Pointless Gripe (#1 in what surely will become a series)

Ever go to a restaurant and place an order, and the waitress doesn’t write anything down?

You’re maybe a little impressed, but perhaps more concerned. And rightly so.

I had it happen – again – this morning. I placed an order, and the waitress didn’t write anything down. Still, it’s pretty standard stuff, so I figured she must just be good at remembering by now. Wrong.

Two minutes later, she’s back asking me to confirm what I ordered, and I had to repeat every detail. If she’d written it down as they usually do, I only would have had to say it all once.

The same thing happens sometimes at sandwich places, or even McDonald’s. My daughter was hungry on the drive back from San Luis Reservoir, so I stopped at a McDonald’s to get us each an order of small fries to tie us over until dinner. The exchange went like this:

Me: Two small fries please, to go.

McEmployee: Um… (clicks register here and there) Um, OK, I’m sorry, what was that again?

Me: Two small fries, to go.

McEmployee: OK. (looks up with vacant smile) Is that for here or to go?

Me: (for third time) To go.

The low point, however, is when the waiter doesn’t write it down, and then fifteen minutes later he brings out the wrong thing. Now it’s going to be another fifteen minutes of your life that this guy has killed out of your life, because writing down the order was just too much effort.

In the big scheme, these are meaningless, trivial things. So why does it still bother me when they happen?

End of pointless gripe. Real post coming soon.