There’s no warmer feeling than being recognized by familiar faces. Whether when entering church, the gym at the Y, or perhaps your neighborhood bar, it truly lifts the spirit when those that work at the establishment give you a smile of recognition. You know where this doesn’t apply? The Panda Express. No, it is rather quite embarrassing when the pleasant woman standing behind the array of mass produced Chinese fare smiles at you and then calls your order out for you. Such was my experience at lunch today (continuing a string of recent unpleasantries during lunch).
Panda Express employee: “How are you, sir?” with a smile as though she’s surprised I had managed to hold out for as long as I had (two weeks!) before returning.
Me: “Umm, okay.”
PE employee: “What can I get for you today? Oh, orange chicken and mandarin chicken, right?”
Me: “Yes” while reaching for the Blackberry, looking around nervously, and making a mental note not to return to Panda Express for quite awhile.
Here's a suggestion to employees/managers of basically all fast food establishments. Even if someone comes into your swillhole "restaurant" daily, act like it's the first time you've ever seen them. If they are in there enough for you to recognize them, you've obviously already won their business. I'm certainly not advocating rudeness, by the way. Be pleasant and peppy, just don't make it seem to them and anyone else in earshot that they are your location's top revenue driver.
So management of the Vinings Panda Express, take note. If you want my business (after my hiatus that must now extend at least three weeks), you will act as though you have never seen me the next time I grace your premises. You may be the most convenient provider of orange "chicken", but you are not the only one!
Being recognized at Cheers, far superior to being recognized at Panda Express
There isn’t much that’s sacred in corporate America these days. The soul of the American white collar worker received its pink slip a couple of years ago, and basic dignity was shown the door last year in uncomfortable fashion with two weeks’ severance and a kick in the pants as parting gifts. Still, we need something to which we can cling, a last bit of turf to call our own. I submit to you that lunch is the final frontier. I’m not demanding extended time out of the office every day or anything of the sort. I eat at my desk quite frequently and am more than happy to do so.
No, I request only that I be allowed to dine on a meal of my choosing without being made to feel like I’m pulling a shady move. Nothing drives me crazier than having to deal with a work lunch where sandwiches are provided. I honestly don’t mean to sound ungrateful. If I wasn’t appalled by tomatoes and the combination of juice and seeds they bestow on every piece of bread and sandwich meat with which they come in contact, it wouldn’t be a problem. I can actually get past the shredded lettuce which couldn’t be entirely removed from your sandwich if attacked with a shop vac. But I wouldn’t even mind that all sandwiches are ordered with the presumptuous mindset that everyone loves deli sandwiches with lettuce and tomato (and occasionally even more egregiously, with mayonnaise) if I could be allowed to alternatively go procure a lunch of my choosing. After all, that’s what all the long hours are for, are they not? So that a man can take six dollars of hard earned disposable income and buy something moderately appealing for lunch rather than staring down the barrel of a lunch that triggers nightmares from my youth. I thought I was past the point of being forced against my will to eat food that I find disgusting. If I finish this wretched tomato-drenched sandwich, do I get an extra 30 minutes of cartoons on Saturday? And one other question before I move on. What in the hell is with the chip selection that accompanies these pre-ordered lunches? I feel relatively certain that plain Lay’s potato chips and Sun Chips would both have been discontinued long ago had they not worked their way into the corporate lunch racket.
A youngster acquiring the skills needed to make it through a corporate lunch meeting
But I am not all complaints and bitterness, my friends. No, I have a solution for the lettuce and tomato haters out there who peruse their Outlook calendar and see the dreaded working lunch meeting in their future. It’s relatively simple, and though it requires some violation of social norms it can be pulled off fairly easily once you’ve got the technique down. Now your standard boxed lunch is going to be a deli sandwich cut in half with a meat of your choosing and the aforementioned lettuce and tomato. What you do is quite simply take the two defiled halves and turn them into one oversized, tolerable half. Grab your boxed lunch and head for your seat. Wait until there is sufficient commotion or, even more ideally, a presenter has started talking. When everyone’s focus is elsewhere, you slide the entire top of both halves off to the side. This removes the ruined top piece of bread as well as the lettuce and tomato. You next subtly take one half and flip it over on top of the other, thus making one large half sandwich. Not only are the unwanted toppings gone, but the two pieces of bread you kept typically have not even been touched by tomatoes.
There is an advanced version of this in which you grab an extra napkin and attempt a detailed wiping of the cheese to further purify your sandwich, but that is not to be attempted by beginners. Having your boss watch you polish a slice of Swiss cheese with your napkin while the rest of the room discusses the contents of a PowerPoint slide is something to be avoided at all costs.
I've been on quite a few flights lately, and without question the process is at best a nuisance. From chatty fellow travelers to lengthy security lines, it often feels less pleasant than the bus ride through Pakistan in Spies Like Us.
