Restaurant Etiquette

As parents, my other half and I have made much effort to teach our kids to know when to keep their big, old yaps shut manners and respect, and to show that respect and appreciation for something even it really isn't something that you appreciated a whole lot. Follow me? Like when you're out for dinner at someone's house and it really didn't taste good (this is probably the ONLY situation where I'm glad people have dogs - because I can just carefully deposit the offending food on the floor to the dog and no one notices - everyone is happy. Especially Fido), but you thank them and pretend it was good because you don't want to hurt their feelings or anything like that.

This morning we packed up the tribe and headed out for breakfast. On a whole, I think we may have actually appeared to be a functional, completely sane family. Well, at least until the end of the meal when the waitress asked how breakfast was. To which Banshee replied: "The food was SO good I think I'm going to be sick".

For real. You can't make this shit up. She said that. Out loud. TO the waitress (who had been wonderful to us). I didn't know whether to laugh or drop dead. The waitress stood there kind of dumb-struck for a minute, then laughed. Thankfully she understood the well meaningness in the statement (because it WAS well intended and was meant to be a compliment - just that it maybe was a really poorly worded one). For the record - I laughed - almost hysterically. My other half and I have been chuckling over this all morning - carrying on about how the restaurant needs to incorporate that into their marketing . . . you know, like on their flyers, menu's and napkins. Their new slogan could be "Our food is SO good, it'll make you puke".

You know though, the more I think about it the more I realize that it's actually a very good and smart slogan. It's like a "blanket slogan" - indicating that if the food is good, then you might puke because you ate so much, and if they fed you bad food and you got all food poisony, then it's your own fault - they already warned you that you might puke.

Think that we best go and patent that slogan . . . before the restaurant 'steals' the idea. I wonder if they'll ever let us back in?!