Dinner Out

I don't think my expectations for people's behavior are all that terribly demanding. Basically, if you're a half-way decent human being and treat other people with a modicum of respect, then we won't have any major problems. However, when people can't handle that, I have a number of pet peeves:

• People who speak exceedingly loudly in public places, especially restaurants.
• People who treat children poorly.
• Cell phone use in certain public places - Wal-Mart, no problem; restaurant, rude.

Tonight my mom and I went to dinner and hit the trifecta. All you can eat shrimp night at a chain steak place, so you can imagine the general clientele, but there was one woman who was practically yelling at the rest of the people at her table the whole time. She said nasty things to her grandson, who looked to be about 3 or 4 years old, including, "look what you made her do," when a waitress dropped something (totally unrelated to anything the kid had done). Her cell phone rang no less than 8 times in 45 minutes. From the conversation - I could hear her half quite clearly - it seemed to be the same person several times. At one point, her grandson ran in front of me and she said "let the little lady go by first." As I then walked past, she said to me, "where's my quarter? I called you 'little lady' doesn't that deserve a tip?" I *almost* said "no, I'm a 26-year-old professional, it's actually quite an insult," but managed to restrain myself. By the time we left, my eye was twitching. I knew there was a reason I grabbed my Enya CD on the way out of the house; the soothing adult contemporary music was quite a relief.

The other guests of note were a guy with two adorable, well-behaved children at the table behind us. It was obviously a divorced dad on his one night with the kids. It was kind of sad, but also really cute how excited they were to be with him. The little boy showed us his coloring book on the way out - the dump truck is his favorite.