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It's always when I know I have to get up at a certain time that my sleep suffers the most. It's one of life's cruelest ironies.
I realized that my last blog, which was a survey asking about my senior year in high school, was exceptionally depressing. Well, unfortunately, that time in my life was pretty rotten. I guess I had forgotten how crappy it was for the most part. Of course, who knows how accurate of a representation the answers to that survey were. My senior year was most of seven years ago, and memories do change with time. Funny thing is, it's actually a part of my life that means little to my everyday existence now. I can honestly say that before that survey I hadn't even thought about events from then for several years or more.
I really really really am wanting to hurry up and buy a mandolin. There are some cheap ones online, but they may suck. I still want one, though. There's one on Musician's Friend for $40 including shipping. The reviews are generally positive, though they cite a need to change strings (duh!) and perhaps sand the bridge. Nothing an old violist can't handle, I suppose....
Amy's parents are in town for the weekend. We haven't seen them since the week after Christmas, so it's good to see them. They're staying here, using a blow-up mattress on the floor of the new office. It's certainly cheaper than a hotel. Amy has to work at least a little tomorrow. She may get off early. Even though I get along smashingly with her parents, it's still a bit awkward to hang out with them alone, at least to me.
We went to Longhorn tonight as their treat. I ordered a prime rib but never got it. It was an odd experience, but since I'm apparently not getting to sleep anytime soon, I might as well try to explain it. Everyone will think I'm a picky motherfucker by the time I'm done.
Okay, so we went to Longhorn and I ordered the Prime Rib. I haven't had one in literally years, and I saw one going to an accompanying table that looked absolutely delicious. The meal progressed pretty normally, until the waitress awkwardly walked up to me and quietly told me that they had run out of rare prime rib (I only eat steak rare). She asked me whether I would like anything else, and I requested the menu. As she stood there quite impatiently waiting for me to choose a new meal, I decided to order a simple cheeseburger. I figured that this couldn't lose, since it was a downgrade in price but an ungrade in reliability. Little did I know that immediately after taking my reorder, she would reappear with everyone else's food. So, apparently she waited until everyone else's food was done to spring this on me, and it's just not proper for people to eat when other people are still waiting. From this, I had decided to cancel my cheeseburger. Before I could finish the sentence, she shoved a massive prime rib in front of me (the thing must've been about three pounds!) and said "well, I thought I'd bring this out and make sure it wasn't alright."
What the fuck?
Keep in mind this tidbit: whereas it used to be that restaurants, upon serving a crappy dish, would replace the dish and take it off the bill, today there's a push to bring out the remade dish regardless of temporal inconvenience and still charge you full price for it.
The steak, while being massive, was medium-well at best. Certainly not rare. I cut into it to inspect it while she stood there, and said "I can't eat this. It's medium-well." She had purposely brought out something that she knew wasn't acceptable, hoping to get me to eat it so that she could charge me the full menu price. On top of that, she had done this after I ordered a replacement cheeseburger, trying to jack our bill from the $7 cheeseburger to the $18 prime rib, and hence improve the base on which her tip would be calculated.
She apologized and tried to explain that she didn't know how she could've dealt with this any better, which I thought was a really odd comment to make. Nonetheless, I suggested that she could have told us about 25 minutes earlier that my order was not available this evening, giving me ample time to choose something else. This comment attracted the attention of the nearby manager (it wasn't loud or anything, he was just standing there -- perhaps he had been the whole time but I hadn't noticed). Once he paid attention, she began explaining that the whole thing was her fault and that I should consider myself welcome to order anything I liked and she'd try to get it to the front of the line. The manager joined into this charade. He tried to entice me with other food on the menu, of course suggesting the most expensive menu items first. He obviously wanted to save this sale and ensure that money would be spent in his restaurant on my dinner tonight.
I refused all of the offers. A tip for you: this is the nuclear option when dealing with restaurant managers. They hate not getting the opportunity to make it right, either in a scale of getting your money that night, or at least assuring that you'll return some day. Perhaps I overuse it, but if we eat out (especially when it's just Amy and I paying the bill) we expect for everything to not suck. If it does suck, we tend to not give the restaurant the opportunity to expect our money. I don't mind having food re-made if it's awful, but the inconvenience is enough that I shouldn't have to pay for it. If Amy and I go out together for a relaxing evening and her dinner is dreadful, I want her to send it back. However, since that screws up the timing (either I can wait until my food is cold, or I can eat it in front of her and let her return the favor when her order comes after I've finished), I think that inconvenience should make the messed-up meal free. It used to, anyway.
So, yes, I dropped the nuclear option. I told him that I wasn't interested in dinner there this evening because they had already screwed up enough, and I didn't want to give them the opportunity to screw up anything else. I said that I would be getting dinner elsewhere tonight because his restaurant had already swindled the opportunity to have my money (or in reality my in-laws' money, but that didn't have the ring to it, you know?). He only responded with more offers of food, this time free food, almost robotically. That's the downside: once you drop the nuke, there's no going back. I refused again. Apparently, he's not very good at listening.
See, I wasn't irritated by any of this. I was jovial through the entire process, and I certainly didn't let it ruin my evening. Quite the contrary, while I admitted that it was annoying (and absolutely unacceptable from any overpriced big-box restaurant), I thought it was mostly entertaining. The waitress, though, spoke three words to us the rest of the night.... "any dessert tonight?" She didn't say anything when she brought the bill. She hated me for turning down the meal and screwing up her evil plan.
I never did get dinner. Now, I'm starting to get hungry and stuff.
I'm such a dick. Shun me.
Posted by Your Friendly Neighborhood DJ on April 8, 2006 02:37 AM | Permalink
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