Bad Manners and Brimstone

I found myself with a collection of “vintage” handbags a few years ago when I was researching how to rejuvenate the bags I had in the back of my closet and seldom used. I discovered   that people who collect bags consider them  to be vintage when they are at least twenty years old, as mine were.  I learned how to restore my old bags and, when they were done, I started checking out second hand sites to find more bags to fix up. I’ve been having a good time doing this and it is fun to have a collection I can wear.

My husband and I went out for a late lunch yesterday afternoon. It was after three pm when we arrived at the restaurant and there were very few customers in the place. Not ten minutes after our food was served our server came by, dropped off our check and asked us if she could bring us any boxes. We had barely started to eat.

I felt that we were being rushed and for no reason. I responded, matter-of-factley, not snidely, not in an angry way, “we just got here.”  The server seemed offended by my response.

Would the server’s actions have bothered you? Would you have said anything?

This is one of the reasons I don’t care for reserved  seating. If you get stuck next to a talker you can’t easily get up and move. Getting up and moving was always my preferred method of dealing with noise or some other nearby annoyance in a movie theater. If I’m in a reserved seat I will look directly at the offending party and say, “would you please be quiet?”  It sometimes works.

I use the recipe on the Libby’s can, subtract one tablespoon of evaporated milk and add two tablespoons of molasses. The molasses gives the pie a little “deeper” taste and a little browner color.

What really boggles my mind is volunteering an adult for a specific date like that without asking. It would make more sense to say something like "Oh, Suzie would love to teach little June sometime" or whatever. (It's still not okay to voluntell someone, but I can understand that more - it also wouldn't have built the kid's hopes up as much). But who the heck randomly picks a date for someone else and just assumes it will work? Crazy.

Yes. Volunteering someone else without any basis for doing so is obnoxious but giving a time and place for it to happen is even more so. What on earth was that secretary thinking? Was she even thinking?

Excellent news! Very happy for you.

I always need salt and I always ask for it in a restaurant if there isn’t any on the table. No server has ever ever lectured me about  asking for salt.  Maybe that’s because 90% of the time I eat out it’s at a chain restaurant or a very casual one. I doubt very much if any of their cooks ever knows or cares who puts salt on what.

But... in the past few years I’ve had servers tell me that the restaurant doesn’t have salt shakers. They told me this at Chipotle, although they did bring out a container with about a quarter of a cup of salt in it when I told them I couldn’t eat the food without salt. 

I have also had servers/counter help tell they don’t have any salt(!)  I’ve been told this when buying popcorn at the zoo and at a major league ball park (where they also told they didn’t have straws because “people throw them at the players.”). A local pizza place denied having any salt in the restaurant. I ended up buying a bag of potato chips to crumble over my pizza so I could eat it.

Now I always carry a couple of salt packets in my purse, along with a paper straw, which I promise not to throw at anyone.