Going to dinner? Bring the handi-wipes.
I took the family out to dinner to celebrate the Mrs. birthday Sunday night at one of our regular restaurants. Food was great as usual, except it was served by a woman who was either suffering from an inner ear problem, or had been dared to spin in place for a few minutes before serving drinks that night. For her first trip to the table with drinks, she quickly drew my attention away from her thumb and finger resting on the rim of my martini glass by spilling about $1.50 of appletini (no laughing, I didn't know it was a chic drink) on the table. Then she just spread it around a bit with one of those totally non-absorbent cloth napkins. On her second trip, she dropped a bottle of root beer on the table in front of my daughter. It landed right-side up, but the impact launched root beer all over my daughter, who was gently escorted to the ladies room by our lazy-gripped waitress to be toweled off.
My second appletini (after all I didn't get to drink a whole one), came in a different martini glass. This one was beefy, without a stem, was very stout, and seemed to be designed just for the caliber of wait service we were getting. I was really curious whether she asked for it to be poured in this clutzware or if the bartender was hip to her.
At the end of the meal, which was excellent, butter-fingers Mary informed us that the root beer would be taken care of, but that was all she was permitted to take off the check. She then thanked us for being so patient and said something close to, "you were all much nicer than all the other people I've spilled on." Huh? We were apparently only the latest victims in this woman's drink-spilling rampage!! Clearly this occurred often enough to start impacting revenue for the establishment, necessitating the "pay for the drink only" rule to be enacted. I shared with my family my temptation to suggest that maybe she should practice, which in turn gave way to all kinds of hysterical scenarios involving crash-test-dummies sitting at a dinner table being served on nerf dishes, with a coach giving instructions behind a one-way mirror. I laughed so hard my head hurt.
My second appletini (after all I didn't get to drink a whole one), came in a different martini glass. This one was beefy, without a stem, was very stout, and seemed to be designed just for the caliber of wait service we were getting. I was really curious whether she asked for it to be poured in this clutzware or if the bartender was hip to her.
At the end of the meal, which was excellent, butter-fingers Mary informed us that the root beer would be taken care of, but that was all she was permitted to take off the check. She then thanked us for being so patient and said something close to, "you were all much nicer than all the other people I've spilled on." Huh? We were apparently only the latest victims in this woman's drink-spilling rampage!! Clearly this occurred often enough to start impacting revenue for the establishment, necessitating the "pay for the drink only" rule to be enacted. I shared with my family my temptation to suggest that maybe she should practice, which in turn gave way to all kinds of hysterical scenarios involving crash-test-dummies sitting at a dinner table being served on nerf dishes, with a coach giving instructions behind a one-way mirror. I laughed so hard my head hurt.