Wednesday nights are wine class, and therefore they're also dinner night out in Dobson for me. My class doesn't start until 7, which gives me about an hour to have a little sit-down dinner. I find that it's a good idea to go to wine class with a full stomach. Most of the restaurants in Dobson kinda suck, but I like The Lantern because it has a good salad bar. I don't generally order salad bars for dinner, but I happened to notice one night that The Lantern salad bar had everything on my ideal salad except for sunflower seeds. When the waitress told me that the ranch dressing was homemade, I was sold.
Last week, I was craving a good salad, so I went to The Lantern. My waitress was about high school aged, a friendly Southern girl who kept calling me "sweetie." Now, I'm sure I milked that Southern charm thing when I waited tables, but I felt pretty ridiculous being called that by a girl who was five years younger than I am. Whatever, she was just being nice. In a town like Dobson, most everybody knows everybody, so she probably has the right to call most of her customers pet names.
In any case, I ordered a one-trip salad bar entree and loaded up my plate with vegetables and ranch dressing. I topped the whole thing with a very generous serving of juicy pineapple chunks, and even made an effort to get extra pineapple juice, a difficult task with salad tongs. I sat back down and prepared to enjoy my ideal salad experience, spearing some lettuce and ham and pineapple on my fork.
The pineapple was sour, obviously way past its prime. Crap, crap, crap. For an anal-retentive gal like me, this was a dilemma. I had a salad full of bad pineapple. While the juice didn't seem to be enough to sour any other of the salad elements, the pineapple is what makes the salad here, folks. Even if I told the waitress about the situation and she corrected it for future salad bar patrons, I still wouldn't have any pineapple, because I had ordered only one trip. I would have to eat my salad sans pineapple.
What does not kill us makes us stronger.
I told the waitress. I waited tables for too long not to complain about something like that; salad bar items should be fresh and tasty. She thanked me and promised to fix it, then asked, "Would you like me to get you a plate of fresh pineapple for your salad, sweetie?" Oh, you lovely girl, call me "sweetie" anytime! She came back with a small plate full of pineapple, juicy and not at all sour. These are the kinds of acts that impress me about servers, because they were the kinds of things that I used to try to do for my customers. I sometimes forgot orders, I spilled water a few times, and I told a lot of jokes that nobody got, but I did try to take care of my customers. If something was wrong, I really did my darnedest to correct it. I was happy again with my salad, though I sighed when I realized that I was going to have to give this girl a really good tip, and I'm already a solid twenty percenter.
Since one trip to the salad bar is not really enough to fill me up, I generally get dessert when I eat at The Lantern. I ordered an ice cream pie that the waitress recommended. The slice was huge and rich and yummy, even though it was obviously a dessert of the pre-packaged variety. I was halfway through the pie when my waitress brought my bill and leaned in close to whisper conspiratorially, "I didn't charge you for your tea, since that dessert is so expensive." I was completely taken aback, but I somehow managed to thank her through my confusion. She must have noticed my reaction, because she came back again a couple of minutes later and said, "I didn't mean to say that you couldn't afford it, just that it's too high. It's good, but I wouldn't pay $2.95 for it." I had collected myself enough to thank her properly the second time, but the whole thing was sort of ridiculous. The dessert serving had been delicious and very generous. Plus, it was obviously a specialty item, so $2.95 seemed perfectly reasonable. I wanted to tell the girl that I used to work at places that charged upwards of six dollars for a dessert half that size.
It seemed obvious to me that the girl was trying to raise her tip. It's not an uncommon trick - it doesn't hurt the server any to give you free stuff, and you end up thanking them with cash. There are some places where you can get away with that more easily than others, depending on how tight a ship the manager of the restaurant runs and how the kitchen receives orders. But it's a crappy thing to do to your employer, and I don't like it. There were a couple of times when I accidentally gave away free desserts by forgetting to ring them up or something like that. And there were other times when I didn't keep close track of my refills for charging purposes. But I never gave away free stuff and drew attention to it to increase my tip. You want a bigger tip? Then be a better server and stop screwing over your employer. Yes, sometimes things are overpriced, and there are going to be times when you are screwed over because of it. But the people who skimp on a tip when they had to pay more than they wanted for dinner weren't going to give you much of a tip anyway.
I was torn. The girl had given very good service, maybe hovering a little more than I would have liked, but that pineapple incident was a big plus for her. But I hated to encourage that kind of behavior. I gave her $3 on my $7 check. I likely would have done that much anyway because of the pineapple. And to be fair, I don't know that she was trying to increase her tip by giving me free tea - maybe she just strongly felt that the pie was overpriced. In any case, it was my second moral dilemma in one night of eating out in Dobson. And it did not kill me, so I can only assume that I am now a stronger person for it, though I do not feel it. Right now, I'm just craving a big salad with pineapple and homemade ranch dressing.
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