Little Red Ants

I cruised in from Rockford last evening a little past dinner time. Baseball and audio books made the boring drive tolerable. The Cubs lost. Burning Daylight made millions. The wife had skipped down to the mall for whatever she goes to the mall to do. She was waiting on me to eat. I told her I was home and she said to meet her at a specific local sports bar.

We arrived within a few minutes of each other. Since it was late, almost eight o'clock, we did not have to wait on a table. On the spur of the moment I ordered a breaded tenderloin instead of my usual bacon, jalapeno, peanut butter cheeseburger (trust me it is way good). The place was crowded as usual, and even more so on account of the Pacers/Hawks game. We were not surprised when it took a while to get our food. We waited. We waited some more. We continued to wait. Our server never came by so we could ask if our order was lost. We waited some more. No food.  No server. Finally, 50 minutes into our wait he stopped by and seemed surprised we had no food. I was amazingly nice and polite about it.

He came back about ten minutes later with a tale of computer problems and blah, blah, blah excuses. I know the server is not in control of the kitchen, but perhaps he should have stopped by the table a little more often than every 50 minutes -- if only to refresh our drinks? He said a manger would stop by. About 15 minutes later a gent in a tie stopped by and gave us our food. He said nary a word of apology. No sorry, no kiss my rear, just "enjoy!". Now I am not one of those people who wants or expects free stuff. Things happen, orders do get lost, mistakes are made. But a simple "sorry you had to wait so long" would have been nice. And no, it was not the crowds that delayed our food, they turned over some tables right by us while we were waiting on our food. Finally, long after we were done eating the server showed up and said we could have a free dessert. Since we had now been there more than two hours, I said sure, why not. I left 15%, only out of pity since I know servers work for tips. I guess he made just over two bucks an hour for sort of waiting on us.

On the bright side I got to spend dinner with my beautiful wife instead of huddled alone in a restaurant, or eating with a customer, so I won in the grand scheme of things. When we got home the wife found a half dozen little red ants marching in echelon across the kitchen floor. They had a flanker scout posted high on the island countertop. We were out of bug spray, so, being a prince of a human being, I drove down to WalMart to get some bug killer. The wife gave me a kiss and told me thanks when I got home. It really was a good day.