I Hate Everyone...Starting With Me (12 page)

I don’t think waiters and waitresses really care what you call them as long as you tip well. If I was a waitress and I knew there was twenty-five percent coming at the end of the meal, you could call me “Joan Rivers, dog-fucking terrorist child molester” and I’d say, “Thank you, come again!”

I also hate waiters
who introduce themselves.
“Hi, I’m Steven. I’ll be your server tonight.” “Hi, Steven, I’m Joan, and I don’t give a shit! Just bring me my Caesar salad and shut up.”

The waiter’s job is to bring me food from the kitchen; my job is to eat it (or at least push it around the plate and pretend to eat it, like all of those anorexics in Hollywood do). That’s going to be the extent of our relationship. We’re not going to become BFFs or have pajama parties or spend a crazy weekend on Mykonos together.

But if we
were
going to be pals, then I’d need a lot more information than just a name. “My name is John” simply doesn’t cut it. John who? John Foster Dulles? John Philip Sousa? John Wayne Gacy? I vet my friends. I’m like a dog sniffing a hydrant; I know everything about them and their parents and their parents’ parents. So if Johnny in the apron wants to be friends, I’ll need to know a couple of things, like where he’s from, did he go to college, did he go to prison, does he have a girlfriend, does he have money, does he have a will, am I in it?

I hate it when the waiter comes to the table and asks, “Would you like to see a menu?”
What’s the correct response to that question: “No. Let me guess what you have in the refrigerator.” Or “No, I’m not worthy. I’ll just eat the crumbs off of the lap of the old lady at table seven.”

I hate it when the waiter reads the daily specials like he’s Meryl Streep in
Sophie’s Choice
. (And by the by, Sophie made a terrible choice. She should have given the Nazis both of those overacting kids.) The waiter has all the daily specials memorized and he recites them with vigor and gusto and you have no idea what he’s talking about and, worse, he has no idea what he’s talking about. “Today’s entrée special is a
bouquetière
of garden vegetables.” You grew up with a prison mom; she didn’t serve her parole officer a
bouquetière
, she blew him for a pair of nylons. The other inmates weren’t banging their cups and chanting, “We want a
bouquetière
! We want a
bouquetière
!”

And don’t come to my table and ask me if I’d like a “festival of roughage.” It’s a bowl of lettuce and I’m going to shit for a month. Now get away from me and go back in the kitchen.

I hate diners who hound the waiter with ridiculous questions
like, “If your mother was eating here tonight, then what would you serve her?” Who knows what his relationship with his mother is like? What if he doesn’t like his mother? The last meal Lizzie Borden served her mother was Jell-O and ground gravel. So it’s really just a stupid question.

I hate when customers say, “Is that gluten-free?
It has to be gluten-free or my throat closes.”
I was on a plane once and the guy next to me almost died—his throat closed and they had to lay him
down in the aisle for the entire flight. I loved it: Finally I had extra leg room. In coach! Since then, every time I travel I carry a tiny bottle of gluten in my purse, just in case I want to stretch out a little.

When I grew up nobody was “gluten-free.” Nobody even knew what gluten was. Now everyone’s gluten-free, afraid to eat wheat. What a bunch of pussies. Here’s an idea: Stay home and have a can of Nine Lives. Stop bothering everybody.

I hate when diners ask, “How is that prepared?”
Like the waitresses showed up an hour early to watch the chef cook. Just once I’d like to hear her say, “Well, once the rats are done crapping on it, the chef kicks it across the floor and then I pick it up and reheat it under my armpits.”

Equally as annoying is when they ask for substitutions: “Can you replace the mushrooms with olives and replace the bread with fruit and replace the spinach with rice?” I’d love the waiter to say, “How about if I replace your teeth with my fist? Bon appétit!” And…

I hate it when people say “bon appétit” in inappropriate places—
which would be
any
place other than France. If your salad comes in a plastic container or you’re mixing your own coffee or if your entrée is sold by the bucket, don’t wink and say, “Bon appétit.” Just let me leave quietly, under cover of the night.