However, I think my fellow flying compatriots would all agree that one issue stands head and shoulders above the rest. Fix just this one issue, and the airlines will be back on the path to customer loyalty, an improved travel experience, and the return to bottom line profitability that would certainly follow. As I'm sure you've guessed already, the issue is legroom. Too little legroom? Passengers feeling like they've been shoehorned into their seats? Of course not! How ludicrous. No, the problem would seem to be excess legroom.
"If only her row was a bit closer, I could more properly affix my knees to the back of the seat."
Rest easy, though, weary traveler. The airlines have been laser focused on the issue and are close to rolling out a solution. Behold the "SkyRider", the new seats apparently set to be installed in coach in the near future.
The SkyRider, facilitating travel to faraway lands AND a three hour gluteus maximus workout!
Read the entire article if you are so inclined, but here's the key part:
The design, named the “SkyRider”, allows just 23 inches of legroom, which is about seven inches less than the average seat's space of 30 inches.
Shaped similar to a horse saddle, passengers sit at an angle, with their weight taken on by their legs. It allows seats to be overlapped.
The seats would also offer storage space including a shelf for carry-on bags and hooks to hang a jacket or a handbag.
The makers say the seat would allow budget airlines, such as Ryanair, to cram more passengers into their tight cabins.
It appears that currently this is primarily being sought out by low cost European carriers, and that it may also face safety regulation hurdles. Rest easy, though, for I have no doubt that their American counterparts will be on the case soon enough. Now if they can just cut back a bit more on the peanuts and pretzels and perhaps further restrict passenger access to drinking water, I think they might just have a winner on their hands.
Well, my wife is currently pulling a TV session that is taking the term horrendous to a whole new level. Specifically, that involves switching back and forth between the MTV Video Music Awards she recorded last night and the current episode of Bachelor Pad. It’s bad news for me, but good news for you, because D’Arcy is back on the blog. Look at that, I wrapped cockiness and a third person reference to myself into one sentence as an homage to the NFL players currently participating in a Monday Night Football game that I can’t see.
Being at the computer also allowed me to check my Facebook account, which is almost more overwhelming than I can handle. Back when I signed up for Facebook a couple of months ago, I received a number of comments expressing shock at my decision to do so. I don’t remember roaming the countryside launching into invectives against Facebook or its membership, but perhaps I’ve just tucked those episodes far away in my mind following my decision to join. I think my reluctance had more to do with the seeming nonstop nature of it rather than any superiority I felt to the website or its participants.
After a couple of months as a fringe member of the Facebook community, I’m not critical of it in general. I definitely have questions, though. First of all, how in the hell do some people post so frequently? I can’t even remember whether or not I washed my hair at the end of half of my morning showers. How do people remember to let the world know that they are headed out for a jog? Or honestly, why do you even want to? Again, I'm not critical, I just assume that people don't care whether or not I'm currently noodling over whether the barbecue I just found in the back of my fridge is too old to safely eat for lunch. Some updates read like a real-time journal of a Frank Ricard Saturday.
Well, um, actually a pretty nice little Saturday, we're going to go to Home Depot. Yeah, buy some wallpaper, maybe get some flooring, stuff like that. Maybe Bed, Bath, & Beyond, I don't know, I don't know if we'll have enough time.
Also, how do people deal with taking what appear to be dozens of pictures a day and posting them? My wife and I have about an 18 month stretch of our lives for which I believe there is not a single shred of photographic evidence. Yet a visit to Facebook leaves me feeling like the only person in my extended network of friends who forgot to photograph and post my half-eaten inaugural Chick-fil-A spicy chicken sandwich.
Either way, God bless you frequent Facebook posters. I say go for it. I honestly wish I was better at the whole thing. Regale us with your inspirational quotes and the results of your journeys to Publix!
Hey, let's get a shout out from all the Serbs in the audience. Let me hear you! As this map from the traffic measurement tool clearly shows, Sic Transit Gloria is blowing up in Eastern Europe.
Someone in Serbia went searching for an American-style denunciation of Julia Roberts and the PGA and struck gold.
I guess when you put a high quality product out there, you can count on Europeans to climb on board the bandwagon, a fact to which this legend of both film and music can certainly attest.
For the record, I am 100% certain that the Serbian visit was some sort of random Internet anomaly. In all seriousness, though, I do appreciate everybody sticking with this thing and checking in from time to time. The blog just hit 1,000 visits, and even after you back out the one from my Serbian friend, that's still pretty solid.
And have no fear! Though the PGA season is coming to a close, Julia Roberts' latest film is already fading from the spotlight, and Burger King is now under new ownership, we'll have plenty about which to get riled up. I might even touch upon corporate America, the mother lode of angst, at some point. I'll need to recruit a volunteer to swing by and secure my belts and shoelaces before touching that one, though.
I do love golf. I want to get that on the record, because this blog is in danger of appearing to be the farthest thing from a fan of the sport. Having said that, when something appalling just presents itself to me, I'm going to comment.
