and reprehensible to good taste besides.

Writing/Logos Where You "Don't" Want Us Looking

Now here is one I have absolutely no problem with per se, but confuses me to no end, so I want to at least bring it to your collective female attention.  You are a modern, empowered 21st-century woman (who still doesn't buy half her drinks at a bar), and deserve to be treated as such.  Correct me if I am wrong, but that means not being treated as a piece of eye-candy, yes?  So why, for the love of Sir Mix-a-Lot, would you want to walk around in public sporting these?

Game on.

You read my mind.

It is challenging enough for the male psyche to avoid sexualizing the feminine form at every turn without drawing attention to the assets (Christ, I went for a pun there).  It's the equivalent of putting up a flashing neon sign that says Don't Read Me.  As exemplified by the above image, Victoria's Secret is especially guilty of this with their "Love Pink" line/mindfuck/whatever.  Then again, I guess this is not terribly surprising coming from a company that exists for the sole purpose of visually exploiting its target demographic.

Sexily exploiting them.

For the record, I think I speak for the majority of my gender when I say it isn't necessarily trashy or unattractive when women dress in such clothes.  However, you cannot get offended when wearing it causes guys to stare at your butt.  It's like wearing a padded pushup and a skintight V-neck that leaves half of your rack basking in sunlight - we're going to look, plain and simple.  Even sweatpants can look provocative on a female when they are this style, for fuck's sake.

Not.  Fair.  They aren't even pink!

I suspect women secretly do this as some sort of reverse-psychology, post-modern, domination-through-stereotype-exploitation stratagem, but lack the proof, since my brain basically turns into non-conductive Go-Gurt substitute, like most men's, in the face of sex.  Conversely, if wearing these pants/shorts literally turns your posterior into a billboard, in scale as well as purpose, maybe you want to opt for something a tad more demure.  Just saying.

"Breaking up the scenery, breaking my mind . . ."

And I think that about sums it up.  I hope you have found this simple guide useful, if not especially politically correct or tasteful (ha, get it?).    Before I start fielding complaints, let me just say that, despite the relative simplicity of our wardrobe options, men manage to screw up their look approximately ten-thousand times more than women.  That's because we aren't as vain, materially-obsessed, and superficial as you.  Just kidding, we're idiots.  There, happy?

Oh, Yes, I Did (*Snap*)

Hey, America, you know what I absolutely hate?  Of course you do - I come here to bitch about it all the time.  But what am I taking issue with today specifically?  Fashion and style shows on TV.  This is the genre of programming in which the most pompous and pretentious people imaginable criticize everyone, but especially celebrities, for wearing certain clothing.  While I am usually all about throwing idiots, famous or otherwise, under the bus, I find shows created for that express purpose grating.  The hosts are usually a sort-of attractive, but overly-made-up bitch and a ludicrously flamboyant male who gets to call himself a style expert simply by dint of being gay.

Because this is what you should aspire to: white slacks, faux denim, and silver hair.

What many viewers seem to lose sight of amidst the glamor and bullshit fashion doublespeak is the fact that these critics are complete prats themselves.  Why should you listen to them?  They will even claim on-air that a positively ridiculous outfit is unacceptable for one person, yet "just works" for another.  For the record, Lady Gaga's "style" does not work for anything remotely human, no matter how much your queer subculture idolizes her.  Women more often than men get sucked into this vortex of trend trash-talk and self-image questioning because . . . well, they're women.

Let's be honest.

So, what's my logical response to these shallow, pointless, soul-raping programs?  My own fashion guide for women, of course!  Yeah, I went there.  That's right, I am here to provide you ladies with a bit of sartorial wisdom, mostly accrued through simple observation tempered with common sense.  I am aware this will not gain me a bevy of female friends or particularly please my undoubtedly enormous feminist fanbase, but that is a risk I am willing to take.  Bros before 'hos and all that.  I realize the realm of feminine fashion is far more complex and fraught with peril than ours, even though you can wear our clothes when we cannot wear yours, and we can avoid all ridicule simply by rocking this look:

*Indestructible claws and urban decay optional.

I am not going to bother with all the obvious gaffes (Daisy Dukes are only for a select few women, shoulder-pads and leg-warmers died in the 80s, do not attempt to replicate anything worn by Snooki, etc.), but instead focus on the smaller WTFugly trends that have somehow slipped under the bad taste radar.

High-Waisted Short-Shorts

Why is this woman topless?  For the same reason covers of women's magazines look basically like the covers of men's magazines: T'n'A sell, no matter your target demographic.

In what world is this style attractive?  Actually, it is a testament to just how fugly these chick-jorts are that (1) the advertisers put them on a 3/4 naked Asian woman to distract from what little she is wearing, and (2) it did not even achieve that much, since my first thought was, Damn, those are some hideous shorts.  And she's a model!  What do you think the odds are you can pull off this look when she can't?  If there is a body-type that this little number does flatter, I have yet to see it, and hope I never do, because it would have to be something like eggplant-shaped.  Maybe a starfruit figure?  These shorts do weird things to any woman's proportions, accentuating nothing that needs it.  Your ass just sort of blends into your back, while from the front it looks like you cut off your grandmother's jeans.  Hot.

