Early Morning Stuff

I had to move my car from the street in front of my house before 7:00 this morning or risk getting another ticket. When I came home last night, there were signs plastered up and down the street saying that no vehicles could be parked there between 7:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m.

That hasn’t bothered me before, since I usually have kept my car in the garage. However, with the garage door broken and now semi-permanently down (it isn’t coming back up until I can afford to replace it), I was up and on the road by 6:30 a.m. I decided it would be a good day to finally renew my auto registration and thus deal with the two tickets I received last week. (See my post for August 13).

I suppose I have seldom noticed that there are few businesses, including restaurants, open at 6:30 a.m. I usually have some place to go or something to do when I am out early in the morning. But today I had at least two hours to waste until the DMV office opened at 8:30. But every place I went was closed, even the yuppie coffee shop around the corner. Finally, I decided to go somewhere that was open 24-hours and headed for Denny’s.

When I arrived, I found that I needed change to purchase a newspaper. I went to the counter and waited—I waited for about fifteen minutes before the waiter came. He made change for me, I bought a paper, and he seated me in the almost full smoking section. After I reviewed the menu, I waited another fifteen minutes for the waiter to take my order. Since I was there to waste time until 8:30 anyway, I certainly wasn’t worried about the half hour I had thus far spent waiting. In the meantime, I watched the waiter and realized that he was the only one on duty. He alone was covering all three sections of the resturaunt. When he finally came to take my order, he apologized for the delay.

“That’s OK,” I replied, “you seem to be covering every table this morning. That’s a lot of work for one waiter.”

“Yes it is,” he replied, "but I’m not really a waiter. I’m a cook. All of the waitresses walked out this morning.”

That explained a lot! And I wonder what goes on at Denny’s. The waitresses and waiters never seem to last very long. They must have an abnormally high turnover of staff.

I must say that the cook-turned-waiter who served me was excellent. Although he had about thirty tables to cover, the service I received from this guy was excellent. When I left to head for the DMV office, I told him how much I appreciated him and the service he provided. And, of course, I over-tipped him by about 25% above my normal 20%.