Jan. 28, 2004
Nice guys know their own.
That's how I knew the super-obnoxious, thought-he-was-our-new-best-friend waiter — let's call him Don Juan — wasn't one of them.
My friend — let's call her Cassandra — and I were at a diner where Don Juan was working. With all of the information he told us about himself that night, he might as well have handed us a resume. I really didn't need to know that he falls asleep to Enya music, or that he is an excellent cook (which doesn't explain why he's a waiter). I repeatedly had to sit through the line "I'm a nice guy" from him all night when really all I wanted was my tuna melt and a conversation with my friend.
He tried to play the intellectual angle when he saw my friend holding a Faulkner book. He said he loved David Faulkner. Too bad the Nobel Prize-winning author's name was William. He tried to insert himself into every discussion my friend and I were having, mostly unsuccessfully.
What really got my blood boiling, though, was when he had the gall to ask my friend out on a date, after slipping in the part about how he was in the Navy and would be "shipping out" soon. I should have told him she was my wife.
In the awkward silence that followed, the best I could do was crack a joke about how asking someone out on my job would get me fired real fast, and that it was great that his boss let him do it on his job. I think it was just loud enough for the manager to hear me.
Lover boy seemed so slick, that at times it almost looked like a routine.
Turns out it was.
I recounted my diner horror story to a friend. When she heard the name and the place, she realized I was talking about the same waiter who had pulled the same routine with her just days before.
Time for a little payback.
The three of us made a return trip to the diner, calling ahead to make sure our waiter-friend was working. I thought it would be nice for all of his new "friends" to pay him a visit at the same time.
Busted.
I don't think I could have seen his jaw drop any farther when the three of us sat down at a table together. He muttered some obscenities, and then something about losing his mojo. Either way, his game was over. Watching the attitude he got from the girls, I almost felt a little bad for him. Almost.
Score one for the nice guys.
Ahmad is a copy editor for the Press & Sun-Bulletin. Waiters often like to spit in his food. E-mail him at wahmad@pressconnects.com.
© 2004 Press & Sun-Bulletin, Binghamton, N.Y.