Writing Exercise: Number 216

This is a sort of facetious, yet halfway earnest take on the usual comment cards in restaurants. I mildly regret that the place my work had its "annual" text department outing did not have them.

Server Number: 216.

Menu Selection/Food Quality: Satisfied

Comments: I am glad you have vegetarian offerings, especially considering how bad I usually feel for our one vegetarian co-worker who always seems relegated to his own private half of a pizza whenever we order in while at work. However, I was a bit alarmed at how much of your menu contained things with heavy cream sauces. Granted, I ordered one of those items (and it was quite delicious), but I believe that there are other ways to make food a bit more decadent without filling our hearts and blood vessels with butter. However, I tried a bit of a friend's citrus-glazed salmon and noticed that this restaurant is taking a step in the right direction.

Courtesy: Very Satisfied

Comments: I really wish I had a name to go with your face instead of some nondescript number etched on a plastic tag pinned on a pristine white button-down shirt. It was your smile in particular which caught my attention. The fact you smiled at all was in itself a marvel to me, seeing as how my own brief forays in the food service industry rendered me into an expressionless automaton well after my first week. However, you did not bear the usual overexerted smile which was the usual result of a long stint of waiting tables, knowing that you have to do whatever it takes to make tips, the emotional bending over backwards obvious on the facade of cheerfulness with a cracking veneer of bright smiles. No, your smile was genuine, a slightly-worn, tired upturn of the lips baring no teeth, unthreatening and attempting to whisk by as efficiently and as unobtrusively as possible.

Quality of Service: Very Satisfied

Comments: Yet even though my companions were absorbed in their various conversations, I still kept an eye out for you and acknowledged your presence in between my noncommittal interjections to them. However, I probably went as unnoticed as you intended to be in my awkward attempts at politeness, thanking you each time you walked by with bread, water or our orders. With all the revelry about and with you always keeping our glasses full, you reminded me of Ganymede, cupbearer to the gods. I am not implying that we were by any means members of some elite pantheon, but rather you reminded me of that particular symbol of youth and beauty. I found that the dimmed ambient and candle light complimented the slight shadow along the side of your cheekbones and the darkness of your hair. If you caught me staring at you on occasion, I'm certain you shrugged it off as yet another customer peculiarity.

Additional Comments or Suggestions: You probably get this often and are probably annoyed by such things (especially if you have a wonderful significant other, which I imagine you would), so I don't blame you if I never hear from you, but my phone number is 555-1364. I was the awkward girl in the pink shirt with short hair who tried to hide her eyes beneath her cap as she walked past you on her way out.