I’ll admit that I like Cracker Barrel, though I liked it better before it was huge. (My family actually used to eat there on a semi-regular basis when there were only two of them, one in Nashville and the other in Columbus GA, and back then they were really good, but with expansion always comes blandness.) I stopped eating there for years over the gay issue and resumed a year or two ago after they’d made settlements and apologized (more the former than the latter admittedly being decisive). I was there the other night and the waiter made Liberace look like Charles Bronson and a waitress who’d make Charles Bronson look like Liberace (although the waiter was wearing a wedding band that I’m guessing wasn’t for somebody named Walter).
I’m curious to see how this is settled. As for laws against such things, she’s lucky to live in New Hampshire as it’s one of the thirteen states that have laws against orientation based discrimination and harassment. (The groping and propositioning would of course be protected anywhere.) In Alabama and 36 other states she could be called a dyke with relative impunity or just outright fired for being gay with relative impunity (something a surprising number of gay people here don’t realize).
The “normal heterosexual values” bullshit from '91 also extended to unwed (at the time of pregnancy) mothers, incidentally. They’ve also been accused of racism in their hiring practices or in giving non-white employees worse sections and shifts. The whole ban on fags, darkies and ho’s as servers reminded me of the line from Mel Brooks’s remake of To Be or Not to Be when gays, gypsies and Jews are banned from German theater: “Without Jews, fags and gypsies there IS NO German theater!”
Man, I love Cracker Barrel breakfasts. The eggs, the bacon, the grits, the wheat toast. The fireplace, the rustic design. OK, their coffee sucks, and their gravy defines bland, but otherwise the food is great. Especially their sausage patties.
Man, I hate being put in the position of having to choose between my moral values and a good breakfast. Because I REALLY like a good breakfast.
For some reason I’m reminded of an old cartoon where a patient has his psychiatrist tied up in a chair and is quizzing him, “Tell me, Doctor, just when did you first notice this paranoia of mine?”
Cracker Barrels attract some interesting people. On the way home from Gatlinburg, TN a few summers back, my family stopped for dinner at a Cracker Barrel somewhere in western North Carolina. The food wasn’t exceptionally horrible – I had pancakes, Mom managed to get some vegetables that weren’t swimming in meat, and whatever meat Dad ordered wasn’t floating in a pool of grease. But our waiter was a really shifty guy who kept hitting on my mom. And the customers…the most memorable one was a woman in her mid-40s who was wearing extremely short cutoff shorts and no underwear. The shorts were so tight that they were jammed into her crotch; when she turned around in her seat to stand up, her nether regions were quite visible. She straightened the shorts upon standing, but her buttocks still sagged out of the shorts.
This past January, my mom and I stopped at a Cracker Barrel about 10 or 15 minutes south of Richmond, VA at the insistence of Mom’s cousins. We had been travelling all day (from Maine), and just wanted a quick bite to eat before making the rest of the trip. But these cousins wanted to sit down to a meal, and ever so generously offered to meet us at their local Cracker Barrel. The whole restaurant smelled very strongly of greasy bacon; that, combined with the blazing fire (though it was quite mild outside), gave me a nice case of the dry heaves. Once again, I had pancakes. I was still fighting the urge to run outside and heave in the bushes, and this was made worse by my mom’s cousin holding up some of the nasty-ass ham he ordered and saying, “Why didn’t you order any meat? It’s good. It’s good stuff. Have some ham, I have plenty.” This guy just could not understand that I didn’t want any ham. I don’t remember what his wife got, but it was a large portion of something creamy and she insisted on getting a to-go box for the leftovers. Mom’s vegetables consisted of more grease and meat than actual vegetable material.
Yeah, but with the history that Cracker Barrel has it doesn’t surprise me in the least that people’s sensitivity settings are on ‘high’. Effectively, their on ‘probation’ in the court of public opinion.
I’m told that someone once said that to learn to write dialogue, go sit in a Denny’s (or other all-night diner) and just listen. I wonder what sitting in a Cracker Barrel teaches you.
I never found the food at CB as offensive as some in this thread seem to. Its quality is on a par with places like Denny’s that target the same market niche. Not haute cuisine, but a safe bet when you are on the road or out for breafast following a night on the town.
WRT to “the kind of people” you see at CB, they are the people who live in the area. If you go to a CB in an area with a lot of hoopies, then CB will be full of hoopies. You go to one in a suburban area and it will be full of suburbanites and so on.
"A Manchester, New Hampshire woman **says ** she was harassed at the national chain’s restaurant in Londonderry and that when she complained management reprimanded her.
Bonnie Usher, in a formal complaint to the New Hampshire human rights commission, **says ** that she was groped by a fellow worker, propositioned and called a “dyke.”
The complaint says that when she complained to her store managers, they did nothing at first, and then reprimanded her for complaining."
Some people SAY they are regularly visited by aliens. :dubious:
Maybe someday there will be a tobacco lobby that can donate a few dollars to an elected represenative’s re-election campaign. Yes, I think someday this dream will become a reality.
Actually I was a CB last year and had a really good peice of fish. I was amazed they could cook something healthy and taste good.
I’ve been to two C.B.s, both in NC. Now I know there are differences in portion sizes between home (Canada) and the U.S. But I took a picture of my breakfast at CB, because - no shit, I’d never seen so much food for one person at a single meal in my life. There was no physical way I could plow through the biscuits and gravy, muffins and eggs, meat side dishes, etc. I suspect that if one trained for the event however, it wouldn’t take long until that seemed like a normal amount of food for a meal.
I don’t recall what is was called, but in my mind it’s the equivalent to the Grand Slam or some such . . .
I agree, except the part about you not having a lobby. If gays had the lobbying power of tobacco comapnies, gay marriage wouldn’t just be legal, it’d be mandatory. But seriously, if you want to establish that your place of employment has no legal right to hassle you over what you do with your lungs, preventing them from hassling employees over what they do in their bed is a good way to lay a foundation for that expectation of privacy.
And rest assured, the last thing I want to see in this country is opening up a tobacco front in the War on Drugs. I’m not supporting any further restrictions on smoking, and if someone can get something on the ballot that repeals some of the laws we already have, I’ll vote for it.
Dude, you’re so behind the times. We’re up to something like 17 states, plus DC. The most recent being Washington state, whose governor signed it into law January 31 to take effect in June. Of course some fuckwit, excuse me, some concerned social conservative, has announced an initiative to get it repealed.
Well, I was going to say that there are potential health problems from being exposed to second-hand smoke. What potential health problems are there for being exposed to second-hand gay?