Isn't the point of a croptop to leave the midriff exposed?

Quasi-Maternity Wear

I don't know how else to describe these tops that have become all the rage over the past three years, especially in the bohemian-indie-hipster-art scene.  They are the Empire-inspired peasant smocks that have no definable waistline and simply drape straight from the boobs down.  To the best of my knowledge, this shapeless cut was designed to accommodate a growing baby-bump.  Why, then, have so many of you non-inseminated females taken to wearing these?

  

From the above photos, you tell me who's a prego and who isn't.  Honestly, males are bad enough at this game without you throwing bullshit curve balls.  At this point, you're just looking for an excuse to bitch us out for miscalling a pregnancy, aren't you?  All clothing need not be figure-hugging, but it should follow the basic contours of your body.  And, sorry to say, the larger your cup-size, the sillier this garment generally looks, as if you tried to pull your flowy skirt over your head and got it caught halfway down.  As an additional bonus, I have to imagine it increases the odds that a strong breeze will result in you unintentionally flashing the headlights.  Think Marilyn Monroe's famous pose above a venting steam-grate.

Skinny Jeans

Yeah, they look stupid on guys.  Do they look much better on women?  Not usually.  Don't get me wrong, we of the courser sex appreciate you wearing tight clothes in general, but it should be tight in the right places.  My Man Card may be revoked for revealing this, but when you feel guys' eyes following you out of the room, it's not because they are checking out your calves, well-toned as they may be.  Enter skinny jeans: if you are thin enough to comfortably wear them, you could probably use some carbs, and if not, those pants are probably choking off your ovaries.  It makes your feet look bigger than they are, too, and pairing them with tapered heels just screams hooker.

Or at least loudly proclaims tramp.

Not to mention, due to the proliferation of misguided Emo-Asian-Skater-Punk boys sporting skinny jeans nowadays, it actually makes you appear strangely androgynous (word of the day!).  Men are sexually insecure enough without adding to the confusion.  Imagine ogling a hot piece of meat from behind (if you'll pardon the expression), only to realize when it turned around that it was the same gender as you!  Only that wasn't hot and borderline-socially-acceptable.  Feel our befuddled, neanderthal pain, bi-curious ladies!

Wait, I just blanked out . . . what was I saying?  Oh yeah, more on this later.

onlinedivas

onlinedivas

More Parents of the Year (and other Dubious Honors)

And now for another Fucktarded Moment in Restauranting . . .

There I am on a Saturday afternoon, bartending.  In my restaurant, the building is divided into two halves, the dining room and the lounge/bar, like many casual dining establishments.  A wall, albeit one with windows, separates the two areas, which means that I necessarily have limited contact with the other side of the restaurant.  A middle-aged woman walks into the bar from the dining room.

CUSTOMER: "Did a little girl with pigtails come in here?  She wandered away from our table."

Wait, you're saying these need supervision?  Weird.

Seriously?  Not only did this woman utter these words with a straight face, she seemed almost as unembarrassed by the implications as she was unconcerned about the possible answer.  It was all I could do to keep from bursting into a fit of laughter.

ME: "Oh, yeah, she went off with some guy who was sitting in here.  That cool?  Ha, just kidding!  Seriously though, I didn't realize it was my turn to watch her.  She took off out the side-door, and since we're not allowed to restrain or verbally reprimand customers' kids, I figured there wasn't much I could do."

Sadly, that response occurred only in my mind.  One of my less-snarky coworkers happened to see the child in question enter the bathroom moments ago, and answered for me, fortunately.

Silly Casey, it's not that hard to get rid of a child.  (What, too soon?)

Meanwhile . . .

Some guy waltzes into the bar without pausing to see if anyone is going to greet him.  He's got his laptop in-hand, sunglasses and unbuttoned powder-puff-pink shirt on - clearly, he's too important to wait like a regular person.  He struts up to the bar rail, where I am posted, eagerly awaiting an interaction with just such a "guest."

HIM: "Hey, do you have outlets?"
ME: "Nope, sorry, our building is actually too old, so they didn't install them everywhere."
HIM: "No?  What about up here? (indicating the bar itself)
ME: "No, not really any that your cords would reach, because they're behind all the coolers and stuff."
HIM: "Oh."  (visibly discomfited)

At about this point, a woman of roughly the same age catches up to Pompous McPinkshirt.  Without asking me any further questions, he mutters something unintelligible to the woman, and they proceed to seat themselves.  Or, rather, they try to seat themselves.  With mounting agitation (on only the man's part, I might add), they go back and forth between three different tables in the same vicinity, spinning in circles and generally resembling nothing so much as guinea pigs cornered by a rambunctious terrier.  Either that, or one of those AI characters in a video game who glitches out and locks up the whole system by repeatedly running into a corner.

