The other night my pal C.C. and I went to a pub for a beer after seeing "The Ides of March." It was a depressing movie and we needed to recover a bit. I ordered a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and C.C. got a Coors Light.
Our waitress was pretty rude. She brought our two beers and sat them down right in the middle of the table.
"Which is which?" C.C. asked.
"The Coors Light," said the waitress, with an undisguised sneer in her voice, "is the lighter one."
I looked at her over my glasses. I don't normally look at people over my glasses because I'm not really
looking at that point, since I absolutely cannot see more than a few inches unaided, but I felt in this case she needed to experience the Mean Lady Glare.
I mean, come on. If you're selling the damn beer, don't try to make your customers feel bad for ordering it. Is that too much to ask?
We picked up the food menu and began flipping. C.C. dropped hers about 15 seconds later.
"Mozzarella sticks," she said, and I understood the shorthand. She wasn't going to eat anything there.
Mozzarella sticks are where C.C. draws her line. She says that restaurants that serve mozzarella sticks are just pushing food that comes frozen in a box. Seeing that one item on the menu is a signal that they don't really care about food.
I get it.
I draw the line at the whiff of old grease. I have a nose like a bloodhound and if I walk in a place and catch the smell of stale oil, I walk right back out. I have learned the hard way to not eat there, lest I risk disappointment and/or food poisoning.
Where do you draw your line? What tips you off?
Photo by
Jumbledpile. Used under a
Creative Commons license.
