Be Careful...Or You May Become Infamous...

On Twitter this week, I came across the best quote for dealing with difficult people, especially as a writer:

"I'm a novelist. Anything you say can be taken down & used against you in a work of fiction."
 ~ Ann R. Allen

I love it!  I'm going to add it to the list of my fav quotes of all time, I think ;-D  And then, maybe, I'll just start using it in real life, too!

What's even better is that, as a blogger, all I have to do is crack opne my laptop, tap away at a few keys and whoever gave me a bad day is forever immortalized - online, too!

Today's victim: the mother who sat beside me in the cafe.  Now, to give her credit, there was no way she should have known that I am actually also an employee there.  Perhaps, though, somebody somewhere along the line should tell her that she is having difficulty with the service indutry because she comes across as a fairly nasty woman.  She had to say two sentences by the time I realized she was an HM Mommy, sans the lululemons and running carriage.  Perhaps she's the HM Mommy, AB-style!

So, I understand the frustration of going into a cafe and being unable to find a spot to sit.  I also understand the dilemna of having to care for another living being and feeling like because you will do this until probably the day you die, you expect other people to care a little bit more for you.  Somehow, though, we don't care.  We're not your mother.  We're not your friend.  BUT, WE ARE PEOPLE, too.  And maybe if you talked to people in the service industry like their IQs were above 80 rather than the way you talked to them today, you might get better service...

After listening to her loudly proclaim her distaste for the cafe, filled as it was with students, writers, artists and the people who regularly spend $100/week there, she went on to rip apart a restaurant in south Edmonton.  From the comments her husband said, I think she more or less has a problem with things south of the river rather than just this location, so I should probably just feel sorry for her.  In reality, I feel sorry for her friends who have to listen to her endlessly complain about the smallest things. 

Overhearing conversations like that are fabulous methods of birth control for me, 'cause I never want the sole excuse for our getting together to be to vent about a restaurant.  Specifically, I don't want to have to tell you that I waited an ENTIRE forty minutes on a FRIDAY at ONE, close to the university.  I NEVER want to be that person! Well, and then the conversation turned to their children and their progress, which is probably exciting when you have the babies to compare to one another.  I'm excited about meeting up with my close friends and family to hear about things like that, but I don't want to waste our time complaining. 

Seriously, restaurants are busier on Fridays more than they are on other days of the week.  And, closer to the university, as an intelligent consumer, you should understand that schedules are a little bit more slack and so the lunch rush is more from 1130 to 230 than 12-1 inclusive.  And have a little patience with your fellow human beings.  Even if it wasn't visibly busy when you walked in, perhaps they were filling orders for call-ins...or, they were recovering from a rush earlier.  And, yes, forty minutes is a long time to wait for an order, but maybe you should cook for yourself.  Or, wait, was this a treat to yourself?  Then why were you going into it with all this nasty attitude?  Now, that's probably why you have so much to complain about in life!  Change your attitude, change your life...

So, now I've done my venting, and not just to one friend, but potentially to the whole world.  The woman will probably never see it, and even assume it's not about her...but at least I got one of these things off my chest.  And I feel better about it.  You know that waiter who had that book published last year or the year before - wasn't that just a blog about the rude people he served?  I haven't read that book, yet, but I wonder if he ever spit in somebody's soup...not that I would ever do that, but I might think twice about it the next time I see that woman in the cafe...no, wait, I'm a writer, I have the potential to do much worse than just give her a taste of my pleasant saliva...