At the checkout, have your form of payment ready before the cashier asks for it. IME most men are ready to pay, most women are surprised everything isn’t free.
Throw their money or charge cards at the clerk. No. Seriously. Don’t do it. Don’t fling your card at the clerk, don’t drop your money on the counter so they have to scramble to chase it all down, and don’t toss bills at them. At all. Ever.
When I was in retail, it was mostly men who would do this–toss their charge card onto the counter as if us clerks were some sort of lesser being. It’s not cool. It doesn’t make you look macho. It makes you a dick.
Don’t applaud when waitstaff drops or breaks something.
I was in a restaurant for a work function and a woman was balancing one too many galsses on a tray. One fell, smashed to bits and a guy at a neighboring table (not from our office) sarcastically started clapping his hands. I thought his date was going to get up and leave.
Don’t tell me you’re ready to order when you’re not. Yeah, you know what steak you want, but you wouldn’t believe the number of people that are then FLABBERGASTED when they find out they also have to choose a side, AND a salad dressing! If only the menu told them they get a side and salad with their steak…oh wait, it does.
Well, if only there was a list of the side dishes to choose from, I mean, they couldn’t choose because they had to wait for me to list them out loud…only, there IS a list. Ditto for the salad dressings.
Honestly, so many people are complete fucking MORONS when ordering food, I wonder how they get by in daily life. It’s honestly not that hard to read over a three page menu.
Please don’t tell me how you’re going to have channel 4, 7, 12, 45… come down here to run a story on how I wronged you. Or don’t tell me how you have a good friend at the local paper who is going to hear about how we wronged you and run a big story badmouthing us. And while you’re at it don’t bother telling me about how I’m going to be hearing from your lawyer cause your going to sue us and I’ll probably be losing my job.
Thousands of threats over 10 years and I never made it onto TV, into a newspaper, or had a lawyer sue me. How disappointing.
When you’re at the register and you’ve paid for your items, and there is a line of people behind you, please step to the side while you arrange your money back in your purse/wallet/handbag, stow your receipt wherever you stow your receipts, check your lipstick, collect your belongings, read a novel, whatever. When you remain firmly standing in place while you do these things, keeping the rest of the customers from stepping forward to continue the checkout process, the rest of us are silently exploding your head in our fantasies.
Can you please explain this concept to my wife?
I pull into the McDonald’s parking lot and into a parking spot.
Her: “Why aren’t you going through the drivethru?”
Me: “Do you know what you want yet?”
– “No.”
– “Well, decide what you want then I’ll go through.”
– “But I can’t see the menu.”
– “It’s freakin McDonalds! They have the same stuff they’ve had last week!”
– “Just pull up and tell them to wait a minute.”
Not restaurants, grocery stores. If anybody is holding up the line searching for a checkbook, it’s a woman. There is a specific sub-set that never even thinks about payment until they can maximise the inconvience for everybody. These people need to be culled.
If your wife had a hairy chest, I’d say we’re married to the same person. I refuse to go to drive thrus with him ordering any more. Not only does he not think ahead, he speaks as though they’re miles away without a listening device to help take the order. On top of that, he cannot just say an order, but has to “uuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhmmmmmm” before each item and leaves pauses so the order taker asks if he’s finished. Which is then answered with “uhhhhhmmmmm”. Drives me batty.
Mine also does the whole, “I can’t read the menu, so just pull up and we’ll tell them to wait a minute,” thing. He also becomes irrationally insane with rage when something that used to be on the “dollar menu” is no longer on the dollar menu, or when he detects some discrepancy in pricing that makes him think the restaurant is trying to rip him off. There has been more than one occasion on which he has become so angry that he refused to order anything, even when the rest of us were getting lunch.
“Aren’t you going to be hungry?”
“Screw them! If they’re going to have a value menu where ordering the individual items separately is the exact same price, then what’s the point of a value menu? That’s not a value! That, in fact, is the EXACT OPPOSITE of a value! Don’t get me anything. I’m not eating here.”
“…well, that’s certainly going to show them.”
The thing is, he’s normally a really easy-going guy. We just can’t take him to fast food restaurants.
I used to go to late night restaurants with a guy kind of like this. In order to get the full effect of this, picture that character that Dan Aykroid used to play on SNL – Remember the really slick guy who pronounced Titian as Titty-an?
“I’d like a… No, wait. What I’d like is… No. Bring me… How about a nice… hot… No. I’d like a nice… hot… cup… No. I want a nice… hot… cup… of black… No. Bring me a cup… of hot… nice… black… No, wait.” (looks at both sides of menu for five minutes) “Bring me… a… cup… of… nice… hot… black… strong… cof… No. Do you have tea? Nice… hot… No. I’d like a…” (looks at menu again) “Nice… hot… strong… black… No.”
This would go on for a good 10 minutes. Every single time we went out. And the only thing he EVER ordered was a cup of nice… hot… strong… black… No.