I am still trying to figure just what criteria, aside from a total lack of power-sources, they are using to decide between these tables in the Bar-muda Triangle when they leave in something of a flustered tizzy.  Really?  You can't enjoy your casual lunch with what appears to be your significant other on a Saturday afternoon because you cannot plug in your laptop?  For that matter, just how old is your oh-so-vital computer?  Because my puny netbook can run for well nigh four hours before the battery is totally drained.  Were you planning on an intense realtime MMPO gaming session that would suck your electrical stores dry in minutes without continuous current?  Last time I checked, PowerPoint isn't exactly a nuclear telemetry-running program, and, as far as I've heard, restaurants are primarily for eating at, not crafting and troubleshooting multimedia presentations.

Pictured: What this guy apparently thought he would be doing in my bar.

Maybe this is just me being overly-critical and kind of a dick, but I find people's technology fetish, and resultant inability to function without it, pretty damn amusing in cases like this.  Oh, and the restaurant actually does have one table with an outlet, but I don't like to publicize it.

Finally, a vicarious experience from another coworker of mine.

CUSTOMER: "How's your grilled cheese?"
MY THEORETICAL REPLY: "It's cheese between two pieces of bread.  Grilled."

This has been another Fucktarded Moment in Restauranting.

*NOTE: I am aware that I told certain individuals I would next be featuring a guide to women's fashion.  Rest assured, it's in the works.

It's not rocket-science, it's car-science

Despite my best efforts to affect a Dude-like Zen calm, I am actually a fairly high-strung, angry person.  Stunning, isn't it?  This is largely due, I think, to my elevated awareness of the world around me.  And, let's face it, the world is a pretty stupid, irritating, ball-busting place a lot of the time.  (Hence my "drinking problem.")  If you did not know this, it is probably because you are one of the ignorant, annoying, oblivious fucksticks I resent and aim to enlighten/demean whenever possible.  Congratulations.  I can only assume ignorance is in fact bliss, because knowledge is a bitch.

Few situations arouse my ire quicker than retards (read: most homo sapiens) behind the wheel, not least of all due to the fact that your shitty driving is endangering my life.  Or at the very least delaying me, which is almost the same, since you are actively stealing minutes of my life.  And, because of my Holmesian observational skills, I tend to notice every last little thing other motorists are doing wrong.

This would probably be funnier if I wasn't 90% sure it actually happens.

"Road rage" does not begin to cover it, as I exist in a permanent state of mild irritation with everyone else on the road, and it takes very little to make me, in the immortal words of Ron White, "spin off into a whole new dimension of pissed-off."  You are (nominally) operating a complex piece of deadly machinery weighing at least several-hundred pounds at high speed; is it too much to ask that you treat it as such?  Think of it like the podrace in Star Wars.  No, you are not piloting an explosive levitating pair of jet-thrusters hurtling through the air at 200+ mph, but, then again, you don't have more midichlorians than Yoda.  You barely have more brain-cells than a bright orangutan.  Driving a regular Pontiac Aztek is the Jedi-equivalent for normal human beings.

This accident could have easily been avoided by not sucking.

By no means do I consider myself one of the world's best drivers.  That would be the Stig and his ilk.  However, because I am in a mindset of constant vigilance, I can typically maneuver my Chevy Cobalt (don't be jealous) effectively and safely through the streets, bypasses, and parking lots of urban America.  Only one chip on my car is my own fault, while the numerous other dents, scrapes, and dings are thanks to, you guessed it, other people.  Statistically speaking, this sample can be seen as an accurate reflection of the driving world at large; my car is a giant, four-cylinder pie chart, and that minuscule bit of missing paint above by license plate is a wafer-thin slice of the graph, showing what percentage of the time I am a dipshit on the road versus everyone else.

For example . . .

This is not the same as . . . 

. . . this.

It's confusing, I know, since they are both paved areas with lots of automobiles.  However, while one is a purpose-designed, restricted competitive racecourse, the other is a place I actually take my car.  So do families with children, senior citizens, and people even less-conscientious than you, believe it or not.  Mario Andretti's famed maxim "If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough" should be born in mind, not only because of its racist humor (heh, get it?), but also because having control of your combustible steel battering ram/deathtrap in a confined space is sort of important.  You are not Vin Diesel, James Bond, or Tom Cruise (anyone remember him?).  All of the other cars will not miraculously avoid hitting you when you insist on peeling out of the supermarket parking lot at 35 mph in your sweet flaming-eagle-emblazoned 1987 Trans Am.  No, wearing your black shades won't change that, nor will the fact that you just watched Transformers: Fast Shit Blows Up or More Fa5ter and Even Furio5er.  Sooner or later, you will collide with another vehicle.  And, unlike Jason Bourne, you have to worry about insurance premiums.

As long as we're on the subject of parking . . .

Parking is not the easiest thing, I will admit.  Parallel-parking is something like a six-point turn for me, usually ending with a rear tire on the curb and my front fender a foot out in the traffic lane.  And that's if I am sober, which is mostly theoretical anyway.  What can I say?  I'm in touch with my feminine side (*rimshot*).

