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| Preparing a turkey last year. |
This year Thanksgiving was more eventful than we had hoped. My wife Esther
had to work until 2pm, after which we were going to go out to eat our
Thanksgiving meal at a local restaurant. We thought if we waited to go till around
4pm, the dinning traffic would have lightened up. By 3:30 we were hungry enough
that we decided to head out, Cracker Barrel being our destination. We knew they
had a Thanksgiving meal special with turkey and all the trimmings. I couldn’t
wait to sink my teeth into some stuffing, my favorite part of the Thanksgiving food
repertoire.
When we arrived at Cracker Barrel, I knew we were in trouble
when I could barely find an empty parking spot. Undaunted, I reasoned that most
of the diners would be finishing up and there would be plenty of empty tables. Was
I ever wrong. We entered the lobby that was wall-to-wall people. There were
only two other couples in front of us to register our names with the receptionist.
Could be worse, I thought. When the couple in front of us gave their names, the
receptionist said that the wait would be between one to one and a half hours. I
was already quite hungry. “Let’s get out of here,” I told Esther. We turned
around and bolted out from where we came.
Our next stop was going to be Golden Corral, where we had
eaten a Thanksgiving buffet a number of years ago. Some out-of-town students of
mine couldn’t go home, so we invited them along with our son. We were hoping to
find less of a zoo than at Cracker Barrel. It was all the way across town. We
knew there were few options for restaurants being open on this holiday, so with
expectation we headed there while our hunger increased. Esther hadn’t had much
to eat since she was taking care of a client over lunch time, and knew we were
going for a big meal in the late afternoon.
We finally reached the street where we thought Golden Corral
was. We drove past where we it was supposed to be but didn’t see it. Was it on
a different block? We turned around and retraced our route. Still no sign of
the restaurant. Finally, Esther pointed to an empty building completely stripped
of any identifying signage with no signs of life around it. “I’m sure that’s
where it used to be!” she exclaimed. We continued on our way, our hunger
augmenting. I later discovered that Golden Corral had closed its business in
Harrisonburg right after Labor Day. Now what?
We passed Applebee’s, saw that it was open, and decided to
stop in. We should have smelled a rat immediately when it took five minutes for
a receptionist to show up to ask for our names. There were a half dozen people
seated in the waiting area waiting for tables. “15 to 20 minutes,” she stated
confidently. Not too bad compared to an hour and a half, we thought. It was now
four o’clock. Our hunger could endure that amount of time.
While we were waiting, we noticed that there were quite a
few empty tables scattered throughout the restaurant, yet no one was being
seated. The receptionist would disappear for long periods of time without
seating anyone or greeting new diners at the front door. We discovered that she
was busing tables as well as serving as receptionist. We were finally seated at
4:15. We looked at the menu hoping to find a Thanksgiving special. No such
luck. The menu was their everyday menu. Guess there wouldn’t be a traditional
Thanksgiving meal for us! I was surprised at how many other diners were eating
non-traditionally. However, our increasing hunger made it clear that, turkey or
not, we were going to stay put. Our server came pretty quickly to take our
orders.
While we were waiting, a young couple with a small child
across the aisle from us was complaining to their server. We couldn’t catch
everything they were saying, but they had barely touched their food. The manager
came out to see what he could do. He offered to replace the apparently
inappropriately cooked food. They scoffed at the idea of waiting more time for
food their order to be corrected. Apparently, it had taken an ungainly amount
of time for them to receive their order. The manager reduced their bill by 50%,
and they left with smirks on their faces.
Meanwhile, an elderly couple across the way kept asking
their server when their food would be coming. “Will soon be up,” she answered.
After three such proddings, she threw her hands up and shouted, “I have no
idea! It’s Thanksgiving,” she continued. “Half of the employees who were assigned
to work didn’t show up.” We could see that those who were working were stressed.
The elderly couple got up and left without waiting for their food. More tables
were opening up, but the line in the waiting area didn’t decrease.
I began to realize that they were only seating as many
people as they could cook for. Even so, we waited, and waited some more. Esther
and I ran out of chit-chat about the grandkids, got tired of playing solitaire
and wished we had brought our books along to read. Our hunger continued to
grow. With the experience of our neighboring diners, I expected the worst when
our food finally arrived. It came at 5:15pm. One hour after being seated. To
our delight, the food was good, if not turkey and the trimmings.
Normally in such circumstances, most people would give a pittance
for a tip. I knew that it was not their fault, that they had to work on a
holiday, and that they were overworked trying to deal with a very stressful situation.
When our server brought our box for leftovers, I told her that we had put a normal
tip on our credit card but wanted to give her something extra for all the things
mentioned above. Her smile mitigated our inconvenience slightly and perhaps
gave her something extra to be thankful for.
*This is a reference to a Jerry Seinfeld episode in which
the “soup Nazi” shouts to customers who don’t follow his stringent rules: “No
soup for you!”
