boxofdelights: (Default)
boxofdelights ([personal profile] boxofdelights) wrote2011-04-27 08:41 pm

eating out alone

I eat out alone a lot. I like it. I bring a book.

I'm a creature of habit. I like going to the same restaurant every week. I also like the fact that waiters remember whether you are a good tipper, even if you are a fat middle-aged odd shabby woman eating alone, with dirt under her fingernails and a book.

Pretending that a professional interaction is a personal one is always going to make me uncomfortable. It's hard enough making eye contact and small talk with my friends, when I really like them and I trust that they really like me. I understand that service workers pretend to like customers because they (or their managers) believe customers like it. I cope with it as well as I can.

This musing brought to you by a new waiter at my favorite restaurant, who addressed me as "my dove". Immediately after a conversation with the people at the next table in which he disclosed that he did not know who Warren Zevon was. If you do not know who Warren Zevon was then you are too young to even pretend to flirt with me. I do not expect you to know this rule, child, since I just made it up, but if you are going to flirt professionally then I do expect you to know that if a woman suddenly stops making eye contact or even looking in your general direction after you address her as "my dove", that is not your cue to ramp up the flirting and the leaning and the hip-shot lingering and the amount of emotion you put into urging her to enjooooy her dinner.
firecat: damiel from wings of desire tasting blood on his fingers. text "i has a flavor!" (Default)

[personal profile] firecat 2011-04-28 04:53 am (UTC)(link)
I've noticed lately that anyone old enough to be a grandparent is fair game for being flirted with by people in their 20s. (One of the times I noticed this was when I had to take my mother to the emergency room a couple of years ago, and the ER doctor, who looked kind of like a young Robert Plant, kept flirting with her. Now maybe he noticed that such behavior made his patients more alert, but it was just a little creepy to me.)

Anyway, I try to pretend the flirters are three years old, because three year olds flirt with everyone and it's cute.

But wow, "my dove"?
amaebi: black fox (Default)

[personal profile] amaebi 2011-04-28 05:18 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, exactly. Wow.
jinian: (Ravenclaw English)

[personal profile] jinian 2011-04-28 06:29 am (UTC)(link)
In fact, I would venture to say that I have never heard anyone in real life addressed as "my dove."