Cell Service

The other day there was an article in the newspaper which indicated that in some restaurants you can now text your order to a waitress. At first I thought this might be a good idea – no more waiting for a drink refill when you needed it. But technology may be ahead of its time in the smaller restaurants.

I walked into my local diner for breakfast this morning. The usual waitress wasn’t behind the counter, but a new face was. She took my order right away and brought my coffee immediately. Then, as the minutes began to go by, and the usual time by which my breakfast would have arrived passed, I looked up, only to see this new waitress standing behind the counter with a cell phone in her hand. Whether she was texting, reading e-mail, or surfing the web, I couldn’t say. All I could think of was my breakfast getting cold sitting on a counter behind the swinging kitchen doors. Finally, the waitress who usually waits on me asked if I had gotten by food yet. When I said no, she turned to the new waitress and told her to check on my order. The new waitress put down her cell phone, went into the kitchen and returned with half my order. “You wanted whole wheat toast, right?” she asked. “No,” I replied, “White.” Sixty seconds later my toast arrived, unbuttered.

The food tasted the same as it always does, but the service left a bad taste in my mouth.