So golf is having quite a run. First, the PGA ruined its eponymous championship. And now, the absurdity of the rules and "integrity" of the game has surfaced once again in the story of Zach Nash. Young Zach, a 14-year old golfer, won the boys 13-14 age division at the Milwaukee County Parks Tour Invitational. Now, that's not exactly the biggest tournament on the golf calendar, but it was clearly a big victory for the youngster. Here's what happened next:
After his victory, Nash went to the Rivermoor Golf Club — where he played 36 holes nearly every day this summer — to practice more and talk to one of his mentors, Chris Wood, the club's head golf professional.
"I was showing everybody my medal and then Chris and I went and we were having a soda and he said 'Hey, whose club is this? And I said 'my friend's.' And he said 'This makes 15.' I was in shock after that," Nash said.
The penalty for breaking the rule, called rule 4-4, is two strokes for each hole played with more than 14 clubs, with a maximum of four penalty strokes. But since he didn't notice his extra club during the tournament, a penalty wasn't added. That meant he signed an incorrect scorecard, which he knew disqualified him.
Nash said golf prides itself on honesty and players calling penalties on themselves. While the decision was clear, he said he couldn't help but cry a bit in front of Wood. Wood had to call Nash's father, Bob, to pick him up.
Later that night, Nash called Andy Landenberger, junior tour director for the WPGA, to explain what happened. He sent back the medal, which Landenberger said he would present to runner-up Dane Reinhardt, who shot an 80.
Nash, who has been golfing for about three years, said a friend spent the night at his house before the tournament and left a 5-wood club, and he put it in his bag not realizing it made a total of 15.
Alright, this is unacceptable. I understand this kid is going to get on television and have articles written about him, so he probably ends up better off when all is said and done. Still, how does any of this make one bit of sense? A friend stays at your house, accidentally leaves one of his clubs with yours, you don't use it all day, a jackass club pro that is supposed to be your friend and mentor sees it and calls you out costing you your medal, and this is a feel good story? No way. Clearly the kid got no benefit whatsoever from the extra stick in his bag. Why would the club pro even point it out? What is he doing scanning the kids bag looking for infractions?
This is the kind of story that will get bounced around in golf circles and be breathlessly retold by Jim Nantz and Jimmy Roberts with melodic tunes in the background. Meanwhile, the rest of the world just keeps moving on down the road. Golf- doing it the right way, and becoming less relevant by the day.
Happy Labor Day! More importantly, we can all breathe a sigh of relief now that football season has returned. Last Sunday I found myself on my couch choosing between watching the Little League World Series and the US Amateur golf championship. Because if there's anything that can top watching 12 year old's play baseball, it's watching 17 year old's play golf. On top of that, ESPN and SportSouth were showing high school football games to round out the selections. Hey, anybody got footage from a bar mitzvah or some church league hoops while we're at it? Unreal.
The only downside to the joy of having football back on the tube is the return of the godforsaken Buffalo Wild Wings commercials. Surely all of you remember this gem from last year...
So let me make sure I understand. The loser in the #2 jersey is so desperate not to return home to his mother's basement that he asks the referee to cost his team the game and "send this thing into overtime"? Beyond the absurdity of rooting against your own team and the referee somehow communicating with you through the television over the bar, can I ask why it is that your time at the oh so sweet Buffalo Wild Wings is dictated by the end of the game? If you're having such a blast, may I recommend just staying for another beer, celebrating your team's victory, and watching the start of the next game? What blows my mind is that they have had an entire year to ponder the idiocy of these commercials (they ran a similar one during basketball season), and the outcome was to basically remake the same commercial using the groundskeeper instead of a referee?! I can't find the horrendous new commercial on YouTube, which is perhaps a blessing in disguise for all of us. Watch a little football, though, and it won't be long before you're subjected to it. If you don't have DVR, it's almost enough to have you longing for the Little League World Series.
Call it coincidence if you will, but I'm not buying it. On Monday, Murls posts a scathing piece ripping Burger King and Quiznos on this very website. A mere two days later, not only does it emerge that Burger King was a potential sale target after their stock price had declined in recent weeks, but the spokeswomen for one potential buyer made it clear that they have no interest at this point. The owners of Quiznos are no doubt in emergency crisis management sessions at this very moment.
I couldn't agree with the anti-BK sentiment more. In fact, I boycotted the place for at least two years in my younger days after they waited 20 minutes to tell me that they didn't have what I had ordered and paid for. That was on the heels of numerous other customer service offenses, which was finally enough to make me walk away from the Italian chicken sandwich of which I actually used to be quite fond. I wish I could blame a portion of my boycott on the cleanliness issue, but since at the time I routinely ordered food from an Athens Chinese establishment with a sticky floor which required significant effort to walk across and a health code rating of 73, that would be less than honest.
Being recognized at Cheers, far superior to being recognized at Panda Express