Not the recommended driving position from the owner's manual.

But that's why, recognizing my weakness and the inconveniences it may cause others, I simply avoid paralleling in most situations.  If I have to park a block away, so be it.  The drivers who approach parking as if it is neurosurgery still get on my last nerve, though.

Here's what I'm talking about: there are several open spaces along the front of the building, directly across the lane from another half-dozen on a cloudless, balmy, late-afternoon in summer.  Decisions, decisions!  What's the only logical way to choose?  Cruising by them at a speed no greater than 3 yards-per-minute so you can adequately browse each and every possibility, of course!  Because it totally matters how straight the lines are painted, not to mention how many weeds are growing out of the cracks in the asphalt.  Don't even get me started on proximity to storm-drains or shade trees.

You don't want to be this guy, after all.  Fail much?

That's just another thing I love about Americans: our insistence on searching for the perfect parking space for an extra 15 minutes, rather than spend an extra four walking a dozen more yards.  Because, damn it, if you start compromising your laziness in the parking lot, what's next?  No mini-fridge next to the recliner?  Actually walking through Wal-mart rather than using the fatass, er, "handicapped" go-carts?  Hell, no!  This is 'Merica!  We're number one!  Oorah!  Love it or leave it!  They took our jobs!  Go big or go home!  Yes, I do want fries with that!  Just do it!  Word.

Recent research I have conducted also suggests Americans possess slim to no awareness of the concept of "lanes" on most roadways.  They either (1) cannot see the banana-yellow or polar bear-white painted lines on the pavement, or (2) assume these to be purely aesthetic decoration.  It is the only rational explanation for why drivers feel comfortable swerving back and forth across the road, never once touching that superfluous lever on the side of the steering column mysteriously called a "turn signal."  The only alternative is . . . well, I will let Clive Owen sum it up:

Turning is a more complex maneuver than it seems, though, as a recent experience of mine proves.  A fellow motorist and I are both waiting to turn onto a two-lane one-way road, coming from opposite sides of said thoroughfare.  So there we, our vehicles practically facing one another across the boulevard as we wait for traffic to clear, affording probably a good thirty seconds for all parties involved to assess the situation.  In other words, this wasn't exactly a Hot Wheels stunt-course.

Here is my scientific diagram.

Rather than turn into the totally clear lane nearest him - you know, the one you are lawfully supposed to use, if pure logic isn't reason enough for you - he instead takes the turn extra-wide and ends up in my lane, presumably so that he can almost rear-end me as I simultaneously pull out (there's some kind of sexual joke here, but the wording eludes me).  For no discernible purpose.  Seriously, there was no reason whatsoever to do this - he wasn't avoiding oncoming traffic, or immediately trying to get over so he could make another quick turn ten feet down the road.  He just . . . liked the far lane, my lane, much better, I guess.  Very justified excuse for a near-collision, right?

Can't get enough of my commentary on strangers' driving habits and lack-of-skills, but want it stripped down, sans flashy graphics?  Look no further.  I have been griping about this subject for quite a while.

*By the way, you didn't get that reference to "the Stig" earlier, did you?  The Stig is pretty much the preeminent ninja assassin of the motor vehicular world, the professional driver on BBC's outstanding car comedy talk show - which, yes, is a genre in Great Britain - Top Gear.

Yeah, he's more or less ShadowStorm in a race car.

He's masked, he's silent, he's made of awesome.  Don't be fooled by the shitty American version of Top Gear, which was originally hosted by Adam "the Least Funny Comedian Alive" Carolla for God's sake, England has the genuine article.

Things You Didn't Know Make You an Asshole at Restaurants, Part 2

Before we dive into the fresh list of unwitting offenses, there's one point on lounging I somehow forgot to touch on in Part 1, probably the most annoying one of all.  People who come in, order the absolute cheapest thing on the menu, then use it as an excuse to hang out for hours, as if I don't know what they are doing.  It's called loitering, and it's actually against the law.  Remember how I said a restaurant is a place of business, operated for the purpose of profit?  Well, if you don't want to spend money, get the hell out, simple as that.  It actually astounds me that it's not just the expected pack of pierced-faced, parent-leaching teenagers who do this; full-grown, ostensibly-employed adults pull this shit regularly, during mealtime rushes, no less.

This is you, only not as cool or amusing.  And I hate you.

Need a place to ooh and aww at those new vacation and baby photos?  (Nobody cares, by the way.)  Want somewhere to catch up with your old college roommate?  Looking for a venue for a three-hour Bible study, then a discussion of your upcoming mission trip and how you "just know this was Jesus telling you what to do"?  Here's an idea: go to your house.  Stop taking up one of my tables, unless you want to start paying hourly rent on it like a hooker-friendly motel.  (Sorry, but I seem to encounter these oblivious, starry-eyed, platitude-spewing, preachy types both in and outside work with nigh miraculous frequency, and they are invariably cheap to boot.)

