All I wanted was a quiet lunch.
“How about the Lone Star Restaurant?” I asked Dick. (Not the real restaurant name but close enough.) We were in Duluth and a quiet lunch sounded good.
“Why not? We’ve never been there.”
Why not indeed? We turned into the parking lot, hopped out and entered the restaurant. A hostess greeted us at the front door with a perky, “Have you dined here before?” I said no. Maybe that was my first mistake.
“How wonderful,” she said. “Wonderful” was a bit strong, I thought as we followed her to a booth but… okay.
We’d barely wrestled out of our winter jackets when our server appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. “This is your first time here?” When I nodded she responded enthusiastically, “Great! I’ll explain our menu.” I figured this uberhospitality thing must be the latest fad and sat politely, pretending to listen as she flipped through the pages of the menu.
She left to get our beverages. Good. We’d now have a chance to talk, and I started to ask Dick what he was ordering but he didn’t get a chance to answer. With lightning speed, our server returned to take our orders. When she left, I figured we’d have to have a few minutes of quiet, but no, but I’d barely taken a sip of my Sprite when her vivacious voice burst out of nowhere. “Are your drinks all right?”
They were, we assured her, hoping she’d go away, and she left. But it was a temporary ploy. She returned within minutes to “see how things were.”
She came back at least three more times to “see how things were.”
Meanwhile, two more employees added to the hospitality: young women from the kitchen brought our food. “Enjoy your food and let me know if everything isn’t satisfactory.”
I had barely lifted my cheeseburger to my mouth when a young man introducing himself as Jeff appeared out of nowhere. “How’s your meal? Is everything okay?” We never figured out who he was. The owner? The chef?
We ate quickly, realizing if we wanted peace and quiet, we wouldn’t find it here. As we were paying our bill, a booming voice from a nearby booth suddenly shouted, “Attention! It’s George’s 35th birthday. Everybody join in the birthday song.”
The whole joint burst out in a loud rendition of Happy Birthday. Following that, the booming voice led everyone in shouting Hip, hip hooray! Hip, hip hooray! Hip, hip, hooray!
“Wouldn’t it be nice,” Dick said as we scurried from the building, “if this place had a separate room for old people who just want a quiet meal?”
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