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Category: Is this reality?!

¿Que?

¿Que?

I’m at my favourite local Mexican restaurant, a little family owned hole-in-the-wall.  Perhaps it goes without saying, but the entire staff is latino and spanish-speaking.

Yet here I am, sitting next to a middle-aged white woman who is intent on translating the components of her order to the server.  She clarifies she wants “carnitas, which is pork” to the waitress no less than three times throughout the order.  She also wants “salsa verde; that’s the green one.”  Luckily, she drew the line at explaining what a chile relleno was, and spared us all that final potential lesson.

A recent grad from Hollywood Upstairs Medical College

A recent grad from Hollywood Upstairs Medical College

I’m finishing up my lunch in a quiet restaurant.  The table across from me is man is eating lunch with two women.  They are engaged in a passionate debate… or, at least he is.  He is insisting to the two skeptical-looking women that if “you die in your dreams, you die in real life.” Dude is insisting it is a 100% true scientific reality.  The women are being polite, “I think that’s just an urban legend” but he is absolutely not having it.  If you dream your death, your body is convinced and just totally shuts off and you immediately die.  A medical fact, he says.

He has the kind of confidence about this information that I feel like even if someone whipped out their phone and googled this for him, he’d just be convinced the whole internet was wrong instead of himself.

I almost regret leaving before seeing how that battle concluded.

No, Cannot Has Cheezburger

No, Cannot Has Cheezburger

Scene: a man eating solo at a generic chinese restaurant restaurant.

The man orders a mango iced tea.

The server says sorry, they don’t have mango iced tea.

The man asks for a raspberry iced tea.

The server says they don’t have any fruit teas, and begins listing beverage selection.

The man wants sweet tea.

The server says they don’t have any kind of tea but regular black tea.  She returns to listing drinks.

The man then requests strawberry juice.       [editor’s note: ?!?!is this a thing?!?!]

Amazingly, the waiter is able to offer him some sort of strawberryish drink from the bar menu, made virgin.

The man then starts ordering food that is not on the menu.  Really, really, not on the menu.  He goes through four or five different “orders” (turkey sandwich?  pizza?  cheeseburger? ) with escalating frustration before he finally starts looking at the menu to see the kind of food that actually is available.  He orders the lunch special.  It is dinner time.  Finally, he gives up and just asks for broth.  He wants nothing in his broth, except maybe some white rice.  Luckily, the kitchen can accommodate this and he is finally content.

I hope he enjoyed his dinner of beef broth and strawberry juice.

I think that man actually hates you, sir.

I think that man actually hates you, sir.

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Scene: Two men in suits.

One man advises the other:

“Here’s what you need to do.  You need to buy [local newspaper] and then you need to invest some money to turn it into a national paper.”

Then they spend the rest of the lunch hashing out the details of this trainwreck of a business venture.

Mrs. Butterpurse

Mrs. Butterpurse

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Scene: two older ladies at a table.

One is telling the other about the time she got in a physical altercation with a waitress at a Waffle House because the server mistakenly said the syrup was real maple syrup but — plot twist — it wasn’t.  She kept harping about how dumb the server was for thinking it was real maple, as if that made it obvious why the girl needed to be attacked over her mistaken categorization of a breakfast condiment.  Her voice was full of pride as she recanted this tale.

She then produced a stick of butter out of her purse and explained that’s why she always packs her own butter and syrup when she goes out to eat, because restaurants usually only have margarine and fake maple.

I’m not sure what is weirder: the Waffle House fisticuffs or the purse butter.  Also, it wasn’t even breakfast.

“Some other kind of South American.”

“Some other kind of South American.”

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Scene: At the table across from me is a lady in her early 30s and several nicely dressed old men (80+).  They appear to have some kind of professional relationship.

[did not hear what led up to this admission – thankfully, I think]
Lady: Oh, no, I don’t interact with Mexicans.
Man A: Really?
Lady: No, never.  Not at all.
Man A: What about in Mexican restaurants?
Lady: Actually, they aren’t usually even Mexican in Mexican restaurants.  They’re some other kind of South American.
Man B: Uh… that is true, they aren’t always Mexican.
[awkward silence from the rest of the table]

Later in the meal, the young lady makes some comment about “Orientals”

Man who has to be at least 90: YOU CAN’T SAY THAT WORD ANYMORE.

Thank you for the lesson on social appropriateness, man who is old enough to have owned slaves.

Not sure if dumb or charlatan

Not sure if dumb or charlatan

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Scene: A handful of professionals at a business lunch

Sales Bro:  The key to making money online for your company is using Bing.
Employee A: Bing?
Sales Bro: It’s Microsoft’s version of Google.
Employee B: [impressed] Oh, Microsoft!
Sales Bro: Yeah, they pay way higher for ad words than Google.
Employee A: What does that mean?
Sales Bro: so like basically if you would have made $180,000 on Google, you’d make almost $240,000 on Bing.
[no one asks the realistic possibility of making either of these figures anywhere]
Sales Bro: Also, the key to driving traffic to your site is using Bing too.  Not Google.  You’ll get way more online sales.  Yahoo might also be good, but I’ll have to check on that.

[note: no, Yahoo is not “also good.”]

He then spent the remainder of the meal bragging about how many offices he has and how many people he manages.  He has an office in NYC and LA.  I guess that means he’s totes legit.