GrammarNazi here and I’m sorry, but I am likely gonna sound like a crusty here.

But I have to vent about this.

Wednesdays are generally Curry night. A group signs up and we go to a restaurant picked a few days earlier to order curry and generally have a nice socializing evening with hopefully good food. This time we went to a new one and I had slight difficulty getting there, mostly cause public transport was late and, hence, it was a pretty full street car.

So I arrived in a bit of a bad mood and I quickly decided to just pick my order and have it to go. I didn’t want to sit there for two and a half hours socializing with people, maybe even give off vibes that I do not really want anyone’s company at that point and somehow make them feel uncomfortable. I try to be considerate about that, because it’s not their fault that I’m in a bad mood and I’d find it rude to take it out on them.

This restaurant did not impress me on multiple levels.

First of all, the waiter did not come over and take my drink order or that of another woman of our group who entered at pretty much the same time as I did. He brought the drinks for the others. Didn’t bother me a whole lot, since I wasn’t gonna order a drink, but I still found it bad. Especially since he saw us sitting there with no drinks, seemed to ignore us and proceed to take orders from the other table, for a good ten minutes before we were asked what we wanted to drink.

When he finally did and took food orders, I told him mine was to go, which he wrote down and all. No problem, the others order and some order starters, others don’t. Now, I know this may sound incredibly insane of a theory about To Go orders but… people who order to go either do that because they don’t have the time to sit and eat in peace and quiet or because they want to leave! A. S. A. P.

Again, the waiter doesn’t know that I have social issues and if I happen to feel I have had too much contact (like with a very full street car with barely any room to move in) I cannot stand being around other people much longer, since I am close to breaking down into tears and fighting rage. And when something like twenty minutes had gone by without my To Go order coming up (and most of the time when I order To Go, it gets done and ready in about ten minutes) I casually mentioned to the woman across from me that I sure am waiting for that order… but mention that perhaps they are going to bring it out when they bring out the main dishes of the entire group. Which, again, is bad since I kind of wanted to leave.

So close to an hour, the main orders arrive, but my To Go order is still not there. Takes another ten to fifteen minutes for it to finally be ready and packed into a plastic bags and all. You know, I might understand it taking so long if the restaurant was full… but it wasn’t!

We were a group of eight and there was only one couple in the restaurant. That is not full. But when I finally got my food, I pretty much dashed as fast as I could but still said goodbye to the group and hoped they had a nice rest of a meal, since I was brought up to be way too damn polite, even if I feel like crap and all I wanna do is cry.

And the food wasn’t even all that spicy! This was an Indian restaurant, why was there barely any spice in it? I know people have this idiotic idea that Germans don’t like spice, and that’s not just a wrong conception, but it also doesn’t apply to me to begin with. (Especially since I am not a “full-blooded” German, I am half-American.) Sure I could’ve said I wanted my food spicy, but I don’t think I should have to in a restaurant of a food type that is known to be spicy on its own.

Sorry for sounding like a crusty, but seriously. This restaurant did not seem to be all that good with its service. Don’t make people who want To Go wait for over an hour. To Go means I want to go.

--GrammarNazi