Member-only story
Humor
My Father Yelled at the Friendly’s Waitresses While We All Cringed and Tried to Hide
Waitress! Waitress! Bring me my Eggs!
The person shouting while pounding on the table was my father, who was a man of little patience.
My children would cringe, and my wife, who had once worked as a waitress at the very Friendly’s Restaurant where we all were sitting, and usually knew the poor woman serving us, was mortified. I was less upset, having lived through this many times.
There was nothing unusual about my father’s outburst. It was, in fact, a somewhat regular occurrence at that restaurant. Admittedly, the service there often was slow and neglectful; my father did have reason to be dissatisfied. His reactions were a bit much, though.
He wasn’t like that at other restaurants; there was something about Friendly’s that would trigger his anger. My father was a relatively mild-mannered person — but not at Friendly’s.
At that time, a good fifty years ago now, lousy service was the norm at Friendly’s Restaurants. The food itself wasn’t bad at all; that’s why we were there. The table might be dirty, and you’d have to point it out to your server, but they would at least clean it. You’d wait for your food, your order might get screwed up, and…
