Words for My Enjoyment

I Am Afraid That My Waitress Doesn’t Find Me Funny Enough To Tell Her Friends About Me

February 6th, 2007

I like to impress people. Okay?

Maybe that’s why every time I go to a restaurant, I don’t see the trip as a food refueling. I don’t see the act of sitting down at a table and ordering food as a necessity. In all honesty, I like to treat each visit to a local restaurant as an opportunity to entertain the downtrodden. To add a spark in a wholly unsparkful day. To entertain my waitress with such skill that it will impact them more than they ever imagined.

Unfortunately, I am afraid that my waitress doesn’t find me funny enough to tell her friends about me.

While most people like to cause problems when they interact with their servers (and obviously forget about the spit-in-food factor), I come from a different school of thought. I’m the guy who likes to introduce myself, ask the servers their opinions on the menu, and break the ice with a few stories about my time in the War.

Which War, I never mention — but that’s just the beginning of the hilarity that’s about to ensue.

I try to be the complete opposite of all the other customers that my beloved waitress has served throughout the day. I choose not to be the “food isn’t hot enough” guy. I stay away from being the “endless soda refill patron.” I do my best to refrain from being the “excessive roll eater” dude. I don’t put used gum in folded sugar packets, I don’t drop silverware on the floor, and I definitely don’t send back my food over and over again.

But do I make my waitress laugh? Indeed I do.

Thing is, I figure that my waitress has probably had the worst day ever. Slinging food, dealing with opinionated busboys, having those aching feet screaming out all day long while she dreams of becoming an actress or a CPA or a lawyer instead. I know that my waitress would be much rather doing a long laundry list of other things, but since stripping is something she just couldn’t see herself doing because she’s too proud to do so — this is the bed she’s gonna have to get out of each day.

So if I can make that day better by doing a pratfall or purposefully burning my face on one of those portable fajita burners — don’t think I won’t do it.

But lately, my thoughts have started to contradict my actions. My enthusiasm and fervor for entertaining my waitress has turned instead to something more self-serving. It seems that I have become a little obsessed with whether or not, by the end of said waitress’ day, if I was the funniest of all her customers…and if said referenced server found me funny enough to tell her friends about me at the end of the day.

Is that wrong to want that?

I mean, if you’re going to go out of your way to be funny to the point of totally forgetting what you even ordered or ate in the first place, I think being able to find out if I was the funniest customer by the end of the day isn’t something completley unrealistic to want to know. Like, for example, if my waitress had 100 customers in one day and I happened to be in the top 10 funny customers she served that day — isn’t it fair that I find out my ranking the next day?

I figure there could be some kind of way for her to post a list or something on the web. You know, a kind of Top 10 Funniest Customer list or something, that could potentially look like this:

Today’s Top 10 Funniest Customers
by Jeannie Evans, Outback Steakhouse

• 10. J. Eisenberg: Told funny story about milk shooting from his nose when he was a kid.
• 09. B. Green: Accidentally got refill of iced-tea when she was drinking Diet Coke. Look on her face was priceless when she thought she was drinking one thing, but tasted the other!!
• 08. T. Mavers: Let me feel the plate in his head.
• 07. K. Weng: Made joke about eating for two, even though she wasn’t pregnant — then referenced the movie Total Recall where the guy had an alien creature that lived in his stomach! Haha.
• 06. D. Evans: Did impression of old man at table 14, who kept sending back his salmon because it wasn’t “red enough.”
• 05. H. Singleton: Asked if he could request that someone spit in his food.
• 04. P. Davidson: Went on a rant about people sticking their gum in the Equal packets.
• 03. O. Langford: Told joke about his mother and her obsession with scrapbooking.
• 02. S. Kael: Asked about my personal life, then made hilarious jokes about my ex-boyfriend.
• 01. M. Donnis: Created a fort out of the laminated menus, which was visually hilarious!

Which, of course, seemed like a great idea until I realized that I would then become obsessed with why I was only number four out of ten. Like a guy creating a fort out of laminted menus or some customer making jokes about my server’s ex-boyfriend could ever be funnier than my rant on gum in sugar packets?

That’s the problem. There’s no winning here.

No matter what I do or how funny I am or how personable or witty or clever I can be while eating a salad, a bread roll and a plate of chicken parm — I’m still going to be afraid that my waitress doesn’t find me funny enough to tell her friends about me.

Which takes all the fun out of going to a restaurant and being clever.

Which makes me wonder if I shouldn’t just invest in frozen foods and talk to myself in the mirror while I eat my Swanson’s TV Dinner.

At least then I could tell my friends about me.

Posted under Fears, Waitresses. |