I hate men who order wine and like to let it “breathe.”
You know those types: They put the “f” in pretentious? Every time I see one of them sniff the cork, I have an incredible urge to run over to his table and shove it up his nose.

The asshole sniffs the cork, swirls the wine around his mouth, gargles and then says, “It’s bold but not so brash as to overplay the occasion. Do you taste the raspberries? Do you find this wine to have a fascinating woodiness?” I always say, “Yes, I do; just like the inside of a mahogany casket.” And then I’d like to water board him with his Chablis.

I hate tipping.
After every meal there is the moment when the waiter brings the check to the table. It’s for nine dollars and forty-seven cents, you put down a hundred dollar bill and he says, “Would you like some change?”

“Hmm… let’s see. The bill is nine dollars and forty-seven cents and I gave you a hundred dollar bill.… You know what, I don’t need any change. I always tip eight thousand percent. And if the ninety-dollar tip isn’t enough for you, here are my keys—take the car, let yourself into the house. It’s yours. No, really, the service was
that
good. And on your way up the stairs feel free to fuck my sister. She’s in the guest room!”

I hate paying cash.
I always tip more on a credit card than I do if I’m paying in cash because somehow it feels like I’m spending Visa’s money, not my own.
And technically, I’m right because, according to federal law, if you die with a balance on your credit card your family is not obligated to pay it off. Which means that if I have a massive stroke and drop dead right after eating, the last meal was on the house. So I say, “Charge it!” whenever I’m feeling poorly.

I hate it that nowadays
everyone
expects a tip.
In this country, waiters make about a dollar fifty-three an hour, hardly a livable wage, even if you live in Iowa. (I hate it when people come up to me say, “You know, Joan, for what you pay for an apartment in Manhattan, you could have a twelve-bedroom house in Iowa!” That’s right, I could. But I’d be in Iowa.)

Tipping isn’t an issue in European countries and Australia because waitstaffs are unionized and they’re paid decent salaries. They’re not working for tips. Which means the service really sucks. I hate that.

But suddenly, everyone expects to be given a gratuity. In the old days delivery boys, hairdressers and the occasional uterus were tipped. Now, everyone expects a reward for “exceptional service.” All across America, there are tip jars everywhere. Tip jars are popping up more than Anthony Weiner at a photo shoot.

There are even tip jars on the counters at Baskin-Robbins ice cream stores. Why? There’s no kitchen, no table service. It’s a scooper, rum raisin and a cone. How exceptional could the service be? Did Billy with the acne make my scoop of vanilla ice cream look like a soft sculpture of Barack Obama? Did he sing the entire
score of
Kiss Me, Kate
while putting sprinkles on my cookie? Why should I tip him when he didn’t do anything?

I blame the “tipping for no reason syndrome” on Starbucks, who make their customers do all the work. When I go to Starbucks, I’m putting in my own sugar, my own cream, my own straw… I might as well go to Columbia with Juan Valdez and get on a donkey and pick the beans. So from here on in, no tips for the “baristas.”
Barista
by the way, is an Italian word that means “fucking lazy.”

Am I supposed to start tipping everybody, like the usher at the movie theater? How about the guy on the highway crew who waves orange flags to divert traffic? Or my plastic surgeon? Should I leave a twenty on the dresser if he makes my nipples wink?

I hate it when the tables in restaurants are too close together.
The only person who likes having strangers on top of him is George Michael in a public toilet.

I don’t want other people so close to my table that I can hear them chew, burp and fart. If I want to hear those things, I’ll dine alone.

I hate “family restaurants.” Next to cheap perfume and vaginal warts it’s my least favorite thing.
The first time I saw an ad for a “family restaurant” I thought I’d give it a try. Why not, I’m an adventurer, just like Magellan. I thought wrong. The
ad said the experience would be “Just like eatin’ at home.” Sure enough, I sat down and the waitress came over and said, “Put your napkin in your lap, sit up straight, it’s a fork, not a shovel, you’re fat, you’re ugly and your father doesn’t touch me anymore.”

