Restaurant Funnies

Today, Shalee's parents were awesome enough to watch our boys for a few hours while Shalee had a photo shoot. I am the illustrious assistant. Shalee's Mom and Dad had offered to stay for most of the afternoon, so after the photo shoot was done we had a good chunk of time to have a date. It's been a while since our last date so we were very excited. We had a lot of fun talking and spending time together.

We went to Olive Garden on our date. The place was packed as usual. A twenty-five minute wait isn't bad though when you don't have two starving/screaming children on your hips. We waited outside because all the inside seating was taken, the sun was out so it wasn't too bad. About ten or fifteen into our arctic waiting game I got up and went to the door to see if any inside seats had opened up. No dice. I sauntered back over to our bench but on the way hooked my shoe on the door stop and about fell on my face. I can only imagine how it looked to the comfortable warm people inside. You can be sure I would have been laughing had I watched it happen to someone else. My near fiasco brought a couple memories back to me, some other restaurant embarrassments if you will.

We once went to Johnny Corrino's and our waitress looked like this:

Ok, so maybe not that old, but she was considerably older than you would expect to see waiting tables. Anyway, our waitress took our drink order and headed to the kitchen. She was gone for a long time, not like a quick pee break long time, more like a "we were all out of your diet soda, so I ran down to the bottling facility in Salt Lake and got you some" long time. In an effort to make my also exasperated wife laugh a little at the situation I said something like this, "Well, she was really old, maybe she died on the way to the kitchen with our drink order." Shalee's face went that special shade that only occurs when a spouse totally embarrasses the other. Yeah, the old waitress whom I had accused of ruining my drink order by her untimely death was standing just over my shoulder, just outside my sight. The upside was, she was holding my drink, the downside, she totally heard everything I had just said. She got the best tip I have ever left.

On a separate occasion we ventured out to Red Robin. We discovered Red Robin while on our trip to British Columbia and we really love their food. This particular trip our waitress was terrible, awful, really, she just sucked a lot. Honestly, if I had been dragged to the kitchen and hand my hand put through the hamburger grinder i probably could have left feeling better served. I decided I wanted to let the waitress know how I felt so when she brought our check I wrote see reverse on the tip section. The message on the back said something like this, "Pay more attention to your customers, just because we are young and have kids doesn't mean we can't afford to tip you." I left no monetary tip. We drove home and Shalee discovered that her phone was missing. Guess where it had been left. Yep. On the table at Red Robin. I had to return to the scene of the crime and pick up her phone. I was only a little embarrassed because our waitress needed to hear what I had to say but still.

Anyway, just don't be a schmo like me when you go out to eat and you will be just fine.