Attention All Villages

Call your idiots. They're missing. I know where they are, too. At whatever restaurant I am eating in.

When I go out to eat, which happens rarely enough that it is a treat, I don't want to be seated next to the village idiot. Unfortunately, that happened the last time I went out to a "nice" restaurant. I'm not talking about kids being loud, either. Ya know what? It happens. I've got one, I know how they get sometimes. I mean those people who really should know better, but act as if they don't.

We had two different tables of them.

The first group was the one that kept sending all of their food back. Each person at the table sent their food back to the kitchen. This is a nice restaurant and their chef is damn near amazing. I have a hard time believing that every person at the table had gotten bad food. Then again, it isn't completely impossible, so send it back once and it's all good, right? Wrong. These people took a handful of bites and sent it back again. So, with far more patience than I would have displayed, the chef cooks a new meal for them and they try again. Third set of meals. Three of the people at the table quiet down to grumbles and the fourth of the group takes some bites and starts the cycle again. Bitch finally gets her meal and eats. And the angels sang.

The whole time I am watching this process, the group was rather loudly complaining "amongst themselves" about how bad their food was and how irritated they were. Like I said, the chef at this place is wonderful and I have never once ever gotten a single bit of food there that was less than amazing and I am a phenomenally picky eater and not so easy to please. I'll be the first one to send food back if it is legitimately not right. Four tries before it was corrected, though? Not buying it. This particular group was trying to not buy it, too. Their meals, anyway. I don't know the outcome of that, but it looked from my seat that they just wanted to eat at a wonderful restaurant for free. They were just irritating, however.

The other table was the "we're getting toasty, look how much FUN we're having" group. Look, I love a good glass of merlot (Echelon, in particular) as much as the next girl, but I don't do it at the top of my lungs. I talk nicely, using my "inside voice". I am all up for having a good time and enjoying a night out, but you have to be able to judge your environment and determine if you are behaving appropriately to the location. These people were partying like they were at a pub and doing so in a restaurant that sells bottles of wines that cost in the multiple hundreds of dollars range. We were not at Denny's at midnight. The more they drank, the louder they got. It wasn't just that they were chit-chatting. It was the annoyingly artificial "look at MEEEEEE" shrill laugh that the woman was doing that was grating.

Dude, I was looking, and frankly, you weren't having nearly as much fun as I was. Quin and I were trading bites of dinner and dessert and being silly. We have fun together and this was no exception. We were having fun quietly, though. With inside voices. No making a spectacle and causing a scene, just enjoying our family night out.

So, as I get ready for another outing at another restaurant tomorrow, I just want to request that all villages call your idiots now. I don't want to sit next to them.

Take care,
Cindi