Tag Menu

Salad Days

Michael 2 Comments

A couple of days ago I met a friend for lunch. This is a change for me as I usually meet friends for breakfast which itself was a change for me as I used to meet friends for happy hour. The things we must adjust to as we get older. Sigh.

Anyway changing from breakfast to lunch meant I had to read and consider the menu. Breakfast is easy. I check out what’s at the top of the list and say I’ll have the *full in the blank* with the eggs over easy and wheat toast. The top item is always the same, two (sometimes 3) eggs any style with three (sometimes 2) pieces of bacon and sauaage, home fries, and toast. It’s just about what I have every morning whether out or at home except that on Saturdays at home I add pancakes or waffles depending on my mood unless I completely switch things up and go with French Toast, or decide to give my heart a break (it’s one of the few organs still in its original condition) and have oatmeal.

So, that top item on the breakfast menu. It’s always the same but I have to take a quick glance at the menu to see what that particular restaurant/diner calls it so I can *fill in the blank* for the server. Even the most greasy-spoon-ish diner will have some cute name for it. Grandpa Bob’s Favorite or Harvey’s Hungry Meal or The Lumberjack Special. Bob and Harvey make sense because we’re usually eating at Bob’s Breakfasts or Harvey’s Hungry House. But a bunch of places have a lumberjack meal or two and I don’t know that this spot on Earth is known for commercial forresting. It’s their places and their menus so I guess they can call ther meals whatever they like.

But I digress. Again. On this particular day I wasn’t eating breakfast out and had to get accustomed to a whole new set of menu selections. Did you ever notice that restaurants/diners don’t give lunch offerings cute names? A grilled chicken wrap is a grilled chicken wrap. I guess by lunch most of the diners have fumbled their way through a half day of work, school, or shopping and just want to eat.

I checked out the offerings and made my choice. I might have mumbled sort of out loud that I was going on the light side and order a salad. That’s when my lunch companion just had to remind me that salad does not always equal light and healthy. Especially at this spot on Earth. Around here our best selling salad whether at restaurants, diners, or at the bar during those once happier happy hours is the steak salad.

Now at those places on Earth that might recognize that you can make a salad out of a steak might just add some grilled steak strips onto a bowl of lettuce and it’s usual accompaniments. Not here. Here we take a whole steak, perhaps even a strip steak, and drop it on top of a hearty salad that by itself could serve 3 or 4, then add cheese, hardboiled eggs (at least two), and french fries. And the only dressing allowed is ranch. And never on the side. Yep. Not exactly light.

So, I decided against the steak salad and tried to stick with something “on the light side.” And I found it, right there in the salad section. A taco salad. It didn’t even come with dressing.

How much lighter can you get?

That’s what I  think. Really. How ’bout you?

Feel free to ignore this greeting. Our menu options have not changed.

Michael Leave a comment

It seems to us that every time you call a bank, an insurance company, some retail store, the local ballet company, your drugstore, your spouse’s work, your work, anybody’s work, or even your kid’s school you are greeted with, “Please listen carefully as our menu options have changed.”  Really?  And when was that change anyway?  We’ve been calling the same numbers for years and they all connect to the same recording that starts every call with “Please listen carefully as our menu options have changed.

We don’t remember what the choices were from yesterday so how are we to know if they really did change today.  The only thing that we are sure of is that the option we really want – to speak with a human being – isn’t one of the options!  Never is.  We’re certain that it used to be.  We’re pretty sure the last choice was always, “Otherwise, please press zero or hold on for an operator.”  That one used to get you to a human.  It said so right in the description – hold on for an operator.  Now it’s code for “Press zero and we’ll hang up on you.”  And there used to be one that said, “If you are calling from a rotary phone, please hold on.”  That got you a real person also.  Did you ever hold on even though you were calling from a push button phone?  They couldn’t tell.  Could they?

We think we know what the problem is.  There are too many choices.  People are probably clogging up customer service lines with complaints about that company’s automated line saying there wasn’t a choice for their problem when there might have been.  But because there are menus within menus within still other menus, sometimes finding the right choice isn’t a reasonable option.  So we’re proposing our own universal auto-attendant menu that any company can use.

 

–Thank you for calling the First National Insurance Company of Discount Ticket Sellers and Drug Store

–If you want to check a balance, make a payment, transfer funds, request a quote, refill a prescription, get our mailing address, get our e-mail address, access your most recent statement, access older statements, buy a travel mug with our logo on it, order tickets for a sporting event, concert, live theater event, movie, ballet, upcoming auto, home, garden, flower, RV or boat show, commend an employee, or file a complaint, hang up and go to our web-site and take care of business there.  If you’re willing to do it by phone you’ll do fine with it on-line.  With the proliferation of tablets, mobile sites and apps, you don’t even need a real computer to take care of business on line.  You can stay put on your couch, access our site during the commercial, do whatever you want to do, and never miss any of your show.  If you don’t have a tablet you can use a smart phone but the screen is a little small.  Don’t complain to us if you hit a wrong virtual button on a cell phone screen.  Now really, we’re well into the twenty-first century and you don’t have a tablet?  Next you’ll claim to still have a rotary phone.

–All other callers please hold on and listen to our commercial for easy to use personal tablets.

 

There you have it.  It has only two choices and it even works with rotary phones.  And it’s guaranteed not to need changing.  Ever.  Or until somebody invents something more convenient than cell phones or personal tablets.

Now that’s what we think. Really. How ‘bout you.