Distilled Reality

I eat out a lot, and have dined in countless restaurants around the world in North America, Europe, and the Middle-East, so I tend to notice things that un-seasoned dinner-goers may not notice.  Ok, maybe I’m just a bit pedantic, so let’s get started here:

The Napkins

You try and pull a paper napkin out of a holder and they are packed in so fucking tight, that when you pull one out, they all come out and fall all over the table, on your plate, and most likely on the floor.  Of course using two hands is out of the question, since when you need a napkin it’s because you have sauce or something on your hand.  Sure I can pull the napkin out of the vice-grip holder before I start eating, but who has that fore-sight right?  It’s not like I planned to make a mess.

I can chalk this napkin packed piss-off up to pure, unadulterated laziness of the service staff thinking that the more napkins they jam in holder creating pressure with enough force to crush coal into diamond, the less times they will have to walk around and refill the napkins.  Of course, you and I know how strenuous and time consuming this can be right?

It’s even better when you try and pull a napkin out of the holder and you only pull off a small strip since it is jammed into the holder by Hercules himself.  It’s like the service staff was using industrial strength pry bars or a large shoehorn to wedge in the maximum number of napkins physically possible.

Put 3 or 4 in the holder, and not 47 creating densities reaching black-hole proportions.  It’s that simple.

The Choices

Sometimes I’ll read through a menu and there are 245 different dishes or so few that it takes me maybe 5-10 minutes to zero in and choose what to eat.  When I finally choose something, it’s a sure thing that after all this deliberation they don’t fucking have it.  This is a given.

Yes, of course they don’t have it – why would they have precisely what I want?  Do my tastes reflect a majority of diners, and thus lead to shortages of popular dishes?  Probably, but I really don’t care, and what I’m saying is that’s no damn excuse — just order more next time.  This just boils down to piss-poor management, and making your customers angry, and sending them home to scream themselves to sleep.

For the love of God – waiters, please tell your patrons up front what isn’t available a la “Good evening sir, just to let you know we are out of the X, Y, and Z, because we are essentially a poorly run outfit, and/or the chef is lazy.”

The Menus

Menus that are written in fancy script requiring the deciphering skills of an Enigma machine cryptographer/code breaker who has a minor in Egyptian hieroglyphics deciphering doesn’t help, and only makes one angry when you are hungry and trying to order.

It’s even better when the place is dimly lit and they provide you with a flashlight to read/decode the menu.

I’m not saying don’t be fancy, and have a bit of mood lighting, but actually try and read the fucking menu before you provide it to patrons and see if you can read it without the aforementioned expertise and lighting apparati.  Or, just supply me with a pair of night vision goggles and a discount if I can read at least 4 dishes off your menu.

The bottom line — make the menu easy to read.  That is all.

The Service

There’s nothing better than being invisible to service staff when you need something once the food has arrived.  In fact needing something is inversely proportional to the attention that the service staff gives.

When everything is cool of course, they’re swarming around and have to swat them away like flies “Is everything alright sir?”  Can I get you more of X sir?” “Do you need anything else sir?”  “Shall I just continue to ask you questions and annoy the hell out of you while you have food in your mouth sir?”  Yes, please continue and you’ll be occupying a shallow grave in the desert when I’m done here pal.

Stop flirting with your co-workers, and keep an eagle-eye on the tables you are serving.  Be different, be helpful, and go the extra mile.

The Stuff On the Table

I just love when you get seated at a table and there is so much “stuff” on the table that you can barely fit a coffee cup in front of you.  I think the flower base, napkin holder, packs of sugar – white, brown, sugar free, hot sauce, toothpicks, triangular drink menu, triangular promotional menu, salt and pepper shaker, and the other 19 things could maybe be whittled down some eh?

Sometimes I just feel like putting my forearm on the surface of the table and just swipe everything across the room “Whoops! Sorry, my arm slipped” And when they try and reassemble the cornucopia of items on the table you can just slap their hands “No, not this, thanks, no, keep this, ok done”.

