A dining dilemma
I love the diner in today's strip--it's the combination of him looking like he's about to fall asleep and his horrible, horrible hairpiece. And the way it's drawn makes it look like the hairpiece is the one doing the thinking. Maybe it's a hairy attachable brain?
Anyway, there's no way that the bill comes to $7.95 in a place where the waiter is dressed like that. Unless the diner went in and ordered only soup or something. Which I suppose is possible. Or maybe the owners of the restaurant are just overcompensating by having the wait staff dress up.
I don't really understand why the relationship between the diner and the waiter is so contentious. Why do they so distrust each other? Did the waiter do a crappy job, and that's why the diner only wants to leave $0.50? Did the diner keep making outrageous demands and act pissy, so the waiter feels the need to hover?
Not surprisingly, I just don't understand. And I don't know that I've ever experienced this, or seen anyone else experience it. I'm not sure what we're supposed to be taking from this strip.
I'm also not sure why I think that They'll Do It Every Time is some sort of teaching device that I should be learning from.
posted by Barb @ 12:14 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
My favorite part is the diner seems to think that 15% is considered a generous tip, when I'm of the opinion that it's the minimum. for the mathimatically declined, a 50 cent tip would be less than 10%, which, unless the waiter spat in his soup or something, is a sign of serious cheapskate.
The answer to this -- as to all other bizarre questions about the TDIET-verse -- is that it's still the 1950s there, and so $7.95 is to be considered a hefty bill.
Hey, that's a thought -- is there any chance that this strip is actually a '50s re-run? Maybe Scaduto died a few years ago, and the syndicate realized no one would be able to tell the difference?
Andrew Wheeler has to be right. It has to be some sort of re-run. In 2006, no restaurant in which your bill is $7.95 has waiters of any kind, much less waiters in white jackets and ties. Moreover, there appears to be a wine bottle on the table (although, since this is TDIET, it's probably Mogen David New York Concord).
Another possibility is that time travel has in fact become a reality, but one that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is keeping secret for its own nefarious purposes. Scaduto is in fact living in 1958, and some feature page editor regularly travels back in time to pick up Scaduto's stuff, and to give him bare bones info on advances that have taken place since Sputnik. Scaduto doesn't undertsand these updates, of course, which explains his lame automotiove drawings, putrid understanding of i-Pods and cell phones, his belief that doctors still wear reflectors on their heads and nurses still wear skirts, and his conception of an HMO opffice as a place where offices full of people sit around with adding machines.
Someone should get to the bottom of this.
A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of eating at a soon-to-be-closed resteraunt that I remembered my parents talking about; They had eaten there in the 70s, and even then it would have been seriously past it's prime. I imagine it would have been something in the 40s and 50s though, gloriously tacky plaster busts with gilt trim, velet-esque carpet, waiters in white tuxedos (with the requisite shoulder tassels), hideous chandeleirs - the whole nine yards.
Of, course by my time its era was well and truly "up". The food was lousy and overpriced, and if you looked too closly at anything the illusion of ellegance fell apart. Everything was "old" in a bad way - dusty, frayed, and worn. But I couldn't help shake this tremendous deja vu I was getting from the place... I know I'd never eaten there before. I had just moved to the city a year or two before.
Finally as we were leaving I realized what had been bugging me - the restraunt was pretty much the spitting image of any "fancy restraunt" ever drawn by Sergio Aragones (or Dave Berg, Don Martin, Frank Jacobs... or any of the other "Usual Gang of Idiots" from Mad Magazine) when writing parodies.
As a kid who was raised reading old out-of-date garage-sale copies of "Mad", I grew up imagining "life in the big city", as depicted therein with flinstone-sized steaks for 75-cents, and a line up (in decending order of height) of six waiters at the end of each meal, each requesting a tip...
I have no doubt that the many fine places I've eaten in since are much better (both in value and content) than those fabled restraunts... but I am a little sad that that the shoulder-tassle has fallen out of fashion... and you can't order a Shrimp Cocktail (the *height* of opulance) almost anywhere these days.
At least, given todays TDIET, I'm not the only one living in the past... but at least I have an excuse. Perhaps instead of just being completely out-of-touch with modern times, Scaduto just needs to get some newer issues of "Mad" to crib off of?
(Incidentally I did some digging with an inflation index. a 7.95 bill in 1950 would be around $63.00, with cheapskates tip ~$4).
junior tracy, has Scaduto ever in any way referred to iPods or cell phones? It's almost like he's trying to avoid dealing with any sort of technology, which would give away that he's still living in 1958. Though someone should tip him off to the typewrite vs. computer thing.
Post a Comment
<< Home