There are a few things that people do when dining out that completely flummox me. Things that make no sense to me what so ever. Of course, I'm aware that they probably make perfect sense to the people who do them, but their reasoning escapes me. For instance, people who insist on being seated in a booth when they're shown to a table. Now, if you have small children, I get why you want a booth. You want to trap them between you and the wall to prevent them from escaping your clutches and running around like monkeys on acid. I get that, really I do, and I thank you for it! What I don't understand is someone without small children who militantly demands a booth in a closed section instead of the perfectly nice table available. We're not even talking about the people who want the dirty booth instead of the clean table that's ready to be seated, standing in the aisle, waiting for someone to bus the booth and clean it, disrupting the flow of seating and lurking over the people already sitting at tables around them. Seriously? It makes that much difference in how much you enjoy your meal? I also don't get the people who demand a lime with their water or soft drink instead of a lemon. Limes are more expensive, generally kept at the bar where the server has to ask for them, and taste no different than the more easily accessible lemon. Requesting a lime slows down your service, since every time you get a refill, the server has to make another trip to the bar. That's part of their job you say? Of course it is, but they can serve you more efficiently if you don't make silly requests that don't make any difference in taste. A lime in your water doesn't make you look more sophisticated either, it makes you look pretentious. Then there are the people who want their toddler to order his own meal. The server is forced to stand there and wait while Mommy keeps saying "Tell her what you want, go on, tell her, tell her what you want, you can do it, say it, tell her what you want, tell her, use your words, you can say it, tell her," while said toddler is hiding his face or trying to get under the table or coloring or anything except telling the server what he wants. Newsflash: restaurants are busy places and servers really don't have time to camp out while you try to get junior to use his words. That server has other tables that also need her attention and if they don't get it, she'll lose money. What about the people who don't unroll their silver from the napkin? Instead, they just pull the utensils out of the roll and ask for extra napkins, and that's if they use the utensils at all. I've seen this with both cloth napkins as well as paper ones. People are animals. Guess what? We give you the silver and the napkin in one tidy little package for your convenience. If you don't use it, we can't reuse it on the next table. (Would you really want that anyway? Ewww!) We have to unroll it, wash the silver, and throw away a perfectly good napkin that you were too lazy to unroll, after we had to give you another one. Napkins (like limes) cost money to restaurants and when customers use (or demand and then not use) more and more, the restaurant will eventually pass that cost on to you. I also don't understand the people who want to pay their modest ticket with a $100 bill. Most servers carry a "bank" to make change that usually consists of about $20. The restaurant doesn't provide this. If you come in to eat early in the shift and want to pay your $25 ticket with a $100, chances are the server can't break it and has to get change from the bartender or the manager. If either one of them are busy, this could take some time, holding up not only you, but also all the other tables in that server's section. Since you almost always have to ask for $100's from the bank and ATMs generally don't give them, the people who do this are doing it intentionally. I don't get it. It doesn't make you look wealthy. It's a pain for everyone involved and most of the time, you get change that consists of $1's and $5's. That fits in your wallet really well, right? What about people who walk in talking on their cell phone and continue to talk on it all the way to the table? Seriously? You can't finish your conversation in the car? How about the people who don't read the menu? Instead, they want to ask me three hundred and one questions involving the possible three thousand and one ingredients the restaurant has. "Do you have this?" Believe it or not, the menus are tools created just for you, the customer! It has all the information you'd like to know! The best one ever was the woman who came in one day who left her reading glasses in the car and demanded to use my prescription glasses that I was wearing! I wish I was making this up. They aren't reading glasses and they aren't for perfect strangers to use! Who does this?! People behaving badly.
