The food industry must hate me by now
I seem to have a knack for unintentionally confusing and/or offending anyone who tries to serve me food.
Incident 1: Sir Dogs-a-lot
While on vacation in California last year, a waiter in an Italian restaurant overheard my mate and I talking in German; as he had spent a few years in Germany, he came over for a quick chat. He introduced himself as Doig. “What an unusual first name”, I exclaimed in a friendly manner. “Yeah… it’s an old Irish name”, he explained.
This got me pondering: if someone introduced themselves to me as Doig, I would assume their name was Doug, and that they just had a weird accent. “I bet people call you Doug a lot”, I opined. The waiter looked momentarily stunned, politely lied “Oh yes, people call me Dog all the time. Woof.”, and excused himself, never to be seen again.
I can only imagine him retreating to the alley, weeping uncontrollably and over-dramatically asking himself “Am I *that* ugly? Mother was right!” while howling at the moon.
Incident 2: The non-ordered pizza
While on vacation in Florida this year, my chum and I decided it was time for lunch. We chanced upon a Little Caesar’s pizza take-away, a chain of restaurants that neither of us had ever been to, and so naturally we were a little hazy on the required protocol. Furthermore, there was no-one ahead of us in line, so we couldn’t observe and then copy their behaviour. Bravely, I stepped up to the counter.
Pizza guy > Hey guys. Cheese or pepperoni?
Me > Pepperoni, please.
The pizza guy then turned around and got a box of pizza out of the heated cabinet behind him. I pondered: aren’t pizzas normally made to-order? Then why did this guy have one ready and waiting? Uh-oh, somebody must have called in and ordered a pizza, and he assumed I was that person, who had come in to actually pick it up. As I am a nice guy, I didn’t want to take away someone else’s pizza, and so I pointed at the pizza and responded:
Me > Um, I didn’t order that.
Of course, anyone who has ever been to Little Caesar’s before knows that they always have a few pizzas waiting in heated cabinets, so they can serve customers very quickly. So imagine what this whole incident must have looked like to the poor guy behind the counter:
Pizza guy > Cheese or pepperoni?
Me > Pepperoni please.
* Pizza guy puts pizza box on counter
* A couple of awkwardly silent seconds pass
* Ben points at the pizza box
Me > I didn’t order that.
To the guy’s credit, he didn’t start throwing things at me. (For the record: it was an exceedingly decent 14″ pizza considering it only cost five bucks.)
Incident 3: My cup floweth over
Later during the same Florida vacation, we were in a fairly pricey restaurant, intent on eating several metric tons of beef. You could tell it was pricey because I didn’t have to explicitly ask for a chilled glass to go with the beer I ordered. (In less classy places, they will indeed ask if you actually want to bother with a glass. Who on earth drinks beer out of the bottle in a restaurant?!) When the waitress arrived with our drinks, she poured beer from the bottle into my glass; and next to it. Actually, mostly next to it; the table was awash with beer.
As she spread out paper napkins to soak up the spilled beer, she apoligised for making such a mess. “Oh, don’t worry, I’ll just suck it out of the napkins when nobody’s looking.”, I replied, hoping to defuse the situation with a bit of self-deprecating humour.
She didn’t even smirk.
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