A lot of people think Covid 19 was a conspiracy of some kind. And I agree. I do think also that it was a conspiracy. I think it was a conspiracy by restaurant owners who were willing to go to great extremes to reduce their overhead just a tiny little bit. Because what they really wanted to do was get rid of the lowest paid employees in the restaurant the dishwashers and the bus boys.
Now, when you go into a restaurant or what used to be a restaurant, you’re still given your food “COVID style,” meaning wrapped up To Go, even if you’re eating in. And if you ask for a plate, people say, oh, we don’t do plates!
“We don’t do plates!”
The world is now allowed to have restaurants without plates, because that started with C O V I D and they decided, “Oh, we’ll just keep on doing that. It saves us the mere hundred dollars a week we would have spent on bus boys and dishwashers. It’s so worth it. After all, who needs plates and cutlery? We’re baboons, now!”
You go into what used to be a perfectly normal restaurant, and now you’re eating on a pile of napkins with a plastic spark like a homeless person on a park bench. Meanwhile I sit there and think, “You know, when I was building this business, early in my career, I was poor, and I would’ve been fine with this. Honestly, part of me would’ve felt like, This is what I deserve. But now, I’m happy to say I’m doing okay. And I kind of feel like having become a card-carrying member of the going-out-to-eat set, is it too much to ask for a plate with silverware?
Is this exactly what I deserve?
Maybe being required to eat a messy bean burrito on a pile of napkins is supposed to be a way of acknowledging the COVID casualties and expressing solidarity with their suffering families? Is there a philosophy behind this? I don’t know. All I know is I’m now expected to pay the same price, mind you, the same price, through a point of sale system that now audaciously suggests a 30% tip might be appropriate for counter service, for a meal I will have to eat over a pile of napkins, with bean juice running over my fingers and all over the table. If I’m lucky, a plastic-wrapped spork may be available. So, there’s that. We now live in a land where a spork is a treat. Thanks, COVID!