Curmudgeon

You know you are going to have to work for your meal when your waitress (or waiter) arrives at the table and proceeds to unload your drinks, straws, coasters, silverware, etc. at one end of the table and expects you to pass it all around.  I don’t know if they have been trained to do this or are personally just too damned lazy to do their jobs.  So the meal starts with them unloading everything like that and continues throughout the meal with whomever is sitting at the end having to sort out who gets what and passing it down to them.  Later comes double aggravation.  It is a rule in restaurants that the quicker you snatch plates out from under people the faster they will leave so they can cram some more people in.  It is bad enough to have them circling like vultures trying to grab dishes away from you (how many times has your fork disappeared because you happened to lay it down?) but then you get the lazy vulture who says “Can I take that?” and expects you to gather it all up and hand it to them.  Last night the lazy waitress we had pulled that stunt and I simply said, “Sure, go ahead.”  I made no effort to pick it up and hand it to her.  I was going to make her come around and pick it up herself but Tracey (she is well trained by lazy waitresses) grabbed up the plates and handed them across to her.  I think next time I’m just going to tell them to go away and wait to clear the table until after we leave.