Yesterday proved to be a very blissful and unproductive day for the boy and I. Among other things that didn’t include much space for doing homework and finishing theses (cough), we went to Olé Tapas last night, purely on impulse. Which makes sense, because tapas bars and other places that cater to appetizer-style cuisine seem kind of geared towards people who buy things on impulse. You can try a lot more that way and not have to commit to a huge meal that you might not like. I ended up getting calamari, which is kind of risky in the Midwest far away from any hint of coastline, and indeed it was mostly breading with maybe a dash of squid here and there. But damned if that’s what I didn’t want exactly, right at that moment, and it was fantastic. Also, the dipping sauces it comes with match the strange interior lighting (a kicky red marinara, and green mayonnaise-y type sauce?), which always appeals to my perverse love of color motifs.
At the table next to us, however, and almost marring a perfect night, were probably the world’s most stereotypical asshole business guys EVER. I seriously thought these guys were parodying business people at first, because I didn’t think any person could really un-selfconsciously waste so much precious oxygen. One of them resembled the BTK killer, and the other I couldn’t see very well; he had brown hair and was younger than the other one, but still definitely had at least twenty years on the pretty waitress whom they kept accosting and harrassing during the entirety of their stay. The brown-headed guy seemed like the alpha-male bully king (AMBK) of the two, but both radiated waves of simpering idiotry like solar flares. Even when the waitress escaped from their clutches and they had no one to harass (unless you count the ruined appetites of other diners), they continued discussing their business deals and something about Word/Excel documents REALLY LOUDLY, so you could tell they were IMPORTANT BUSINESSMEN.
At the arrival of the waitress, AMBK suggested, in a voice that enabled everyone in the dining room, and indeed, in the next restaurant over, to hear him: “I’m a very masculine, manly man, but sometimes I need a little bit of romantic candle lighting. Would you light my candle?” He held up what was probably the same chintzy broken glass candle holder like the one on our own table (my back was facing the two; the boy could see the two men in all their disgustingly toadish glory). After that lovely start of asserting his malehood, he held our waitress hostage. “Don’t let the t-shirt and jeans fool you, I’m filthy rich. I buy millions of pairs of expensive underwear.” Suddenly the tiny, shrivelled legs of the baby fried squid in my hand seemed a little less appetizing.
Every five minutes they called her back to their table to light the damn candle. I guess she forgot to bring a match the second time she passed by their table or something. Some choice quotes from the two: “I’m gonna get you deported, you watch out, if you’re an illegal immigrant, you’re goin’ back to Paraguay!”, “Your tip depends on my candle being lit,” and “You studied abroad in France? Mmm, did you have any French boyfriends?”
We ended up giving her a nice tip for having to deal with those guys, who probably ended up leaving her nothing for her troubles. My summer waitressing at a greasy spoon cafe, in retrospect, was extremely blessed - all I had to deal with were stingy or talkative elderly people, and luckily no horny Lotharios.
What do you do, though, in her position? Do you play along with them, as she did, in the hopes that you’ll get a good tip? Do you tell them to fuck off, and risk losing your job? I’d personally be more inclined towards the latter, but I’m luckily in a position where I don’t need a shitty waitressing gig to maintain financial security (well, uh, yet. knock on wood). In a meta sense, this is an issue that we women constantly have to face: the Cornered Waitress. Should you pretend to be giggly, fluffy-headed and act sexy in order to get ahead? Or do you outright reject all that and struggle, for the rest of your life, against something you know will not change in your lifetime or that of your daughter’s or grandchildren (assuming you have them, of course ;)?
There’s a girl who writes for our illustrious and high caliber campus newspaper :roll:, notorious for writing articles such as this one, in which she makes the claim that women can’t be president because of our wacky girl hormones. A week or two ago, she appeared again in the Kansan, in this article, in which she talks about how her lifelong dream has been to appear in Playboy.
Now, some girls dream of being astronauts and doctors. I wanted to be a famous artist or writer. Little Sara, on the other hand, has shot for the lofty goal of being masturbation material. Sara is a Cornered Waitress who has chosen to play along, wholeheartedly and with zeal. The ones who don’t, unfortunately, don’t get a quarter of the notoriety or attention, or they get lambasted or dismissed as feminazis and shrews.
I don’t mean to say that it’s as black and white of a choice as ‘resist’ or ‘play along’. We all play along, to some extent, in order to exist in this society and not go insane. I play along when I half-heartedly laugh at a sexist joke a friend or professor tells in front of me, for instance, because I don’t have the guts to speak up or stand out. Or when I participate in gossip about another woman, based on insulting things about her appearance. Among a myriad of other things.
Though the food was really good and highly recommended, the incident we witnessed left a bad taste in our mouths. All I can hope for is that maybe after we left, the waitress picked up the cheap candle holder and bashed it over the troglodytes’ heads, all while her boss and the other customers looked the other way. Yeah. 