I was out running some errands last night, and decided to get something to eat. Thank God I had a book in the car, because eating alone kind of sucks if you don’t have something to occupy your attention.

You know what I hate about eating in restaurants? The waiters.

Not all waiters, only the waiters who think that being a waiter is cool. The waiters that have accepted their lot in life, they are cool with me. It’s those waiters who think they have to impress me that I hate.

For example, waiters who feel the need to take your order by memory. And I’m not talking about four-star restaurants where it’s the norm, and even expected. I’m talking about places like T.G.I. Friday’s where Jimmy thinks that taking my order without writing anything down will garner him an extra 5% on his tip.

Dude. Get a pen. You always get it wrong. He’ll saunter up to your table after you’ve had more than enough time to peruse the menu and try to commit my bacon cheeseburger, with a baked potato instead of fries (butter and sour cream on the side), with a side salad with ranch dressing to memory. Doesn’t sound complicated, right?

After he walks away, I know I’m screwed. Ten minutes later, a plate with a BLT, loaded baked potato and a cup of chili is put down before me.

“Be careful. The plate is a little hot.”

What, the BLT? “That may be so, but the order is a little wrong.”

Jimmy frowns, wondering how this could be possible considering his mental prowess has landed him a job at Friday’s making $3.00 an hour plus tips. Use a pen. Write it down. It’s not like you had to take a jungle cruise to get to the kitchen; it’s thirty paces at most.

If you fail to remember an order for a single diner correctly, you deserve to be working at Denny’s. (No offense to the fine people at Denny’s. All I’m saying is that you know how to write shit down.)

That way, I don’t have to spend an extra twenty minutes waiting while the kitchen remakes my food, and I can eat my dinner in peace and get home in time to masturbate to Baywatch.

Any waiters out there? Sorry. I try to keep the waiter bashing to a minimum because I eat out a lot and I really don’t want to try the Booger Soup.

Another thing that I completely loathe is going to the bathroom at a restaurant. I won’t damage my kidneys over it, but I’ll only use one if absolutely necessary. And no, it’s not because of having to pee while standing next to someone else, separated only by a thin partition. It’s the lack of quality toilet paper. It’s not only the lack of quality paper, but also the propensity it has for getting stuck in the dispenser.

The paper is wound tighter than a speed junkie during withdrawal, and the dispenser is engineered like a vending machine as to make it impossible to manipulate your hand in such a way to advance the stuck paper.

Also, most bathrooms have the industrial soap that makes your hands smell as if you washed them in gasoline.

The restaurant bathroom I used last night didn’t have a paper towel dispenser. It had the motion-triggered blower, which blows dirty air through a rusty, moldy blower onto your freshly washed, gasoline soaked hands.

And to make matters worse, I had to use a few pieces of toilet paper to open the door, not for fear of general hygiene, but because the guy who exited before me declined to wash his hands.

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