America, Stuff Your Faces!

What is it about a pizza buffet that lets you see the true colors of different folks?  We stopped in at a local pizza restaurant for lunch over the weekend.  It's a chain restaurant, independently owned.  They recently added a buffet so we thought we'd give it a try.  For some reason, Hubby chose a table right next to the buffet table.  That wouldn't have been my choice because we were then forced to watch middle-class America overindulge in an All You Can Eat special. People behaved as if they hadn't eaten in weeks.  (And judging by their appearance, I can pretty confidently say that wasn't the case.)  Plates were filled so high with salad, then garlic bread, and topped off with a couple slices of pizza.  And no, this wasn't a one trip only buffet.

I had to stand in line and wait behind a woman who used the (probably filthy) spatula to obtain the center two pieces of  the round garlic bread pie.  She turned to me, smiled, and said "I like the middle pieces."  All I could reply was, "Oh yeah?"  I would have rather said, "Looks to me like you like an awful lot of things here.  Your plate is piled so high that one more item might cause the entire structure to crash to the ground!"  But I didn't.

And then halfway through our meal, a door on the side of the dining room opened and the manager's family emerged.  (We've seen them before at different events so knew who they were.)  They were dirty, unkempt, and half asleep.  Looking through the door, we saw a mildewy basement where this family apparently lived.  It was quite a sad sight.  I wondered about the three pudgy little girls whose hair hadn't been combed in a while.  Was pizza their primary food staple in life?  Is that all they ever ate?  Come to think of it, the family has been there every time we've eaten there.  Now it makes sense- they live there!  I really felt sorry for the kids...what a life!

By the end of the meal, I think we determined to never dine there again.  Very few things about the experience were enjoyable.  Good thing I don't write restaurant reviews!

We left the restuarant to see the most enjoyable part of the meal.  Parked outside was one of those huge stationwagons you know your parents drove in the 70s or 80s.  The vanity license plate read "GRSWOLD."  If you know me well enough to know how big of a Christmas Vacation (and Wally World) fan I am, you will understand why this tickled me to the point of laughing out loud.  Good ending to a not-so-good afternoon.