“Part of the joy I get from dining out is speaking with the hopefully pleasant, attentive and polite waitstaff about the menu, the restaurant, or the day in general.”
Not me! I could gladly do without the hoping for a bigger tip, suck-up routine.
Ate at Red Lobster yesterday. The “server” gave my meal to the wife and vice versa. Except after switching them to the right people, my wife had my asparagus and her rice was still in the kitchen.
It was dead, there were hardly any customers in the place. He did suck up enough for my wife to still leave him a decent tip. YES, my wife pays! After all she has the money.
Maybe the paranoids are after me, but at age 84 I am beginning to detect an old-age discrimination among the young people that seat you at RL. Hadn't been there in a long time, but wife and I felt like some of those biscuits, so we went to the one in St. George, UT.
We asked for a booth, so the kid takes us past all the nice ones with a window and places us at the last one, a closed in spot near the men's lavatory. Halfway though the meal I start to notice how isolated we are (situation awareness not working that day) and I start to steam. Can't do much about it at that point, but it started to eat at me when I got home until I b!tch-slapped my self out of it.
A month later we went again, fully prepared to say OUT LOUD "This is not acceptable!" if they tried to pull that again.
This time it was a young girl and she steered us towards the same area. However she stopped one booth short, still a bit out of the way, so I told her we preferred on further out in the open. I didn't get "the Look" but I sensed a bit of exasperation, and were seated out with the rest of the luncheon crowd.
We go there because of their "Seaman's Platter" with, except for the fried/breaded shrimp, the seafood is all grilled.
As I said, maybe I'm just too sensitive, but, by choice, we don't eat out much, but have noticed this tendency as of late. It's as if they don't want the "old folks" in view of the younger crowd.