Last Thursday Firda and I went out for dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, Anna Mae’s. The restaurant is always busy since you get soup or salad, bun (white, brown or cheese), a full dinner (one of four meat choices, potatoes, veggies) and desert (pie, cake, or ice cream) for 10 bucks. The place usually filled with around 60 to 80 percent senior citizens – most of them have been going to Anna Mae’s for years and know what to expect.
This particular day we were seated beside a table with two ladies and a man. One of the ladies was the “cantankerous old lady” mentioned in the title of this post.
This particular old lady had plenty of things to complain about – the 30 second wait for cutlery (I give it to her that there should have been cutlery on the table when they sat down but the way she just couldn’t wait 30 seconds for her waitress to grab it and bring it back), the fact that she wasn’t given a bun (when she was asked what type of bun she wanted she said “either” – which sounded like “neither”).
The real kicker is that after she and her companions were finished eating she came back into the room looking for her sweater. She was absolutely positive that she had left her sweater on the back of her chair and when she couldn’t find it she was absolutely positive that someone had stolen it. She even walked up to the waitress who had served her and said to the table she was waiting on “this is disgraceful – don’t come back to this restaurant – you leave for 5 minutes and they steal your stuff”.
Other people at tables around the old lady asked her “maybe your companions took it” or “maybe you left it in the car”, which she denied because she was absolute in her thinking that she had brought it in and put it on the back of her chair.
After several minutes of looking around and rummaging through stuff she gave up. And guess what? She had left her sweater in her car all along. Just as people had suggested.
She didn’t even come back and apologize to anyone. She just decided that she was right and everyone else was wrong. I’m hoping that she was embarrased. I know the other diners had some words about this.
There is no excuse for this type of behavior. I know she was a senior and we are suppose to respect our elders, but how can you respect someone that acts like a child. I just hope that when I’m a senior citizen that I don’t act all high and mighty. That I respect other people (no matter the age) as long as they deserve the respect.
Now if you’ll excuse me – I seem to have forgotten when I left my sweater!