How To Get Bad Service In A Restaurant

We've all been there before. You're just sitting there with some useless money in your bank account so you decide to take out your mate/buddies/family to some glorified feeding trough, but when you get there you decide to minimize your experience as much as possible to justify the foul personality that everyone already knows you for. Well how do you do that? With this nifty guide, that's how!


1.) The Arrival
First, make sure to show up as the same time as everyone else. Restaurants are predictably busy at specific times, so make sure to get there exactly 15 minutes after the rush starts so you have to wait the maximum time possible. Throw the poor teenage hostess some flack for not having an infinite number of tables to seat everyone at just to make sure there's a small chance she'll forget your name on the list all together. This is your first chance to act self-important and to pretend you're the only person there and should be sat immediately. If you arrive during an event, say at a big football game at a sports bar, it's advisable to get visibly upset when you're informed that there's a three hour wait. Feel free to walk through the bar in an attempt to find that one place for two people that the other 30 people waiting along the wall somehow missed. After all, you're smarter than those idiots, right? If you like, force yourself on someone else too polite to stop you and just sit with them, or just steal one of their chairs. You are so cash.


2.) Getting a Table

Let's say you do happen to get there at a decent hour or happen to luck into a table because of your obvious importance, make sure to complain about where the table is located or, alternatively, just sit yourself. It's especially useful if you find the one seat in the entire restaurant hidden behind a bush or something so that there's only a 5% chance someone will notice you. Completely ignore the fact that you ignored the sign saying 'please wait to be seated' and blame them for not seeing you there. If it does take longer than 5 seconds for your server to greet you, tell them you've been waiting fifteen minutes. They won't care, but it establishes dominance right out of the gate, and this is very important. The second thing out of your mouth should be some complaint about the temperature or the music. Despite the fact that it's intentionally loud or chilly most of the time so you WON'T be too comfortable, there's probably a good chance that every employee you meet has access to the thermostat and can turn it up the one degree that you need it to be.


3.) Ordering Drinks

First make sure to interrupt the server right away so they don't get to finish their required speech about today's specials. If you're ordering a beer make sure to have everyone at your table individually ask what beers they have. Reading a beer list takes less time, sure, but reading is hard and you have more important things to do. If the restaurant has coke, want pepsi, and complain about it. If they really wanted to make you happy, they'd have anticipated your desires and had both put it. Expect all drinks, especially blended ones to be back at the table in less than 90 seconds. Despite the fact that there is only one blender in the entire building, and maybe even only one bartender making all the drinks, there is no reason why it should take longer than pouring a coke. Also make sure to complain about the strength of the drink. This is especially important in chain restaurants where the staff has absolutely no control over how much alcohol went into your appletini. It's called a recipe, but they should ignore it for you.


4.) Ordering Food.

Don't read your menu, don't even open it. Just interrupt the person ordering that's sitting next to you to and force the server tell you what they have. Ask for something rare and get miffed at them for not making it available immediately, and every place on earth offers free bread sticks now, so just expect those to be available too. Always ask your server if something tastes good. Taste might be entirely subjective, but your palate is the standard and they should already know what you like. If the server lists off the available sides to every person before he/she gets to you, make sure they have to do it again because you were to busy thinking about how awesome you are to pay any attention to it. If your server happens to be well trained and is repeating orders back to people, ignore whatever comes out of their mouth. It's their fault if they didn't hear the words you half mumbled while avoiding eye contact and, despite the fact that what they repeat to you is exactly what you'll be getting, it's their responsibility to know it's wrong, communicating is for schmucks.



5.) Before The Meal.

Most burgers take 8 minutes to make, steaks and ribs usually a lot longer, so there's no reason to wait longer than five minutes during your lunch break for the steak and rib combo (well done of course!). The busier the restaurant is, the faster the kitchen should be, that's just science. Also expect the kitchen to stop everything they are doing to make your food immediately. You are the only important person in here for very obvious reasons. If you have a soda, try to drink them faster than they can be refilled. Your server has nothing better to do than to pour Mr Pibb down your gullet like they're filling up an oil tanker. Make sure to interrupt your server at least once while they are talking to another table, do it by touching them and speaking VERY LOUDLY to make sure they hear you. It's not rude if it's about you.


6.) Getting Your Food

Odds are in the modern restaurant that it won't be your server bringing you your food. It's about business efficiency, but that's less important than you being treated like royalty, so blame them for that too. When your food does finally make it to your table, do not under any circumstances pay any attention to the person handing out the food, just keep talking. If it's the type of place that has many similar items, say a burger joint or a wing place, just accept the first thing that would resemble what you ordered in the dark and complain later that you didn't get the right thing. Also make sure to east a substantial portion of your buddies food before you notice that you ordered a salad instead of a fajita so they have to make a new one from scratch. If you needed anything special for your meal, say an extra plate or lots of extra sauce, NOW is the time to mention this instead of when you ordered everything else. The more you make the staff work, the better they'll feel about earning their poverty level wages.


7.) Eating

Pigs are majestic animals who wallow in their own filth and have 30 minute orgasms, try to channel this while you eat. If you have children they should have been able to cover everything within seven feet of your table in a nice film of crayon shavings and fries by time you leave, this is a good chance for them to express their creativity by seeing how many different things they can spill during their meal. They don't need to use the children's lids every place provides these days, your kids are special. Continue huffing soda like it'll heal the whole daddy left in your heart and expect every drink to be bottomless just because it's free.


