I went out to eat with friends the other day and one of them ordered fajitas. My ethnicity is mixed but I grew up eating a lot of Italian so I had never been subjected to Spanish food in a restaurant setting. When the food arrived, it didn’t seem done and required some assembly; the food was literally in separate piles as if the waitress brought the food out before the chef had combined it all.
The cheese was in one pile, the chicken in the other and the onions and peppers were in their own pile. The wraps not only had their own pile, but they had their own plate as did the guacamole, sour cream and salsa. So before she ate, she had to assemble her meal using all of the ingredients like it was an erector set. It was a test to see if she could cram everything in. I don’t remember her being hired in the kitchen and there was no discount on the bill. When I order food, it had better be done when it gets to the table. The new car dealership didn’t give me a pile of parts, a wrench, and a can of glossy paint.
Now that the holidays are behind us, I decided to take a step back and assess my gifts and see which of them required work. I got the game Apples to Apples which is great to play with friends and the requisite socks/underwear/travel coffee mug for the car. It’s always great to get a gift because some gifts are the ones you always wanted yet never realized it. It would be great to actually get one of those, but it’s never actually happened. Some gifts say on the box “some assembly required” which means I actually received a job for Christmas.
I got a pool for a gift but it wasn’t actually the entire pool and it didn’t exactly come assembled or installed or even complete. It was basically the shell of the pool itself and the filter. So I had to throw in money for a pump and liner and stairs and a deck and chemicals. So the gift was really a bill and a job and a license to dig up my backyard and then maintain that mess for the next fifteen years. And the gifter asks when he can come over for a free swim and I’m obligated to oblige him as he gave me the “free” pool to begin with.
With gift giving stemming out of control, I thought we should have some rules, or guidelines or perhaps tips to aid the gift giver.
Tips for gift giving:
-if batteries aren’t included, they need to be which means you should have purchased them or included the receipt so it can be returned – there’s nothing more frustrating than getting something that requires batteries and not having them
-if you buy someone a gift and the box says “some assembly required”, you need to assemble it for them
-don’t secretly buy what you want in the hopes that they won’t want it and they’ll tell you to take it
-don’t re-gift to the person who gave you the original gift
-if someone re-gifts something back to you, they’re trying to send you a message: you give crappy gifts…. going forward, you should buy everyone gift cards and, whatever you do, pull yourself out of the secret Santa pool.
When I go to a restaurant, I expect the food to be brought to the table, and when I’m finished, I want someone to clear off the table. The Panera people, who thing bread is meal, have me busing my own table. Sometimes they bring the food to me, other times, it’s done cafeteria style where I wait for my tray and walk it to the table as if I’m in middle school. When I’m done eating, I have to dump my garbage and place my plates in the appropriate bin which is basically the same tub the bus boy used to use before I was given his job. As time passes, prices go up and the level of service goes down.
A friend stopped by early one Saturday and said we were going to go get some fruits and vegetables. Rather than go to a grocery store, he drove me to a dirt parking lot on the edge of a farm. He said we were going to pick our own vegetables. I spent the afternoon on my hands and knees like a migrant farm worker.
Gas was full service years ago and the full service was really fully service as the gas station guy would clean the windshield and check the oil and tell me to turn my head and cough. Over time, the attendant stopped providing real service and just pumped the gas, and they gave you the option of pumping your own gas to save a few cents a gallon. Then the discount went away and most of the service station’s pumps are now self-service. They’ve taken the service out of the stations and it’s been replaced in the name of convenience. Now it’s tough to get the guy from behind the glass to even acknowledge you enough to turn the pump on as you mime directions to him as he throws his hands up and motions for you to come inside which is not what you want to do because you want him to come outside and pump your gas.
Years ago, milk was delivered to the front door. Now we have to go to the store to get it. The mailbox used to be next to the front door, now it’s at the end on the driveway on a post. At one time, movies started at the beginning and went in chronological order to the end. Today, movies like “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and “Pulp Fiction” have to be unassembled and then reassembled in our heads in real time so I have more questions than answers when the credits role. I’m the guy who’s always saying to the person next to me “I have no idea what’s going on. Did we miss the first half of the movie? Wait now the brother is really the sister or is the cousin the uncle? Can someone hit rewind?” It’s gotten to where I have to see the movie a second and a third time and use a grease board with the erasable markers that get me high to put all of the pieces together. And it’s not just seeing the movie itself; a 4:00pm movie begins at 4:30 because they want you to see 300 previews of movies. You can stroll in at 4:25 just before the movie begins but you don’t get a seat because everyone else has been seated since 3:30.
It’s like those people who save money by spending. They buy a big screen television to save $300 by spending $800. They have a coupon and get something they don’t need like dog food when they have a cat. Or they buy Oreos when everyone in the house likes Chips Ahoy.
I’d love to continue this psychotic bumbling but it’s 6:00pm and I have a 7:30 movie to get to.
