I get why law enforcement might prefer male/female* to boy/man/girl/woman, because when you’re describing a suspect you can’t always be sure of their age, and even if you knew the person was, say, 16-17, which side of the line does that put them on? But when a cop is talking about the person he’s dating, I’d like to…

I used to work at California Pizza Kitchen, which I would like to state clearly for the record does not offer any drinks named after racial slurs. That said, they do seem to have in place an unstated policy with a “peculiar reticence,” as you so aptly put it, that vaguely echoes this bar’s decision. On slow days…

Exactly.

Aaaaaaaaaahhhhh ghost frog!

The rules re tipping on take-out aren’t hard and fast. Generally, I’d say it’s completely discretionary on small orders, but you should kinda maybe throw a few bucks their way if you’re picking up lunch for the office. I think you’re OK tipping $10 on $150 orders; it’s probably much appreciated.

I’m still trying to decide whether I’m an awful restaurant customer, or if I just encountered a really bad restaurant last week.

Wouldn’t it be great if everyone became a server in the afterlife, and had to wait on people exactly like themselves? Serving can actually be fun and lucrative when you have good customers, so for me that would be a kind of heaven.

When I got to the part about there having been 8 margaritas, I was thinking that was for his entire party, but upon re-reading I see it’s actually quite clear he himself had 8, plus however many were ordered for his friends. Yikes.

I know this kind of defeats the purpose of restaurant week, but try not to judge a restaurant too hard based on your restaurant week visit. I’m not trying to defend those restaurants—if they can’t do a cheap prix fixe menu for insane crowds, they just shouldn’t participate—but every single restaurant week experience…

Those distinctions really matter. I had never heard of sensory processing disorders back when I waited tables, but I can assure you I noticed when parents made smart choices regarding their children, versus when asshole parents were raising the kids to be just like them. I worked in a few family-friendly places over…

Some will argue that water constitutes the third ingredient, which is a fair point. By the time you’re done shaking or stirring a martini properly, it’s about a third melted ice. But your larger point is absolutely correct; even if you were to count ice as an ingredient for all cocktails that contain it, there’s still…

Nah, the three-ingredient cocktail rule is like not wearing white after Labor Day or not ending a sentence with a preposition. Just because it’s been repeated ad nauseum doesn’t make it true. There are tons of classic and contemporary cocktails with only two ingredients, unless you’re counting ice, which, please. I’ll…

I’d like it on a thermos, please.

I used to get lots of requests to warm up the butter, which was annoying af but at least understandable. I never encountered the opposite.

Sounds like he could have just as easily been super cute and well-behaved in the nail salon, though. WTF is up with people?

Wow, really? I stayed there...God, was it really fourteen years ago now? Anyway, I remember it still being rather isolated, way up a winding road on a hill. Sad to hear they’ve developed the area around it.

Only if you think women are people.

Thanks, that’s really helpful! We’ll do a call-ahead walk-in during the week so we don’t keep anyone from attending to better customers, and I’ll keep an open mind and check out the jewelry selection.

I LOVE the idea of a FB/cat dry run with the new name. And I love that you are already prepared to support whatever decision the kiddo makes regarding her own name. I think that’s the most important part.

Thank you for sharing this. We don’t hear a lot from people who regret their choices, and I think that perspective is especially valuable.