Lunch on Sunday

[fireflykid]

Or: Lester Bangs Was Not Last of the White Niggers

Las Margaritas is a nice, nearby Mexican restaurant we like to frequent.  The food isn’t necessarily stand out, but for Americanized Latin fare it’s a good, sturdy value.  The service is always efficient and courteous; I’ve never had a bad meal there, or bad service.

Today Perry and I went to lunch

Comments

[terrible_greg]

Good lord. I don't even know where to begin. I guess I'll start here: working in the retail service industry, I am never rude to waitstaff anywhere. Fast food, the Mexican places, Applebee's, whatever-- I try to be nice and understanding, even if it's undeserved and I really am getting terrible service. (In those cases, I'll be short but polite and stiff the waiter*, alas.)

I am a skinny American in the Mexican restaurant. Fattening food is okay with a bit of portion control.

The fact that, moments after these assholes were chortling and guffawing about, I'm presuming, "fat lazy Mexicans", those same disparaged folks turned around and did the birthday thing just galls me. Especially since, irony noted, it was for a fat lazy White American family. Ugh, ugh, UGH.

You've nailed it on the head. These are the "white niggers" of the suburbs. And they are very real. Suburban racism and classism is something that has really come to bother me over the last few years, especially since those attitudes are very entrenched in the divide between Detroit (black, Middle Eastern, urban) and its suburbs (White, Jewish, distantly patrician). I've come to echo George Carlin's line from-- of all movies-- "Jay & Silent Bob Strike Strike Back":

"Don't be so SUBURBAN."

For me, that really pretty much says it all. I'm in still in the suburbs now, but in a few years, my wife and I are bound for downtown Detroit, in a fitting move of "reverse white flight." Can't wait!

*It's actually almost always a waitress that blows it, truth be told. For whatever reason, I've noticed that male waiters tend to have their shit more together. A sexist observation? Yeah, probably. But one nevertheless rooted in genuine life experience.

[fireflykid]

I can normally tolerate crap service in a restaurant, because I only go out with people whose company I enjoy. It's more time to talk, and something to talk about. But the thing with these people...the service wasn't bad. At all. They were just demanding and overbearing. It's unacceptable. And they fact that they had SEVEN children with them, and are setting THAT kind of example for them, that's abominable.

I don't understand why people go to a full service restaurant when they are in a hurry, or in a bad mood. Stay home! Order in! Don't subject the rest of society to your misery...that's what the Internet is for!

And I bet you these people will go and tell all their friends how TERRIBLE the service was. And they’ll be believed, because the customer is always right. Well, to quote another Kevin Smith movie, “The customer is always an ASSHOLE.”

[jagreen79]

The upswing there, of course, is that they were probably socked with the automatic 18%-or-so gratuity for a large party.

[fireflykid]

Good point. Next time I eat there I'm checking the menu for that policy...!

[jagreen79]

Greg, you may have missed your chance: there was a news report out on a whole ton of properties in D-town that went unsold at auction, even with a starting bid of only $500.

Also, as someone who just moved into the St. Louis city limits for the first time in his life, city living is pretty awesome.

[terrible_greg]

This sort of thing is pretty common of late in Detroit, actually. We'll get our chance. We're not doing anything until my wife finishes her Master's Degree.