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Con Jobs

Author has enough of self-help!

There's a wildly popular restaurant in Providence where you (the customer) do most of the work and you (the customer) love it!

Here's the scenario: I drive my family fifty minutes from Worcester on a bone-chilling January evening because this is my son-in-law's birthday-dinner request.
The waiter takes our drink-orders, tells me to read the mission statement on the menu since I'm a virgin (ha,ha), then gives us a tour of the food-stations. The rest of the evening is literally in one's own trembling hands.
I don't mind making my own salad ; I'm a veteran of countless Opening Days at my kids' colleges. There's immediate dysfunction at our table as the non-leaf eaters are already moving on and sizing up their entrees.
I opt for Seafood as my second course. I fill a bowl (one bowl per trip, please) with frozen shrimp, scallops, tuna, swordfish,and calamari, pick an appropriate sauce ( I gamble with honey-garlic ) then wait in line at the Giant Grille where grown men in large white hats are singing and occasionally dancing while they sear my seafood.
You have to stay near your meal and remain focused because the entertainers ask you to I.D. your selection when it's time to sauce it:
“Is that yours,sir?”
“It might be... No, maybe not... Is that talapia... No, mine's one over.”
Traying my sustenance, I walk back to an empty table except for my ambivalent daughter.
“Try the honey-garlic,” I suggest.
My third course is a bowl of Meat featuring chicken strips, pulled pork, kielbasa, and a hamburger patty. For my sauce, I choose Alfredo unleashing the 70's rebel still rocking deep inside me. Again, the obligatory fifteen minutes at the Giant Grille then back to our table where everyone except my ambivalent daughter has finished their meal.
Exhausted, I punch my time card, pay the bill, and long for an America where waiting on yourself wasn't held in such god-damn esteem!
Ever get caught behind me at the Home Depot as the self-checkout rejects my debit-card out of pure vituperation? How about the Charter rep who tells me to reset the cable by unplugging then plugging in the modem-wire; I'd have a better chance finding the freakin' Holy Grail!
The “ service” in “service industries” is being boiled down and discarded and we (the consumer) are so mesmerized by the vaudevillian grille-cooks that we can't see the corporate sleight-of-hand.
I'm heading over to Mom's house where an oldest son's appreciation of good food and conversation is duly rewarded. Besides, I have her Social Security check.

Submitted by bardofaisle9 on Thursday, January 22, 2009 (04:13:01) (725 reads)

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