Moving on . . .

Coming in late

Almost everyone pays lip-service to being sorry for this one, yet it stops perhaps .1% of them from doing it anyway.  The last hour that a restaurant is open is not for new customers.  It is to give the people who were already there a chance to eat in peace.  Toward the end of the night, when business begins to dwindle, restaurant staff start the long process of closing the building: putting away equipment and food, cleaning up, polishing the table you let your infant eat directly off of (gross, we don't sanitize those, FYI), etc.  Pretty much the most thankless part of the job, except all the other parts.

It's not as sexy as it sounds, and leads to impromptu fornication less than 50% of the time, despite what pornos would have you believe.

This is especially true of the kitchen.  You know, the place where that five-layer burger you just had to order at fifteen minutes till close comes from.  Shutting down a commercial full-service kitchen - where food is stored in different freezers overnight, the deep-fryers have to be scoured, and enough pans, utensils, and assorted metal implements to armor a platoon of Robocops need washing - takes a certified Long-Ass Time.  Trust me, I've worked both sides of a restaurant.

Just your average cleanup job.

Enter your stupid ass, sauntering in half an hour before lockdown, aviator shades perched backward on your wood-glued fauxhawk two hours after sundown, looking for a three-course meal.  Basically, the close all but grinds to a halt for you.  Not only that, but a good portion of it is actually undone.  Would you like it if someone came into your cubicle at 4:15 and said, "Yeah . . . I'm just going to go ahead and delete your last hour's worth of work and hand you six new TPS reports to process, mmkay?  And if you need to stay after close, you go right ahead, we'll just cut your pay to $3.00 for that hour, all right?"  Can you see how this would be irritating, even downright nerve-grating?  Maybe even make some people food-tamperingly pissed off?  Think about it the next time you decide a MexiMelt or Encharito just isn't good enough for you.  Ever notice casual dining doesn't advertise "4th Meal"?  There's a reason for that.

And, for the love of Wolfgang Puck, if you have the gall to come in and order a meal in the final hour, tell your server everything you want upfront.  Forgot you like olive relish with your sandwich?  Tough shit, Needy McBitch-a-Lot.  You're going without it tonight.  I cannot count the number of times I have been sent back to the kitchen by the same clueless guest multiple times to face the wrath of a cook because s/he needed two more ranch dressings, which has by now been moved back to the cooler in the rearmost part of the building, probably beyond the Chasm of Certain Doom and a churlish guardian dragon.

"So you are on a quest for honey mustard?  First, you must answer me these riddles three!"

While we're on the subject, let me clue you in on a little secret: you never need two more fucking ranch dressings.  Each of those teensy little harmless cups conceals approximately 170 calories and 18 grams of fat.  That's because it is concocted from straight buttermilk, mayonnaise, concentrated cream-of-death, and Satan's zesty ejaculate.  Do your screaming arteries a favor and forego the second dousing on your 10-ounce side salad.  To quote my boss, "Your food is not a vessel for ranch."

Fuck this country.

Using coupons/gift cards/certificates

Who doesn't like to save a buck?  In these hard economic times, with a family to feed blah-blah-blah (*insert obligatory recession-acknowledging bullshit opener from every article about penny-pinching and corner-cutting written in the last decade*).  You know what?  I'm one of those people suffering, too.  So just because you got a meal for free with the purchase of another, after you argued with me for ten minutes about using two coupons and combining them with another in-store special even though every goddamn coupon on the planet has the same stipulatory fine print that reads Cannot be combined with any other coupon, discount, promotion, or special offer, does not mean you are excused from tipping on that other meal.  I have said this before, but it bears repeating: you tip on the original bill, not the adjusted one.

Please take one!

It has actually reached the sick point where I loath using coupons myself when I go out, since I am disgusted by association. I fear that every employee in a building is looking to shank my tires and/or kidneys the moment I pull out a crinkled clipping from my weekly circular, because that's more or less the involuntary impulse I get.  Which is one more reason I never mention where I serve on this blog.  While that may say more about my mental stability than anything else, it's also a testament to how often servers get royally screwed by the Couponistas.  (*Insert your preferred cheap ethnic stereotype joke here*)

As for those darling media-cunts Rachel Ray and Oprah Winfrey who have both condoned lousy tipping in general as a perfectly acceptable way to save money . . . I'm sorry, I just had to shunt an aneurysm in my brain with a box-cutter and a silly-straw.  That's because I cannot afford medical insurance on your shitty tips, Mrs. Extreme-Couponer.

Um, what was I saying?  Oh, yeah, fuck this woman.  But not like that.  Seriously, I just had to include this picture I stumbled on, because I think it says something disturbing about America, suggesting a latent Freudian sexual-culinary urge to bang TV cooks.  Or something.

Modifying food or requesting non-existent items

Do you remember when waitresses in pastel skirts and paper hats took your order on a little notepad, hung it on the old-fashioned ticket wheel, and retrieved your food half an hour later from the open-windowed kitchen?  And you could get fountain Cokes flavored with vanilla or cherry syrup while taking your best gal out after the football game, where you gave her your letterman sweater?  No?  Maybe it's because that was so six decades ago.