8.) Afterward And Extra Credit

If you haven't snapped at your server to get their attention, or waved them over when they were obviously heading directly at you, you aren't trying very hard. If there are people waiting to eat after you, make sure to double the time you use this table to have the same conversation you could have had back home. Remember, you are the only important person here and should get to use all the resources you want for as long as you want because this is America damn it! Your daddy didn't avoid the draft so other people could use the same things you just used. Make sure to touch your server whenever possible, condescendingly or flirtatiously is best, and be offended if they step away from you every time you blast your highly flavorful breath right into their face.


9.)The Check

When the check does arrive, make it as uncomfortable for everyone as possible. Get into an argument with each other like schoolchildren and then demand that the server listen to only one of you when it comes to who gets to pay. Everybody likes to be involved in family arguments, especially if they don't know you very well, get extra offended if he lets your better dressed brother pick up the check. If you need the check split, when it is dropped off should be the first time you mention it. Don't do it easily either, make sure that it is in the most convoluted, backwards way possible with people buying each meals for each other. Always contest at least one thing on your bill. If you ordered 12 beers, say you only drank 8. Despite the fact that this person has done this literally thousands of times more often than you have, and you are kinda drunk, your logic is always superior. If you don't remember drinking it, than you didn't drink it. Also, expect things to be the same price they were 20 or 50 years ago. Once something used to cost 3 bucks, it always stays that price.


10.) The Tip

For extra points make sure to mention the tip at the beginning of your meal. Nothing motivates somebody more than knowing that you are the sole arbiter of their financial security. No matter what you leave, you are a generous soul and they should be happy with it. If you spend five hours watching a game and spent only twenty bucks on soda and appetizers, 4 bucks is plenty to compensate them for the 273 soda refills you drank and for taking up their time. Despite the fact that reciprocation is the foundation of every functioning society, the amount of work that they put in should have no bearing on the amount you leave. If the kitchen screws something up, make sure to pay the server less. If it's too cold, leave less money. If your children are cranky, leave less money and a bigger mess for them to clean. Everything beyond the control of your server should impact their income. If you don't bring enough money, a handshake and a compliment will pay the heating bills for their family. If only more people were sensitive like you.

And lastly, if after all of this you still get good service from somebody, do not, under any circumstances, ask for that person again when you come back. After all, you'll almost never get bad service in a restaurant if all you do is act reasonable...

The First Hypocritical Church of Christ

I am a huge fan of satire, I've actually exhausted the category on stumbleupon several times. The Onion, Betty Bowers, Landover Baptist Church and several youtube channels are frequent lurking grounds for me on the interwebs, and that pales in comparison to my religious devotion (irony noted) to The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. I'm certainly not the only person on the internet consuming sarcasm and the like, devouring laconic ironies for breakfast, sardonic videos for lunch. One of my most popular stand-up jokes involves lampooning racists, something nearly everybody gets behind, so it shouldn't be too surprising that I started a satirical facebook group called The First Hypocritital Church of Christ. It's obviously satire, isn't it? I mean, isn't it?
 
I've thought of making it bigger and having a web-site designed, selling some t-shirts, making some videos, all poking fun of the obviously hypocritical things that are pervasive in our culture (Also, daddy has bills to pay and needs constant attention). But before I move forward on that I really need to find out why average Christians find it so offensive. I'll admit I didn't think it through all the way and added pretty much my entire friend's list without thinking on whether or not they'd be offended, and I certainly won't blame facebook for letting just anybody add you to any group without your permission (Although in light of this they should probably change it before some bored miscreant puts everyone they know in a group called 'rapists and thieves), but it is interesting how people get so defensive about the groups they belong to without thinking about it.

I wonder if there's a way to phrase it to dull the emotional reaction without losing the edge that makes it funny. It's not my intent to insult people, well not most people, but to really point out how irritating hypocrisy is. For example, is there anything more Christ-like than to sell everything you have and give it to the poor (Matt 19:21) or taking care of the sick (Matt 25:36)? Yet how many 'religious' people are against universal health care or social programs to help the needy? How many religious leaders have to molest children before there is a real outcry of the people? Why do we condemn children confused about their sexuality in a culture with more mixed messages on the subject than clarity to the point where they lose so much hope that they take their own lives? I may not believe in the divinity of Jesus, but if the words in his book are a true reflection of his personality as a man, I'm pretty sure I can extrapolate how he'd feel about it (hint: not good). Even his Father hates hypocrisy (Job 13:16) to the point where they don't even get into heaven...

We are all hypocrites. None of us lives up to our own ideals, few of us are innocent of driving in the same ways that enrage us, and even David, the man after god's own heart, had a man killed so he could steal his wife. Yet it's not God's forgiveness that's important, it's each others. It is the forgiveness of your neighbor's faults that we all share, more or less each in their part, that makes a society strong. I try to do my best daily and I try specifically to be a douche as little as possible, just like most of  us, but what irks me is the person who stands up and loudly proclaims what they believe and then openly does the opposite. And if it offends you that they are the subject of my ridicule, than I guess you just don't get it.