Me! Me! waves hand
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was English. She wrote “arsehole”, not “asshole”.
Do I get a gold star?
After dinner at a friend’s in-laws, the MIL called her dog over, lifted it’s tail to show us the colour pattern of it’s fur surrounding its anus, and exclaimed with joy and wonder, “Doesn’t it look just like a star!”
Well done! A gold star AND you can stay after class to clear the pixels from everyone’s monitors.
Et tu Brute?
Really???!!! I never would have guessed.
I for one though plan to continue to frequently and enthusiastically wave to all of my servers in the future.
Little known fact, but Elizabeth Barret Browning wrote the lyrics to “Cop Killer.”
I am the OP of the thread. Do you have any interesting or weird restaurant stories to share? I can’t control your posting but I’d like to ask you to take your argument somewhere else, you’re messing up my thread. Please? I genuinely don’t care about fibs or lies or bad memories. I just want to hear fun stories.
To appease the OP, I repost something I wrote here a looooong time ago. It’s still one of my weirdest restaurant experiences.
Keep in mind, “Th’ other day” was in 2001.
Nah, that would be a a fascist Krypto. A Krypto-Fascist would be a hyper nationalist who wanted state control over Superman’s dog. Like, if Lex Luthor had a cat, that cat would totally be a Krypto-Fascist.
I remember a very strange story - though it has more I think to do with mental illness than anything else. It isn’t funny (at least, not “ha ha” funny) so much as disturbing.
I was at a diner when I was a tween, getting a hamburger. All was normal until this older fellow came in (I guess now he was in his mid 30s, which at the time was “old” to me. Ha!). He was quite well dressed, in a suit and tie, and I thought at the time he sorta looked out of place - the diner was full of teens.
Anyway, he orders a milkshake, and when he gets it, he - tosses it right in the waitress’ face. The glass bounced off her head and she was covered with shake. Then he runs out of the place.
Everyone was stunned. We couldn’t believe what just happened. There was a moment of total silence. Then the waitress gave a shriek (fortunately, she wasn’t badly hurt). That brought the cook out, who called the police - no-one had thought to follow the guy. The police came - a couple of cops - and we answered their questions. No, the waitress had never seen this guy before. No, no-one had seen whether he went to a car or what. There was little the cops could do, but write up a report.
It just struck me as so totally weird. There was no obvious reason for it. We just assumed the guy was crazy … boy did I feel sorry for that waitress, who was just doing her job and got attacked for no reason.
I’ve got another one. My friends and I regularly go to this all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ – you know, the kind where they bring you the raw meat to your table and then you cook it on your own grill at the table.
So, when the grill gets too hot or is starting to have too much flames shooting out of it, a waiter will come by, use a tong to lift up the grill and pour cold water into it. I’ve always been told not to pour water onto hot grease, but that’s what they do here.
One of my friends (let’s call her Julie) goes to this restaurant a lot. The waiters all know her by name. She also insists on being the one to manage the grill and put the meat on and take it off, because she has a particular way she likes it cooked. Which is completely fine with me.
So, we’ve ordered another plate of meat. Julie goes to the bathroom. Her boyfriend goes out to smoke. The other friend also decides to go to the bathroom. I’m completely alone at the table when the new plate shows up.
I figure I’ll just put the meat on the grill, so it’ll be cooking when everyone comes back. I’m being so thoughtful, right? So, I put the meat on and it’s cooking. And then I notice the flames are coming up. So, I try to flag down a waiter, since I’m not sure what to do. Finally, I get a waiter’s attention, but by the time he comes over, the flames are shooting way up through the grill. He grabs the tongs, lifts the grill up, and by this time, the flames are so high that I get out of my seat to avoid being singed.
Then the busboy runs over with a pitcher of water. Now, picture this in slow motion. The busboy is all set to pour the water into the grill, while the waiter starts to shout “Don’t pour it!” But they happen simultaneously. So, the water goes in. FWOOMP!
At this moment, all my friends have returned. And every waiter in the restaurant is crowded around the table trying to deal with the out of control flame. And of course, all my friends decide that I don’t know how to work the grill, and so I am not allowed to work it anymore.
And the waiters agreed with them! I’ve been in there twice since it happened, and they call me “fire boy” and won’t let me have the tongs. 
Not bad but something out of the ordinary: we were at some truck stop in Ohio for lunch. I spotted an interesting burger on the menu and ordered that. The waitress felt the need to point out that what I ordered came with three different cheeses.
Evidently they had lots of complaints about this “triple cheese burger” only having a single patty.
So as not to get gigged for changing a quote, even in the Pit, I’ll do it this way:
Fill in that blank with pretty much any restaurant terror:
[ol]
[li]Have a team of health inspectors show up without warning;[/li][li]Have ICE show up without warning;[/li][li]Have two busloads of college students show up without warning;[/li][li]Have the grill catch fire;[/li][li]Have the grill chef catch fire;[/li][li]Have a team of health inspectors catch fire;[/li][li]Have the chiller quit at 10 am on Saturday of a major holiday weekend;[/li][li]Have an entire colony of roaches, ants and/or spiders move in without warning;[/li][li]Have three waitresses quit and file paternity suits against the grill chef;[/li][li]Discover that ‘tu madre’ does not mean “Yes, boss.”[/li][/ol]
I dunno what it is about restaurants and their menus. It can’t be cost, because sometimes they reprint or update them multiple times without fixing things that cause endless headaches for diners, waitrons, cooks, management or all four.
For the same reason: what AB quoted was taken from what I originally wrote but edited when it occurred to me that I left out a space, which made the comment about changing the menu superfluous.
About 30 years ago my dad and I were having dinner in a small country town in Victoria and ordered a ‘beef curry’. What came out was goat (tasted a lot like an old billy) drenched in *Dutch Curry and Rice *packet soup mix which had been mixed with about 1/2 the recommended amount of boiling water
We walked out and had a counter meal at the pub down the street 
Two recent ones I saw and crossed the establishments off my list before eating there:
A coffee/sandwich place located in an open section of a local shopping mall (I won’t give the name of the chain but I’m sure if I put the initials C.C. in Aussie readers will get it). Walking past this join one morning as it was setting up I saw a waiter try to wave away a fly with a menu before smacking it down on the table top and apparently squashing the offending insect. The waiter then wiped the back of the menu on the edge of the table and put it back ready for the first customers.
Different mall, in the food court. Just before the lunch rush I was buying some sushi rolls for my boys. While waiting to order I was watching one of their ‘chefs’ cutting salmon up and throwing the offcuts into a garbage bin. After a few slices he threw a chunk in the bin, paused, looked down and retrieved the piece, trimmed it a little and added it the mound of ‘good’ cuts for use in rolls.
Went to the other sushi place.
Ah, yes, food courts. We were browsing the menu of a sub shop in the food court of a local mall when I happened to notice a cockroach rooting around the lettuce. We went somewhere else. Pretty sure a different sub shop has taken over that location.
On a different day, I was by myself and wanted to try out a different stall in the same food court but the counter wonk couldn’t be bothered to stop yakking with the cook long enough to turn around and take my order. After at least ten minutes of trying to get her attention, I took my business elsewhere. Now everybody is because a new company took over their counter.
Sounds like some variation on balut.
What’s a counter meal?
Sandwiches served at the bar?
Lots of casual breakfast/lunch places and diners will serve meals at the counter.