It may have escaped your notice, but eateries have changed a tad in the interim, especially massive chains.  We now have these fancy machines called "computers" that we use to ring in your order, and they are not word-processors.  Your sever doesn't just type in exactly what you want letter-for-letter.  In order to simplify, streamline, regularize, and otherwise expedite your restaurant-going experience, which is the express goal of casual dining, the company designs and installs a program with the specific items from the menu each represented by a single icon on a touchscreen.

Think of it like your iPad, except less pretentious and even more prone to bizarre fuckups.

This is so that you get precisely what's on the menu, no matter which location you happen to be at, thus avoiding the terrifying double-headed bogeyman of "local flavor" and "change."  You don't like mayo on your club sandwich?  Fine.  All I have to do, after punching that [Club Sandwich] button, is bring up the meal and hit two more buttons: [86] the service industry lingo for "no," and [Mayo].  The catch is that for everything you change, I have to follow the same process.  Can you see how this could become problematic when you decide to play mix-and-match with every conceivable spice, condiment, side, and topping?  Also bearing in mind that the odds are English is not the first language of the cook preparing your dish?

It gets even worse when you decide to build your own meal from scratch without regard for the actual food the restaurant offers, because - guess what? - there is no fucking button for that.  Instead, we have to try to assemble your plate like Dr. Frankenstein from one of the preexisting entrees, modifying roughly 17 conditions in the process and tying up that computer terminal for ten minutes.  Then you wonder why your meal took a bit longer to hit the table?  And you have the audacity to bitch that it's not what you ordered?  When I said we don't have burritos, I wasn't just trying to hide the massive hoard of delicious burritos from you so I could have them all for myself - I said it because we don't make them.

Which reminds me of a sidenote.  Do not attempt to argue with your server about items that (1) the restaurant has discontinued or (2) never offered.  Menus do change over time, and when a company opts to stop making a particular dish, they generally stop stocking the ingredients as well.  Nuts, huh?  At my workplace, not a month goes by when some jackass doesn't ask for a particular kind of nacho platter we literally discontinued over three damned years ago.  Give up the torch, dude, they are gone.  It's gotten to the point where I myself am not even entirely sure which nachos they are referring to, and I have served there continuously the whole time.  I guess Jesus must have dropped by three years ago and invented them.  Well, sorry, we quit making Christ Nachos.

Similarly, let's just pretend I am the server who is and has been at this restaurant day in and day out for several years, and you are the none-too-bright patron who stops in once or twice a month; believe me, I know our menu better than you.  You did not get our colossal onion-petal appetizer here two weeks back, because we stopped serving it in April 2009.  And, no, for the last time, we never had burritos.  Ever.  Period.  This is not up for debate, so don't you dare roll your eyes at me and condescendingly assure me, "Oh, you used to, it must have been before your time."  My servile status is degrading enough without you telling me how to do my job.  Compared to you, I am Gordon Ramsay.  You are . . . Pauly Shore.  At best.

Do not make me cut you.

 Ludicrous as it sounds, my coworkers and I have waited on plenty of people who do not even know what restaurant they are in.  Seriously.  They can't figure out why the individual they were supposed to meet for dinner isn't showing up, until they realize they are at a totally different chain.  And it's not that they misheard or could not recall the agreed-upon meeting place, it's that they literally thought they were inside a different restaurant altogether, because apparently to the untrained eye and TomTom-dulled brain, all casual dining establishments are indistinguishable.  I have even had customers try to pay their tabs with gift cards from our competitors, I shit you not, and they weren't making a lame attempt at a joke. You couldn't be troubled to ascertain your specific physical location in the world, but now you want to argue with me about what you ate "here" a month ago and why we "got rid of" Mellow Yellow and sweet potato fries?

So, in summary, employees of the serving industry drink a lot.

Just like Carson.

Things You Didn't Know Make You an Asshole at Restaurants, Part 1

So you think you can eat at a restaurant?  You believe you possess the requisite tact and grasp of proper etiquette to dine out and not make a dick of yourself?  Guess again.  Tipping like it's 1945, letting your bastard offspring scream and wail for forty minutes straight, and treating your server like Starscream to your Megatron are only the more obvious ways to fail at restaurant-going.  Here are a few tips on the finer points of not being That Asshole at your favorite restaurant, gaffes you probably never even considered faux paus, because you were too busy wondering why saying, "Hey, we're in a hurry, we have a movie to catch in forty minutes" had no appreciable effect on the space/time continuum or the physics of cooking food, nor did it magically move your order to the front of the queue.  ("Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize!  Fuck all these other customers, we'll make your shit first!  Fire up the flux capacitor!")

