American Restaurant Service

Wednesday I went to lunch with a friend.. He took me to Cheeve's for lunch. We went to Cheeve's, so I expected good food and good service. Wrong!

The food was decent, I was amazed at the service. It stunk. Dining out in France pretty much ruined me on most service in American resaurants. Those Frenchies really know how to do it. They don't really try to converse. They don't ask you questions. They just do what you need done when you need it and stay out of the way of your enjoying the food, atmosphere and company. They are true professionals.

The first thing our waiter did was offer us his hand and introduce himself. It was particularly odd because he was probably a freshman in college. Friendly is good, I guess, but it was too much. The staff repeatedly asked us about our meal. We were probably asked 3 times before we ever really had a chance to try it. It was almost amusing. I told my friend that in French restaurants, they didn't ask if the food was good because they knew it was good. They thought, "We are the food experts: If it wasn't good, we wouldn't serve it." It was rather annoying because we were trying to have a serious conversation, and we kept being interrupted.

When we were finished, our waiter asked if we were pastors. He said he heard us talking and that if we were pastors, we might know some of his family. First of all, I thought his question was odd. Why was he eavesdropping? Secondly, who cares if we know his family. We went on to say that he was part of the "famous" Crosby family and that one uncle was a pastor here and one a pastor there, etc, etc for what seemed to be five minutes.

I probably sound like I am being really hard on the boy, but it was just too over the top. If I had been 20 years older, which my friend was, I think I would have taken him aside and said, "Son, for yourself and for Christ, can you tone it down. Just serve your fellow man humbly and don't worry who knows who. Without Christ we are all just worm crap."

It is crazy that we can be so caught up in ourselves that we blindly make a fool out of ourselves. Christ calls us to be fools, but he calls us to be his fools. This is true wisdom.