Restaurant Tales

I have a lot of stories about restaurants, but my favorite stories didn’t happen to me. This first story happened to my brother Ken.

Ken goes into a KFC just before closing and orders a bucket of chicken. At the time this happened you could (and maybe still can) pay extra to get all white meat. So Ken asks for all white meat. The girl taking his order says “No, that would take all our white meat and if another customer comes in and wants white meat, we’ll have to drop another chicken [into the fryer], and we don’t want to do that so close to closing.”

Ken asks to speak to the manager. The manager comes over and, after being briefed on the situation, tells Ken the same thing. Ken can’t buy the white meat because another customer may come in and want it. So Ken leaves empty-handed and goes elsewhere for food.

The KFC had food to sell but refused to sell it because another (imaginary) customer might want it. They could have sold the chicken to Ken and told the next guy, “Sorry, we’re out.” But that would have made sense.

Another story came from my sister-in-law, Shirley. Traveling back from the beach, Shirley stops at a roadside diner. She orders dinner, which includes a choice of baked potato or potato salad. Shirley orders a baked potato. When her meal arrives, instead of the baked potato she ordered there is potato salad. The waitress explains that they are out of potatoes.

It so happens there is a pyramid of hot, foil-wrapped baked potatoes on the salad bar. Pointing to it, Shirley says, “There must be two hundred baked potatoes right there. Bring me one of those.”

And the waitress answers, “I can’t do that. Those potatoes belong to the salad bar.”

Once again, the restaurant has food the customer wants, the customer has money the restaurant wants, and you’d think there could be a simple swap that leaves everyone happy. But again, that would have made sense.

Why do I bring up these restaurant tales? Because I want to illustrate a certain kind of thinking. I call it the IBM binary mind. Yes or no. Black or white. Up or down. Good or evil. There are no shades of gray. It’s my way or the highway.

I don’t know where those restaurant workers are today, but their spirit lives on in Washington, D.C., where for many months, the name of the game has been “Let’s Not Make A Deal.” If we shoot ourselves in the foot, it will be our own damn fault. That’s what we get for voting nincompoops into office. Let’s not do that again.