These days, even treating your best friend to a slice of birthday cake (or three) has its fair share of hazards. What you think will be a simple matter of sidling up to a nice, friendly neighbourhood cafe (with, oh, only 3 kazillion or so franchises worldwide) and ordering drinks and cake becomes far more sinister.
I knew I should have fled the moment the man with the giant whisky bottle appeared. But no, we had ordered, and we weren't about to back out. It turns out the staff were just doing a neat little birthday number for the benefit of some young patrons (with the help of the GWB). After singing a birthday medley (in the same way as an inexperienced teppanyaki chef could be said to be delicately converting $120-apiece fresh scallops into simplified carbon), they presented both (traumatised) birthday boy and girl with a complimentary slice of cake each.
As bemused Best Friend returned to her chair after a mysterious visit downstairs, I told her, "Don't worry, you won't have to go through that. I told them we'll be paying for the cake."
P/S: I'm not as horrid as this post implies. Really, if any of the waiters at this establishment read this, you're all doing great at work, and the cake (the one we paid for) was lovely. I know you were hired for your ability to wait on grumpy customers while smiling up a storm, and not for your singing talents, and probably you only found out about the singing bit after you took the job and they gave you a magnifying glass to read the small print with. And finally, in case you're wondering, that's not a picture of one of you. My camera made this one up after I told it this story. What could I say? Dim atmosphere, giant whiskey bottle; it had to try.
No comments:
Post a Comment