Have you ever left a restaurant during that tiny period of time after you’ve ordered your drinks but before the waitress has brought them? I have, plenty of times. I call it the soda-break-break and I actually feel pretty bad about it.
I remind myself frequently that it is not a case of the fabled “dining and dashing,” but instead a last minute choice to eat elsewhere. And I earnestly regret that the restaurant is out a few sodas (I won’t go into my theory about how soda is the best and cheapest liquid in the world here, because that won’t win my any sympathy points). But my real guilt comes from imagining the confusion of the waitress when she (yes, she, I’m being sexist today) returns. I also feel very sneaky rushing away from the table with my head down, shoulders slumped, giving a furtive “thanks” to the hostess, even though I am fairly certain that this practice is not illegal just in bad taste.
You might ask why I am doing this so frequently if I am aware that it is in bad taste. (On a side note, is eating out in bad taste these days? With all of those calorie lists on tables I’m not certain.) Last minute regret-driven decisions are just one of the many fantastic bad habits inherent in being indecisive.
Indecisive behavior is particularly cumbersome when dealing with restaurants and eating because it can be so easily shielded by a pretend politeness. No one wants to venture a food type and when the issue is decided, everyone wants to drive there. I am personally a master of the “I don’t care. What do you feel like eating?” line even when my soul earns for a burrito.
I suspect that you are thinking that while this is all well and good, repressing one’s desire for a burrito is not a crime equal to the soda-break-break. And I agree, the two are not equal. But the soda-break-break is an escalated version of the indecisive choosing conversation.
The break generally occurs on occasions when you have been seated and you know the moment that you sit down that you made the wrong choice. Anything could bring about this realization but my queries have revealed expensive food, loud kids, and a bitchy hostess with gauged ears as the main contenders.
For example, my personal-person and I were seated once in a Marie Calendar’s in some shopping mall somewhere. The moment that our asses hit the cold plastic booth it was as though a switch had been thrown. We suddenly saw the restaurant as it really was: cold, depressing, and filled with church-goers wanting the breakfast buffet at 2:20 in the afternoon. I stared in horror at an old man sitting alone a few booths away eating a whole pie and drinking pink lemonade. Not even cornbread could persuade me to stay.
We asked for two cokes, and when the waitress wasn’t looking, we made a soda-break-break.
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