Contrary to popular belief, people actually like to rest the plate on the table, rather than their lap.  So don’t load the table with every thing imaginable just because you are too lazy to bring whatever the customer wants on demand.  Really, a small flower and vase will do and you can just bring everything else as needed.  Again, the “preservation of energy at its finest”.

Strange — it seems that laziness seems to be a common motif here.

Yeah, right.

I don’t know about you folks, but when I come across a site (not mentioning any names) where I have to validate and decrypt a Re-Captcha image showing, cryptic mashups of case-sensitive letters, my blood pressure is amplified about 49 times.

Sure we all understand the alleged benefits of this “extra” security precautions from the spammers, scrapers, worms, bots, etc, etc, but there has gotta be another way.  I sometimes have to take 3-4 tries to get it to accept.

Here’s a typical scenario that occurs when I see a Re-Captcha screen:

The first thing, is likely something along the lines of “Ah, for F*ck sake.”

(studies cryptic hieroglyph and gingerly types in what is barely legible — guessing at at least one or two characters)

Hits ENTER (Fails)

More swearing ensues.  ”Was that an “i” or a frickin’ “1″, or a lower case “t” in a Siamese configuration with that “l”.  Is that an “l” or an “I”?”

Sound familiar?

Harsh chemical cocktails/personal hygiene and other household products are a multi, multi-billion dollar business, and are part of our everyday grooming rituals (for most), but do we really need all these fancy concoctions to improve the quality, and cleanliness in our lives? Were our ancestors any worse off with regular soap? Should we be interfering with the delicate balance that our own bodies have evolved into over billions of years? Are these chemical cocktails responsible in part for rising cancer rates and other diseases?

Speaking strictly from a naturalist perspective, one could deduce that the addition of man-made chemicals into a balanced complex eco-system (our bodies) can essentially do “nothing good”, and upset the natural balance and results in essentially “unknown consequences” in the long-term. You don’t need a Ph.D in Biology or Genetics to recognize the fact that washing your washing your face or hair with a product with ingredients that are almost unpronounceable isn’t a good thing. Let’s take a few of the following common ingredients found in hygiene prodcuts, and repeat after me: “Triethanolamine, Diethanolamine, Imidazolidinyl, Diazolidinyl, Behentrimonium Chloride, Sodium Laureth Sulfate”.

Bring it on.

This, and coupled with the sheer number, and combinations of chemicals used to groom ourselves from skin moisturizers, make-up, aftershave, toothpaste, and detergents the long-term effects on our bodies are a literal question mark.

But wait you say, there are “sensitive versions” of the chemical cocktails we have grown to know and love. Pharmaceutical companies have been putting out “regular” versions of their products for decades and over the past few years a sudden influx of “sensitive” versions of your favorite brands from skin care, laundry detergent, to toothpaste which have materialized. One could argue that the usage of the cornucopia of different chemicals we use every day MAY, just may, be contributing to a great deal of adverse health effects in the long term.

Is there really a point in using anything other than the “sensitive” versions of any particular product, especially when it comes to personal hygiene? Let’s take skin care for example. Why would anyone choose any other version of a product other than the “sensitive” version?

(Manly Man Jones) “Yes, I’ll take this maximum industrial strength 10 grit energizing twin-turbo body wash which takes off a couple layers off my hide — I can take it baby! Why would I consider a sensitive version that is less toxic and keeps the natural balance on my skin intact?” Quite frankly, if a skin care product is good enough for a baby, it sure as hell is good enough for an adult.

At the end of the day, it all boils down to revenue generation for the big corporations, who spend hundreds of millions on marketing campaigns to push products on you that you don’t really need – always trying to outpace and out innovate their competitors, to increase profits for their shareholders at the expense of the public.

Company X: “Well, with the rising cases of class-action lawsuits, we better release a version of this deodorant with less toxic chemicals that we have heavily invested in to still turn a profit from the unwashed masses.” Pun intended.

We all rely on personal hygiene products in one way or another, and are almost unavoidable if you wish to maintain any type of contact with people, without them running away from you in terror, ensure you can at least pronounce all the ingredients on the label. But it’s always fun to stand there in the store, and try to pronounce these chemical formulations out loud.