Too Much Service Can Be a Bad Thing

Here's a weird thing that happened to me the other night.

This past Saturday, while Lisa and Natalie were out of town for Odyssey of the Mind, I took Meredith to an Applebees for dinner. I ordered a new menu item, the Cheeseburger Sliders. I was completely unimpressed. I assumed, because they were called sliders, that they would taste something like a White Castle hamburger, but probably better, maybe with a grilled out taste or something like that. Instead, they were basically tasteless, which really bothered me for a beef patty that I assumed was not low fat. The bun was grilled and had a nice crispness but again had little taste to it, and while there were plenty of onions, there wasn't a strong onion taste in the burger. The whole thing was like a study in blandness.

But that's not the weird part. I've had lots of items at restaurants that weren't that good, and despite the blandness I ate these sliders anyway. The weird part was that toward the end of our meal a manager came up to our booth. He'd been going from booth to booth checking to make sure customers were satisfied, and though I couldn't hear the conversations I noticed that he stopped at each table, asked a question, maybe chit chatted about one more thing, and then moved on. Fifteen seconds at each table, tops!

He made his way to our table. He was a handsome enough fellow, I guess, with a big, friendly smile, and he was dressed sort of like an American Eagle mannequin with a name tag.

"Hi!" he said brightly. "How was your meal?"

"Fine," I said.

He pointed at my empty plate. "I see you got the new sliders." I have no idea how he knew I had the sliders since my plate was empty. Maybe they came in a unique serving tray. "How did you like them?"

I hesitated. I didn't think he really wanted my answer. But almost against my better judgment I gave it to him. "Honestly, I didn't like them all that much."

He looked really concerned. "Really?" he said, as if he'd just learned my grandmother had died. "What was the problem?"

"No problem, really," I said lightly. "I just didn't think they were that good."

"What was wrong with them?" he asked. He sounded offended, as if he had created the recipe himself.

I thought of the best way to say it, and after a moment said, "They just weren't all that tasteful. I felt like I could easily have made a better burger myself on the grill at home."

"Well," he said after a moment, "fair enough! Would you like me to bring something else out to you instead?"

"No, I'm fine," I said congenially, waving him off.

"There'd be no charge," he swiftly added.

"No," I said, trying to be polite. "It's not like I didn't eat it. Look! My plate's empty!"

He shook his head. "That doesn't matter! It's my job to make sure that you're happy with the food you have."

"Don't worry about it," I said, and I tried to make meaningful eye contact with the guy. "Really." He apparently didn't notice, though.

"Let me get you a menu. You can pick something else!" He started to walk away but I stopped him.

"Really!" I said. "I'm fine."

He looked around our booth. "There must be something I can get you. How about dessert? Are you getting dessert?"

"We're getting dessert," I told him, "but we can order it from our waiter and we DON'T want it for free!"

"Well, I have a dessert menu right here," he said, reaching for his back pocket. "We'll pick something out together and I'll give it to you, my compliments." I threw my hands up in the air like I was signalling for a touchdown, or maybe the way contemporary Christian worshippers do when they're singing songs in church.

"Dude!" I said fairly forcefully. "We're okay! We're fine! We don't want...we don't want anything." I said "anything" very slowly, like I was talking to a six year old.

"Well, okay," he said as he dropped his head in a dejected manner. "Just let me know if you change your mind."

He left. Eventually our waiter came back and brought me a new drink and we ordered dessert. I was a little bothered by the guy's insistence, but overall I was ready to forget the whole thing. But as we were finishing our dessert the guy was back.

"How was the cake?" he asked us.

I looked at him warily. "It was good. We fought over the last bite."

He laughed a big, hearty laugh. "It must have been good for that to happen!" He paused. "Hey, are you sure that I can't--"

I cut him off forcefully. "If you offer to give me something free one more time I'm going to ask you to give me the ENTIRE meal for free!" He froze and then started to say something else and I said, "It's really becoming a problem for me. Can we just get our check?" He apologized and brought us our check.

I just re-read everything I wrote above, and it occurs to me that maybe I sound like the jerk in this story. And maybe I am. After all, the guy was just trying to be helpful. Maybe by denying him of the opportunity to give us something for free we also robbed him of the opportunity to feel good about his job, about serving people. I don't know. I do know that the whole thing sounds like a bad scene from Seinfeld, but I really just needed the guy to leave me alone. And it taught me this: Too much service can be a bad thing.