...when waiters attack.

Say “Gluten free” again, motherfucker, I dare you. I double dog dare you. Say it one more fucking time.

I have had it with you people and your fake allergies and fad diets. I don’t need it, I don’t deserve it, I’m a good person and a hard worker and I’m better than this. You don’t have an allergy, you just saw a thing on TV and decided to change your diet in fundamental ways based on very little information, and now you think you’re within your rights to get pissy with me that our kitchen can’t bend over backward far enough to kiss your ass and make you happy? Eat a bag of fucks, you low-information, off-menu-ordering piece of garbage…

What? Of course I have a gun, all the waiters here have guns, it’s company policy. Now sit back down and shut the fuck up, I’m trying to tell you something.

And the worst thing is, there are real people suffering real, in some cases life-threatening, food allergies, and they have real problems getting their issues taken seriously because peasants like you use “I’m allergic” as though it and “I don’t happen to like it” were interchangeable.

They’re not. They’re different words that mean different things, and you can’t use one in place of the other. You aren’t allergic, this is not a real allergy, you just happen not to like it.

Huh? How do I know you don’t have a real allergy to gluten? Why am I so confident? I apologize, allow me to explain…

…YOU ASKED IF THE BREAD WAS GLUTEN-FREE! YOU DIDN’T EVEN BOTHER ASKING IF THERE WAS SPECIAL BREAD, YOU ASKED ABOUT OUR REGULAR BREAD, AND WHETHER IT WAS GLUTEN-FREE!

I mean, seriously, do you even know what gluten is? A person with a legitimate medical issue with regard to processing it would already know that yeah, there would be gluten in the bread. A person with a non-fake allergy to gluten would not have to ask.

And you don’t have to ask either. Just order your fucking food, pay your fucking tab, tip thirty percent for wasting my time and get the fuck out, and take your weird fad diet with you. Can you do that? Can you? Can you please do that for me?

Thank you. That wasn’t so fucking hard, was it?

Anybody else here have a problem with how I handled that?

Good.

Now, how about you, sir? Have you figured out what would you’d like for your dinner?

WHAT THE FUCK IS PALEO??!?!??!

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

…and then came Valentine’s Day, and across the land a certain type of couple rejoiced.

Specifically: Loveless couples.

The type of couple who can’t be bothered to take the few seconds thought and few minutes effort required to tell the person they most care about that yes, they do still care the other three hundred sixty four days of the year. The type who put it off until the one appointed day and try to make up for a year of neglect and disinterest with one grand, misguided gesture.

The type of couple who, in the last dying years of what once was a beautiful and vibrant relationship, can only bring themselves to make the sort of token effort at romance that seems to come naturally to those who’ve forgotten that love is a beautiful, living thing, one that needs to be tended and nurtured every day.

You touch your partner’s body every day.

You tell her she’s beautiful.

You tell her you’re happy to be with her, and that you’re lucky and grateful to have her.

Every.

Single.

Day.

Or, if you can’t be bothered to do that, and many couples can’t, you buy some shitty chocolate and make a reservation at a middlebrow family restaurant.

Some couples convince themselves that this is what love is, that what they have is not a pale imitation of the real thing, an unfunny joke at the expense of their lifetime of loneliness even in the midst of what they call “Love”.

And those fuckers love Valentine’s Day.

For the record, yes, this has always been my position on the holiday, regardless of whether I’m in a relationship or not.

My own romantic life does not affect my opinion of the holiday one iota, nor should it.

When I am in love, I am in love and love is the center of my world. When I am not, I am not and it is not.

And either way, I have nothing but contempt for the whole concept of Valentine’s Day.

I wait tables, you see.

And I see them there, those couples. Sitting, impatient, each in turn thinking that their unique, perfect love is more unique, more perfect, than the love of the people sitting around them, and that it entitles them to special treatment.

Their unique, perfect love, which they could not be bothered to celebrate yesterday. And will not tomorrow. Or any other day of the year.

So unique that they have to celebrate out among the millions of other couples celebrating in the exact same, equally unique way.

So perfect that their food being delayed ten minutes due to the volume of food the kitchen has to cook might spoil it forever.

Those couples, you know the ones. You’ve seen them, though if you’re lucky not closely.

I will spend the day smiling, and nodding, and helping them celebrate love. Because that is what I do, and because I am a professional person.

So yes, happy Valentine’s Day if you must.