It's Not That Impressive

It doesn't matter what sort of restaurant you go to: the chic one with glass everywhere and the vague impression that the interior designer might have had a short but meaningful fling with slight, well-manicured Japanese man; those BBQ places that aren't really so much BBQ as they are the end product of some highly efficient de-graded beef and chemical food delivery process that would put Mussolini's railway to shame; a small cafe at some long abandoned highway town where the main ingredient in all the food, even the fruit bowl (especially the fruit bowl) is pork fat; one of those chipper new 'hip' restaurants that's just a front for one of those older restaurant chains that you could have sworn had given up the ghost to marching progress and the vagaries of the every changing and fickle North American palate; Dennys.

It really doesn't matter.

There's always a cadre of servers who have, through choice or fate, made that job their life. For good. And for some reason it's the majority opinion of them that taking the order by memory is the bestest, most impressive way to get a big fat tip.

It's not.

It's the best fastest way to get me all anxiety laden, and ineveitably, smirky and self-righteous when you bring me the Moons Over My Hammy rather than the small Coke and apple pie I ordered. This might just be a confirmation bias, it may be that all these servers who shirk from a pen and paper like economists from basic ecological theory, are, in fact, better. But my anxiety of you messing up my order is, objectively, ruining my experience.

And I feel bad for them of course. Them and their mortification for having messed up my simple order of  the 'the bacon burger,that's it, just the bacon burger, fries', as if this thing doesn't happen every goddamn day. And how could it not? It's precisely because my orders are so boring, and of course, I naturally exude boring myself, that my order would be as memorable as a Democrat's stump speech.

And I'm sorry for that.

But please. For the love of my very severe craving for a BLT and not, say, a Cobb salad, please write down my damn order.