Picking your own table

They have restaurants where you get to choose your own seat.  Typically, they feature an obnoxious cartoon character as a mascot and "funployees" sporting novelty visors.  Either that, or a breakfast-anytime menu and dead-eyed waitresses with names like Ethel and voices like James Earl Jones' crossed with Joan Rivers.'  If your contact with the service industry is limited to annoying us, you may not realize that there is an order in which we seat tables, called a rotation.  This is a written sequence that, ideally, maximizes the quality of the service you receive by ensuring that no server becomes overwhelmed, because it takes into account the servers' skill level, proximity to other tables, who was last to take a table, etc.  Hence, when you waltz in, especially during a busier period, and say, "Oh, we want that nice, big booth in the far corner away from everyone else with the window," you are fucking up the rotation, if not outright demanding a table in a closed section.  You would be amazed how much consternation and confusion this can create amongst the staff.  We'll do our best to accommodate, but odds are good your service may suffer, and you are starting off on the wrong foot with even the perkiest server.

Her friendly smile conceals her seething resentment at your presumptuous arrogance.   And, no, I didn't mean "perky" that way.

Ask yourself this: five minutes after you have sat down, are you even going to remember that it mattered where that seat is?  How is this going to affect the taste of your meal or the quality of the conversation?  Trust me when I say most of you are so self-absorbed and utterly oblivious to your surroundings that you will soon make yourself more comfortable than your neighbors would like.  Half the time, I suspect people insist on particular seating, especially booths, from force of habit and subconscious societal programming, rather than any definable benefit.  Do you have a booth at your house?  Why not, if that's by far the most luxurious, comfortable option?

The same goes for requesting the bar or dining side of a split restaurant.  Again, we have our reasons for seating customers the way we do.  Despite what your righteously-moral Christian upbringing may suggest, the lounge in Zinger's is not frequented solely by knife-wielding, raucous, degenerate boozers and cleavage-baring, foul-mouthed biker sluts.  It's mostly just people like you in there, only less prejudiced.  Conversely, some people seem to be under the comically inaccurate misapprehension that service is somehow inherently better and faster in the bar.  If anything, it is the opposite in most restaurants.  For starters, there is a more casual atmosphere and the tacit assumption that you are not in a hurry.  Anyway, the food all comes from the same kitchen, Sherlock.  Second, bars in casual dining eateries are often the most minimally-staffed areas; in some cases, it's just the bartender, who has to not only wait on more tables than everyone else, plus the guests at the rail, but also make every drink for every table in the whole building.  Oh, yeah, and if the place offers food to go, the duties of taking the calls, bagging the food, and handling the transactions often fall on the bartender, too.

"Yeah, sure, pull up a seat!  I'll be with you in ten minutes or when I damn well feel like it, whichever comes first!"

So, if you see that over half the tables around the bar are already occupied, and a frenzied employee is racing around the space like a caged marmot on methamphetamine, understand that you may be waiting a few extra minutes for that first toasted marshmallow espresso martini.

Refills

Refills. We all drink 'em. I remember when I was a young teenager, and my goal was to see how many Mountain Dews I could down in the course of one meal, probably inadvertently consuming so much Yellow 5 that my impotency could be passed on even to my adopted children.

Well, I was a little prick.

You chuckle and make certifiably-retarded camel jokes or say things like, “Ha, I guess I was really thirsty!” (As if soda - a beverage consisting mostly of sugar, substitute sugar, and/or sodium - is a hydrating thirst-quencher.) But do you know what your server is thinking while they fake-laugh along with you? Fuck this fucking guy, I haven't even finished taking his fucking food order.  Only sometimes in less-civilized language.  We have roughly a bajillion things to do on a busy shift.  Is one of them bringing you refills?  Yes.  Does that mean topping off your goddamn Diet Coke every six minutes?  No.  Which, by the way, sort of eliminates the whole "diet" aspect, as does asking me to dump grenadine in each refill (roughly 15 grams of sugar per serving, oh health-conscious one).

Daily recommended allowance: not half the bottle, surprisingly.

Remember, at any given time I may have as many as twenty other people who need shit, too.  And that's to say nothing of stocking the front of the kitchen, busing and wiping off tables, running food out to every other server's tables in addition to my own, making sure the cooks have dishes on which to serve your meal, and sweeping up shit your Dr. Pepper-powered, cracker-smashing, Sweet'n'Low-flinging, salt-shaker-sucking (gross) nightmare fucking gremlin of a child has chucked on the floor while you laughed and looked on.

Yeah, really precious.  You know what?  Keep drinking Yellow 5.

Think of it this way: do you drink a two-liter with every meal at home?  Actually, judging by the fact that you'll likely need a crowbar and a jar of Vasoline to get out of the booth, you probably do. Stop that.  Or, if you just can't resist the urge to suck on a straw like a jonsing Saigonese crackwhore, understand that you are going to be without a beverage for a while.  Tough shit.  Hot food and greeting a new table comes before your fifth flavored pseudo-lemonade, which, by the way, contains precisely 0% juice.

Using other tables

I just want to clarify something right now:

This is a table.

This is a coat rack.

