The Great Change: Turning Cathy into a Lawyer

I sort of realized, too late, that when I planned my summer I had neglected to schedule for myself a day at the beach, literally or figuratively. A day where I could do nothing but lie around in a relaxing place. And/or go swimming. Even my trip to Southeast Asia ended up beachless, despite there being some very nice ones in Thailand. And I really could have used it - it's been a marathon going form the semester to the writing competition to the move to the job to travel to the job again and I was craving a mental pit stop.

I finally got the proverbial day at the beach when last weekend my friend and I... spent a day at the beach. We headed out to Ocean City, MD. It was a beach whose geographic proximity mocked us as we fjorded the state highways for three hours to get there, but once there we had a nice time. The beach was pleasant and we had a nice swim. The waves were high enough to not be boringly placid but not so big that swimming became a bruising experience. Initially we were near the boardwalk and walked around eating boardwalk food (which naturally included crab cakes) but then we went up the road to this complex that was sort of a Disney-fied bar on the inlet (Ocean City is a barrier island). It was all done up as a Jamaican oasis, with palm trees and sand and lots of distinct bar areas done up with their own tropical atmosphere. It was sort of nauseating, in a way, although having never seen a place like that it was kind of fun to take in for the first time while it still had some novelty. My concern stemmed from the realization that it was the kind of place where "Girls Gone Wild" videos are probably shot (as the various signs warning us that AV recording was happening at all times suggested), where drunken coeds partake in their unique notion of inebriated "fun," and where, for a place with no walls, the dress code was highly regulated (e.g., no backwards baseball caps). I did think the jetski parking lot for those who approached by sea was an interesting touch though.

Neither my friend nor I had ever jetskied, and although it was a little expensive, we decided to give it a try and rented one for a half an hour. It seems that if I think it's important to take in all sorts of new but foreign experiences, it's also worth taking in new domestic ones as well.

For dinner I'd not yet had my fill of greasy beach food and really wanted fried chicken, so we pulled into the first place that seemed like it might offer it. Big mistake. The service was very slow and poorly prioritized. For instance, my meal came with fries. When the waitress came over mid-meal to see how we were doing she thought to ask THEN if I might like ketchup. She eventually returned with it, after having done about 10 thousand other things first.

The bigger problem that really bothered me, in no small part because my fried chicken fix was absurdly expensive (3 or 4 times the equvilent price at KFC, but hey, it was table service and convenient, right????), I couldn't get the chicken pieces I wanted. It came with 4. I was hungry enough for at least three. I asked for drumsticks, which, as I explained to the waitress, was the only kind I really liked. When she brought my order there was but one. "We can't give you any more, we save those for our kids meals."

After my stunned silence abated I managed to shoot back, "Well would you prefer I act like I'm 12? I'm a paying customer and I asked for drumsticks!" I might have understood if it had been like ordering a half-chicken and you'd need to keep the set of parts together. But since they obviously manipulated the inventory I was flabbergasted that they wouldn't manipulate it for me. Given that white meat is usually more popular it wasn't like I was asking for something I wasn't paying for. She took the plate back to the kitchen and returned but one more. "This was all the chef would do." Fearing I'd never get to eat anything at all at this rate, I took it, and regretted it the whole meal. I'd finished the two and was still hungry and I was increasingly livid that I'd be spending an obscene amount of money to not get what I wanted. It was sort of interesting because as the meal went on I heard her tell another table, "Oh we can't do that," with regard to some request (reasonable, I'd imagine). What kind of restaurant says "no" or "we can't do that" to a customer? Has our notion of hospitality really strayed to such cavalier proportions? There are schools all over the country teaching restaurant and hotel management, and I really doubt they teach their students to say that to their customers. Ever.

When you go to a restaurant, the deal is that for your money (more than you'd spend cooking it for yourself or in a take-away shop) you actually get served satisfactorily. This place was straying from that tacit agreement and then playing, well, chicken with me that I wouldn't get uppity and walk out. So not only was I hungry, and not only was I embittered that I wasn't getting what I was paying for, I felt increasinly resentful that I was being taken advantage of. Had I been alone I might have walked out but it wasn't really a viable choice with my friend there. Plus it would have resulted in the wasting of two full meals which couldn't be reserved, and I really hate waste. But I felt I had to assert myself somehow because I hated feeling so taken advantage of.

I thought about asking to speak to a manager but everyone in the restaurant seemed fairly surly and I doubted that I'd get any satisfaction. So I told my friend that I'd contribute the cost of my meal and tax to the bill but no tip. She let her customer flounder and not get what she ordered, and I wasn't going to reward her for it. It was also the only way of acting that wouldn't potentially result in a loud public argument.

The problem is that my friend didn't have the right denominations of money for his share, and decided (for me) that it wasn't such a big deal and I should still contribute a dollar for my portion. But this really made me angry with him, plus it created an awkward situation. "I'll LEND you the dollar you need to pay the tip on yours, but you need to pay it back to me because I WILL NOT GIVE A TIP." This was very awkward because I normally wouldn't be so petty in making my friend repay the debt of a dollar. But it was the principle of the thing, and I was annoyed that he was minimizing it. I'd picked my battle and sunk my teeth into it, and being told to let go for the sake of expediency did not sit well with me at all.

It's not that I'm so petty that I always get worked up over things like two pieces of chicken. It was more a sense of indignation that the restaurant was taking advantage of its customers' compliance, bullying them into just shutting up and taking what it gave them and then making them pay for it, and that's wrong no matter what the context. I didn't like feeling I was enabling such behavior, and I really hated feeling so runover by it personally. As a result of that it was no longer a fight over chicken and felt like something worth fighting on principle. Stupid things that aren't fair always are. Injustice or bullying don't deserve a fair pass for anything.

But I will acknowledge being a little prickly that evening. The sun and salt sort of suck out all your energy while you are having all your fun, and I had a three-hour drive looming in front of me. I was also not looking forward to passing by the spot where earlier in the day we'd passed by a house in the final stages of burning down to the ground. It was a place of anxiety and trauma, where the sweet sooty smell of someone's life being ruined permeated the car (and was still lingering in the air when we passed by again hours later.) As we were passing by in the morning I foolishly turned my head to see it for just a few seconds and that was enough to etch it forever in my mind. The fire raged with a remorseless thoroughness, immune to any pleading to end its destruction. It's frightening enough when such indifferent destruction is exhibited in something inanimate, like fire. It's even worse when that same sort of unrepentant power is demonstrated by people.