Then there’s “family seating,” which is a complete social aberration. Family seating means long picnic tables with dozens of total strangers sitting next to one another chewing. Who does this? Who needs this kind of aggravation? I don’t like to have dinner with people I know, let alone a group of strangers that just drove in from Nebraska. Even the Donner Party knew better than to do family seating; they got to the pass, they split up the corpses and then went and ate separately. And you know what? It was a perfectly nice night on the mountain. And no one had to hear strangers’ kids complaining, “Knees, again?”

Tasting menus are bullshit.
A lot of fancy-schmancy restaurants offer “tasting menus.” A tasting menu is when the chef sends out tiny little dollops of his favorite courses for you to taste and charges you three hundred dollars, which is about fifty bucks a dollop. Those dollops, combined, might fill a finger bowl and that’s only if you’re deformed and have very small, childlike fingers. The biggest problem, other than the cost, is that when you finish the tasting menu you have to go to another restaurant and order a real meal off of their eating menu.

The only thing tasting menus are good for is the
homeless, because the meal never ends. They bring item after item and it goes on and on and on like a Jay Leno monologue. A friend of mine once ordered the tasting menu at a restaurant in L.A.; it took so long that she went through menopause. They started with soup and by the time they got to dessert she was so fucking cranky she had lost her appetite.

I hate restaurants that serve steak tartare.
Steak tartare is a scam. Steak tartare is nothing more than raw chopped meat and onions. Tuna tartare is a can of cat food with pepper. And sushi is just a guppy with rice.

Tartare is considered a delicacy, so it costs a fortune. Explain to me again why should I pay you to
not
cook my food? If I want raw meat I’ll take a bite out of a passing Kardashian.

I hate when your food is charged by the weight.
It’s food, not jewelry. I don’t need a three-carat rump roast. The only person in the world whose jewelry and food weighed the same amount was Elizabeth Taylor, and you know where that got her? Forest Lawn Cemetery, that’s where.

Fast-food restaurants actually serve things that are
only
sold by their size, like, “the Whopper,” “the Double-Double” and the “Quarter Pounder with Cheese.” I say, if they’re going to offer you meals by the pound the least they could do is offer free angiograms for dessert.

At steak houses they always have two sizes of prime
rib: “the regular” and “the king’s portion,” which is about half a cow. If you order the smaller portion you look a like a cheapo and if you order the king’s portion you look like the self-centered, gluttonous narcissist you are. For me, that’s a lose-lose.

I hate lobster houses, too.
I hate it when they say, “Pick your lobster.” Lobsters are like the Japanese— they all look alike. And just like steak houses, lobster houses serve by size, which I really don’t understand because all lobsters weigh about the same amount; they all weigh-in somewhere between one and a half and three pounds. In my entire life I’ve never once been served an obese nine or ten pound lobster. I don’t know how it’s possible that every single lobster fits within that narrow weight range, but they do. When it comes to body weight, humans have an enormous bell curve to work with, ranging from Kate Moss on one end to the cast of
The Biggest Loser
on the other.

Yet lobsters are all thin. Did Richard Simmons get them to tone up by releasing a
Working Out with Mollusks
DVD? (Don’t kid yourself, if anybody could corner that market, Richard Simmons could. The man is a genius. Back in the day he got kids to work out, he got old people to work out… he even got pregnant women to work out—remember that video,
Abortin’ to the Oldies
, where you exercise to “Bye, Bye Baby”? Just fantastic, one of my faves

You can’t tell me that there are no depressed, overweight female lobsters who sit around the reef in filthy
nightgowns eating Fritos and watching
Flipper
reruns.

The other reason I hate lobster houses is that they make you wear a bib. I think that if you have to wear a bib to eat you shouldn’t be in a nice restaurant; you should be in assisted living.

I hate children’s menus
because their presence implies that children are welcome. (See the chapter “For the Children” for more on this.)

Infants should never be allowed in nice restaurants. They smell like dairy cows and they’ve always got Zwieback crackers stuck in their hair and their parents can’t shut them up.

If you want children to be quiet in restaurants, I say change the names of the items on the children’s menus. Instead of “The Popeye” or “The Dora the Explorer,” the meals should be named things like “The Mommie Dearest” or “The Casey Anthony.” I assure you, they’ll be quiet.