Sometimes the place is worth stopping, regardless of the food. Sometimes it isn't.
This is a guest post from Rob Lobitz, with www.motorcyclehidxenonlights.com.
I don’t know about you but, for me, one of the great treats of taking a long bike trip through our beautiful state is the meal that comes at or near the end of a long day. My standards aren’t ultra-super high or anything, but when something gets in the way of that meal being served in a reasonably proper way, I can become just a little bit irritable.
Well, one day a few years back me and my biking buddy, Zayne, were taking a longish trip across the state on the way to visit another one of our friends. We’d both been arguing all day about which of the various motorcycle HID kits I should install on my Kawasaki, but then it was time to discuss where we were going to get our dinner a few hours hence. Zayne suggested a place he’d seen the last time he’d made the same trip.
“Why there?” I asked.
“There was like a gazillion cars and bikes in the lot. Looked like it must be really popular. The locals must know it.”
That seemed logical enough to me. So, after a long day of biking in some pretty cool and wet weather, it was nice to get to the place, which I am leaving unnamed for a reason. The warmth and that wonderful diner smell of coffee was such a sensory treat right then.
On the other hand, it should have been a sign when the host who escorted us to our chair had that vacant “I don’t give a @##@$# look” you see at convenience stores and the DMV from time to time, but we ignored that. It was just good to be some place warm and return to our friendly arguing over those motorcycle HID kits.
It took a couple of minutes, but a waitress finally appeared. She seemed friendly enough. I let Zayne order first because I always take forever to make up my mind. He ordered spaghetti — something I would never order in a non-Italian diner but, hey, it was his funeral. I was trying to lose weight, so I ordered a grilled chicken sandwich and the waitress agreed to substitute rice pilaf for the fries. Life didn’t seem so bad.
We talked and talked and we finally resolved the great motorcycle HID kits debate to our mutual satisfaction. It suddenly dawned on us that we’d been talking for at least 35 minutes. No food. We chatted for another 15. Still, no food. Where the heck was our waitress? We then looked around. We saw mostly food-free tables and grim faces.
It was then, we realized why the well-located diner had such a crowded parking lot. Actually not that many hungry diners came in, but the foolish ones who did, like us, waited hours for their food. Hence, the crowded parking lot. It was the restaurant equivalent of a Roach Motel.
It was time to take action. Our waitress was nowhere in sight, so I got up and started a search. A few minutes later, I found her hiding out near the kitchen “Hey, I was just wondering what happened to our order.”
She looked at me blankly and said, “You ordered the chicken sandwich.”
I was dumbfounded. “What does that mean?”
“You ordered the chicken sandwich.” I tried again and got the same answer.
It was obvious to me she was of the opinion that, as a male, I had never cooked a grilled chicken sandwich for myself and would therefore assume that it could take at least an hour to properly prepare rather than, say, 10-15 minutes at the outside. (I might not be Mario Batali, but I can cook a slice of raw chicken long enough to be safe to eat and relatively tasty, also.)
We got our food about half an hour later, a full 90 minutes after entering the diner and, not surprisingly, it was kind of terrible. I almost wished I had ordered the spaghetti, bad as my friend’s pasta looked. At least she wouldn’t have the same stupid excuse.
I respect waiters and waitresses. Theirs is a tough, physically demanding job and I’m usually a very decent 18-20% kind of a tipper. However, for the first and only time in my entire life, I wanted to stiff the waitress on the tip. Not for taking so long but for insulting my intelligence with that idiotic answer about the chicken sandwich. If she had answered even remotely honestly and said the place wasn’t able to handle the number of people it was trying to serve, or some such, I would not have been nearly so ticked off. Clearly, she just didn’t care enough even to come up with a decent lie.
Zayne insisted on leaving 10 percent, figuring the drop would send a strong enough message. I disagreed but was too tired to argue. That was three years ago and I still wish we’d left zero tip.
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Let me apologize up front that this post has nothing to do with motorcycles.
We weren’t taking the direct route, however, straight south. We were doing an abbreviated Four Corners Tour, with stops in New England and Florida before reaching Southern California. Not to mention occasional side trips to Music City, the Middle of Freakin Nowhere, and elsewhere. And being that this was a motorcycle ride, we would hit the big rally locations, including Sturgis, Daytona, Laughlin, and a few more.