Notice the subtle difference?  Notice how they actually look nothing fucking alike?  Then why do you think it's acceptable to use them interchangeably?  Believe it or not, we restaurateurs have another use for that table: seating other customers.  Just because there isn't anyone there at that exact moment, doesn't mean we had no intention of putting people there any time during the course of your meal.  Agonizing and enjoyment-destroying as it may be, sit on your coat. You are the one who chose to dine at an establishment too casual for a cloakroom (the presence of tacky 80s and 90s memorabilia on the walls is a good indicator of the restaurant's relative status).  Also . . .

This is not the same as . . .

. . . this.

One of these things is not like the other, capiche?  It is not OK to discard your unwanted dishes, napkins, and table scraps on another, vacant table.  Not only does it render that table unusable, it gives us, your humble servants, yet another thing to clean up.  If you're that desperate to have the surface cleared, put the flatware and napkins on top of the plate and push it to the edge.  Assuming your server isn't occupied refilling a mango-kiwi decaffeinated green tea for the ninth time, s/he will take the hint and whisk away said refuse as quickly as possible.  Likewise, it's not cool to use another table as a secondary lounging area, nor as a playground for your spastic Children of the Corn.  We already gave you a table to use.  Use that one.  While we are on the subject of lounging . . .

Lounging

I know you go out to a restaurant to relax, have a good time, and avoid the hassles of food preparation and cleanup.  As a guy whose fridge seldom contains more than takeout leftovers, year-old condiments, and beer, I sympathize.  And when you are a paying customer, you buy the right to use our business-space for a while.  However, that does not legitimize you (1) putting off ordering for an hour while you wait for someone to join you or until the mood strikes you, (2) protracting the meal to an hour-long affair as you leave the food untouched while you natter incessantly, or (3) hanging out more than half an hour after said food has been consumed.  I know this is confusing, because an eatery looks kind of like your dining room, only with more tables and lots of strangers and even less-tasteful, "nostalgic" decor, but it's not.  Get in, get fed, get out.  That's the real motto of any restaurant, at least in the realm of casual dining.

Sorry to shatter the illusion.

The industry doesn't do reservations for precisely this reason; if you could call ahead and get a table before a person who just walked in the door, it wouldn't be very casual, would it?  I think this is the inherent problem with the target demographic of casual dining (ie. middle-class WASPy bourgeoisie who like to think they are living the high life by eating at a restaurant with servers, but actually have only a dim idea how chain restaurants work and almost no clue how truly class places are).  As a result, we as servers are supposed to "make every guest feel special" or some such bullshit, when by definition treatment isn't "special" if you give it to each and every shit-thick fuckwit who walks in the door, which we are required to do.  And, because your table isn't reserved, you don't get to boguard it all night.  We are not a snobby bistro, a loitering-friendly coffeehouse, a conference center, or a library.  You are here to eat, not hobnob like a turn-of-the-century socialite.  I shit you not, I have had a trio of patrons ask to combine two six-person tables so they could go over blueprints at dinner.  Are you fucking serious?  Realistically, from the moment you set food inside to the moment you get up to leave, no more than two hours should have passed, unless you are consistently ordering more drinks (not refills).

Ladies and seniors, I'm looking at you specifically.  More than any other group, these two subsets are guilty of grievously abusing anti-loitering policies, apparently because they lack even a vestigial sense of the passage of time.  In all seriousness, women, do you even agree on a timeframe when arranging to meet with your girlfriends?  Because judging by what I've experienced, you must call up Jennifer, Stacey, and Marissa and say something along the lines of, "Let's grab a bite at Shenanigans sometime before sunset."  Then, your posse of wannabe Sex and the City princesses proceeds to trickle in one by one over the course of three hours, after which you will take a further fifteen minutes to stop clucking like hens and cackling like hyenas, another twenty to decide you're just going to split two appetizers, and yet another hour and a half to actually eat that food.  Afterward, you will debate how to pay for the $23.00 tab you have collectively racked up, ask me to divvy it up in a needlessly complex way, then hand me a credit card to cover three out of the four checks you just had me divide.  And, sorry to say, most of you then tip about 12%.  Thanks, Vag Pack.

You wish.

And senior citizens?  I should not have to remind you that you are actively dying.  I know, I can smell it.  Every second is precious.  Do you really want to spend millions of them at Hijinks Grill and Bar?  I realize it's easy to get lost in the conversation when you can't remember where it started, where it was going, or that you already had the same one yesterday, but please limit your post-meal fond reminiscences and irritable bowel syndrome discussions to one hour.  Furthermore, if you are going to fight over who is paying the check - thoughtfully throwing me in the middle of the debate so that I have to referee your group like an adolescent birthday party - try tipping more than 10% when you triumphantly emerge from the fray as Most Gracious and Charitable Old Person.

That's all for now, kids, but rest assured this article is a To Be Continued . . .


*Note: That's a whole article without referencing Jersey Shore, MTV, Macintosh, any derivation of the word "douchebag," House, or over-reliance on technology.  Just saying.