I Gotta Go Roll Up My Windows

  I have not rambled aimlessly for some time now (being overly obsessed with barbecue hunting), but I will regress for your enjoyment.  A reader of many blogs and other noteworthy scribing I have found that there are extraordinarily smart people out there. I do not subscribe to being smart just to be smart. Smartness must have a purpose, a place, a higher goal. Therefore, I subscribe to be clever, if not clever, then at least not an idiot.

  Maybe my tombstone will read "Not the smartest cookie, but not just a crumb." I obsess with idiotic behavior, and my goal in life is to point it out. Plenty of idiotic behavior goes undocumented. We must document this behavior for the future of the species. Otherwise, the ants and the roaches will take over the world. No, the rats and the mice will NOT take over the world as they are too much like us. Duh... has one ever heard of Micky Mouse and Atom Ant? Atom Ant will kick Micky's butt any day of the week.

http://weirdthings.com/2009/10/the-labrador-sea-monster/

  Sometimes I genuinely feel awful that I do not have something intelligent, deep, and or even spiritual to share with my readers. I do not. I care not for the depths of the mental oceans where sea monsters swallow time and space. I fear those monsters who make us pull our brains out of our skulls and examine them with piercing stainless steel picks to drain out the inadequacy of our spirits. I choose rather to jet ski on top of this dread ocean full of mental monsters. I ride with a shotgun in hand as I may need to shoot any wayward tentacles that may arise in the mist.

  Speaking of mists, there are idiots in the steamy mists of summer, and they must be documented.

  It is summertime in the Deep South. Hotness rules the day, that is, until the afternoon thunderstorms roll in and dump liquid sunshine on unsuspecting drivers. I am curious why some individuals leave their car windows down in the summer. Is there a significant difference in temperature with the windows down versus up? Do they lock their doors in the wintertime? If so, why? Do they have radios that work in their cars or have they been ripped out already?

  What truly baffles me is (no matter what the driver is doing at the time) their action must be discontinued immediately due to the "surprise" thunder shower. It matters not what the activity is at hand.

• Have you been waiting in line at the bank for fifteen minutes? Go roll up your windows - its raining.
• Are you waiting on tables at work? Go roll up your windows - its pouring.
• Is your shopping cart full at the grocery store (with ice cream deicing)? Forget it - your floorboard is two inches deep in water.

 Thunderstorm activity may not happen everywhere in the world, but it does happen here. If one lives in the Deep South, one will encounter thunderstorms with some regularity during the summer months.

  I can only conclude that the idiots who leave their windows down during these summer months are not from the South. They may be illegal. Maybe they have infiltrated to inbreed with the logical and intelligent in our society. Only then, when we are all dumbed down enough, they will strike and peel off their outer epidermis to reveal that they are prickly skinned aliens... right. Maybe they are Yankees. No, Yankees are smarter that that.

 It could be that the drivers that I speak of do not have air conditioning. This is the only logical answer. Maybe the two-degree difference in the temperature of their car with the windows down is significant enough to warrant such idiocy.

  What ever the reason, we must fight back. We must stop this behavior. We must save mankind.

Thanks for reading,
gf

The Bargainers

 There is a growing collection of "entrepreneurs" in the dining world these days. I hereby will call them "The Bargainers".

 I am not sure where they all came from, or why they came, but they are possibly here to stay. Bargainers have dug in, and entrenched themselves into society during these last most unfortunate years of recession. These are a variety of diners that believe that restaurant managers and owners have unlimited resources to promote whatever, whenever. Somehow, we flat out owe them.

 Church groups and schools (looking for donations for a raffle, golf tournament, booster club, etc.) are the benign Bargainers. Some call them "beggars". There is at least a chance of a return on investment with those type donations. Unfortunately, managers are often, not in a position to hand out prizes and donations for everyone's financial crisis "bake sale".

 The true purebred Bargainer is a piece of work. In their mind, they are doing the establishment an extraordinary favor. They just want a discount for waking up in the morning. We recently had booked a party of thirty on a Friday night at seven thirty. Which, for your information, is when the entire planet wants to eat dinner. I felt that we had already given this group dedicated service, by providing a separate and private dining room, during a peak hour, while we were on a wait. This assessment was incorrect. The leader of the pack presented herself to the floor manager. She proceeded to tell him that she thought that we should not charge her group for their teas. She felt that since she was an "event planner", and since she had brought us her party's business, we should make this discount (about seventy five dollars worth of sales). My floor manager let her know that he was not in a position to approve such a concession. She huffed out a "Let me speak to YOUR boss." I reckon that was her error #44-3a (asking for the boss).

 "His boss" arrived and greeted the guest with a smile and a handshake. She delivered the same story, and she received the same answer. She then spewed her same response. "I need your corporate number then." OK, thanks, and come again... Bargainer. 
 How do these people conclude that managers can randomly discount meals with no errors on the restaurant's part? If one goes into Wal Mart and takes their entire bowling team, do they expect to get a discount? When taking your entire family to the dentist, is the result a discount? A pre-negotiated discount is one thing (still annoying), but at least there can be a pleasant discussion about what can or cannot be done. Trying to intimidate a floor manager with the whole "I will call your boss" routine just ticks me off.

 The wait staff certainly does not like the bargainers as a general rule. "Bargainer" and "generous tipper" usually are not found in the same paragraph or chapter. Waiting on these groups is a challenging task (especially if you want a fair tip). I will go ahead and put it out there. Serving a bargainer group is twice as difficult as a non-bargainer group. If the manager gave in to the "let me speak to your boss" routine, the server is their next course.

 Now let's not get carried away and start calling couponers bargainers. Hell, those who are not couponing these days are not cool, or even smart. The only concern I have is couponers discounting the service that they receive from the service staff. This of course brings to light the whole nasty subject of tipping. I will save that for another day. Please, when using a coupon, be sympathetic to the server. The good one's are hard to find, and harder to keep.


  Click here to view a clever gratuity chart.


Thanks for reading, 


gf