I recently witnessed the end of an argument between a restaurant owner and a customer. I don’t know what started the argument but I’m certain that I know who’s right: the owner.
Only idiots still believe that “the customer is always right.” Nowadays, customers are almost always wrong – especially this one.
I know he was wrong because he threatened to leave a nasty online review; that’s what cowards do to gain the leverage for a full refund, which I watched him get.
I know the restaurant owner was right because as he reversed the credit card charge, he spelled out his own name for the customer so that at least he’d “get one thing right in his review.”
Though he was Irish so he pronounced it as rite as in “Getit rite.” He’s now one of my heroes.
When I commiserated with him after the transaction he told me that he “put his hands on the fella’s shoulder and he told me I’d dirtied his shirt.”
Then he made sure I was being helped and went back into the kitchen – possibly to wash his hands.
This was at a seasonal Irish restaurant in Cape Cod during the first week after Labor Day when all the help have left and they’re purposely letting supplies run out. Not an ideal time for a visit from an entitled diner, and not a time when expectations should be running high.
Because this was my third visit of the week, I knew they were running low on everything. I also knew that the few remaining staff members would soon be out of work but were still trying their best.
And trying is what really matters. Especially when you have no staff and are running short on supplies.
That’s what I’m doing here with these weekly columns: trying.
This is my 100th consecutive weekly column being written without anyone asking for it.
Maybe I am chasing immortality or maybe, as my very first post stated, I’m chasing Andy Rooney. And it may all be in vain, but what do any of us do anymore that isn’t?
I spend lots of time socializing with people of all different ability levels who are trying – really trying – to achieve a personal goal.
No matter what stage of life I’m in, I surround myself with people trying to accomplish something: become a professional speaker, win an election, publish a book, get a comedy spot on The Tonight Show.
There is nothing I find as inspiring as aspiring.
I’ve tried an awful lot of things in the past 100 weeks besides just writing an old-timey humor column and I didn’t know how any of them would turn out.
I share the successes freely: winning a national humor writing contest, quitting my job to be a stay-at-home dad, becoming my hometown city’s first story slam champion, putting out a full season of a podcast.
But I’ve also had some pretty spectacular failures like trying to mend my own garden fence, submitting op-Ed’s to major newspapers, and making small talk with normal people.
I’ve always been attracted to ambition. My library is filled with memoirs of great women and men including Presidents, Generals, titans of industry, genre-defining celebrities, and those proclaiming to speak directly from God.
A common thread is that while sometimes they failed and sometimes they succeeded, they always tried. I hope you do too.
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