Yes, I am a snob!  Specially when it comes to food & restaurants.  I love to cook, and when I go out and pay good money, I want something memorable,, something that is at least as tasty and well presented as what I create.

It never ceases to amaze me how poorly trained most restaurant staff seem to be these days.  It got totally topped off by a recent visit to the Roadhouse Café (formerly Cash Store) in Davenport.  An old friend was visiting, and she wanted to take me out for breakfast and had fond memories of the old Cash Store.  I was a little reluctant as previous meals there, admittedly dinners, had not been good experiences.  But I thought maybe we'd give it another try.  After all, how badly could a breakfast be? 

Wait staff:  clueless, nice, but clueless.  People standing about, waiting to be seated, even get their name on a list, and there are only 3 other people seated in the restaurant.  Finally, shown to a table - had to return with menus (another wait of 5 - 10 minutes).  We order....coffee comes...my friend Judy had asked for some sugar/substitute for her coffee - there was nothing on the tables:  no salt/pepper, no usual hot-sauces, ketchup, etc.  She kept waiting, until her coffee was almost cold, then went up to the front counter and asked for some - standing there until she got it. 

The waitress did come over to fill up Judy's coffee cup, and didn't even notice that mine was almost empty - just splashed coffee into the cup and spun off. 

When the food finally came after a loooong wait, (and I'm telling you there were only now 6 people in the restaurant), the only thing edible on the plate was the toast.  One taste of the breakfast potatoes: they tasted fishy, and they were so soaked in oil as to be inedible.  It was clear they hadn't changed the oil in a while - at 9 a.m. in the morning, the oil shouldn't have tasted like fish.  And even clearer the cook didn't know what he was doing.  To have the potatoes be as oil laden as they were, the oil probably wasn't enough.....and how someone could make scrambled eggs that were stringy and tasteless is beyond me.  I won't be going back there until they sell the place (yet once again) because it had gone under.

But back to my original rant about lack of training for restaurant staff.  There are really on a very small handful of restaurants I've gone to in Santa Cruz that have trained wait staff:  Shadowbrook in Capitola, Ristorante Avanti in Santa Cruz are  ones that spring to mind.  Most of the rest just suck in terms of service....you see they have one person who is supposed to help the servers, i.e., make the rounds, clear dishes, top off drinks, water, coffee, and they come out with one item in their hands, don't make any eye contact, service 1 table, and then go back without looking around to see what else needs to be done.  And waitresses with visible dirt under their nails, slovenly dressed - like they were late for work and thru on what was piled on the floor....argh!  And then I can't tell you how many restaurants open up with a decent chef, who creates the menus, and then the restaurant hires the lowest wage person, who likely speaks very little English and has little actual chef experience, to take over the cooking.  The results speak for themselves.  Yarg!

Professor Robert J. Thornton of the Economics Department at the Lehigh University notes that job candidates often see reference letters and sometimes sue the writers.  For this reason, he has developed the Lexicon of Inconspicuously Ambiguous Recommendations, or LIAR, to convey unfavorable information in a format that needn’t be construed as negative.  Here are a few examples:

To describe a candidate who is woefully inept:
“I most enthusiastically recommend this candidate with no qualifications whatsoever.”

To describe a candidate who had difficulty getting along with fellow workers:
“I am pleased to say that this candidate is a former colleague of mine.

To describe a candidate with lackluster credentials:
“All in all, I cannot say enough good things about this candidate or recommend him too highly.”
 
To describe a candidate who is not particularly industrious:
“In my opinion you will be very fortunate to get this person to work for you.”
 
To describe a candidate who is so unproductive that the position would be better left unfilled:
“I can assure you that no person would be better for this job.”

To describe a candidate who is not worth further consideration:
“I would urge you to waste no time in making this candidate an offer of employment.”

A visiting professor at the University of Alabama is giving a seminar on the supernatural. To get a feel for his audience, he asks:

"How many people here believe in ghosts?" About 90 students raise their hands.

"Well that's a good start. Out of those of you who believe in ghosts, do any of you think you've ever seen a ghost?" About 40 students raise their hands.

"That's really good. I'm really glad you take this seriously. Has anyonehere ever talked to a ghost?" 15 students raise their hands.

"That's a great response. Has anyone here ever touched a ghost?" 3 students raise their hands.

"That's fantastic. But let me ask you one question further... Have any of you ever made love to a ghost?"

One student in the back raises his hand. The professor is astonished. He takes off glasses, takes a step back, and says,

"Son, all the years I've been giving this lecture, no one has ever claimed to have slept with a ghost. You've got to come up here and tell us about your experience."

The redneck student (remember, this is Alabama) replies with a nod and begins to make his way up to the podium.

The professor says, "Well, tell us what it's like to have sex with a Ghost."

The student replies, "Ghost?!? I thought you said `goats`."

A woman asks her husband, 'Would you like some bacon and eggs for breakfast? A slice of toast and maybe some grapefruit and coffee?' He declines. 'Thanks for asking, but I'm not hungry right now. It's this Viagra,' he says. 'It's really taken the edge off my appetite.'

At lunchtime she asked if he would like something. 'A bowl of soup, homemade muffins, or a cheese sandwich?'

He declines. 'The Viagra,' he says, 'really trashes my desire for food.'

Come dinner time, she asks if he wants anything to eat.

'Would you like a juicy steak and scrumptious apple pie? Or maybe a rotisserie chicken or tasty stir fry?'

He declines again. 'No,' he says, 'it's got to be the Viagra... I'm still not hungry.'

'Well,' she says, 'Would you mind letting me up? I'm fucking starving!'

I love to share humor.  If I see something that makes me laugh, I will share it with you.  I used to send out email jokes to several hundred people each day.  And now that is a bit spotty, so I thought I'd try sharing humor & art via my Blog.  Please be warned that much of the humor I love is not politically correct, often it is down and dirty.  If you are easily offended, you probably don't want to subscribe to my blog. 

I will not blog cute baby or pet photos, unless they are so funny I've wet my pants laughing.

A joke a day keeps the doctor away!