For godsakes can’t we lighten up a little bit? I am sick of wars, and oil barrels, and one dire strait after another. Instead let us sit upon the ground, as Richard II adjured us to do, and tell sad tales of hamburgers, restaurants and that bane of an otherwise happy life, tipping.
Now before you hold me accountable for being a curmudgeon in respect of the benighted, irrational and unjustifiable custom of adding as a matter of course 10 percent to our restaurant bills, let me assure you that – much like all the readers of these columns – my mission in life is to spread sweetness and light wherever I go, to bring smiles to faces, and to engage in joyful badinage with strangers, and I sincerely want everyone, including waitrons, to earn lots of money.
Why then do I give way to a sense of splenetic outrage whenever I reach the end of my meal in a restaurant, and by way of an enforced gratuity, become a part time and unwilling employer of the person who brings me my plate of food?
Above all, it is the irrationality of the practice that gets to me. The restaurant has openly solicited my custom, and I comply. I order a plate of chicken and chips for R150, thereby entering an admirable and voluntary contract with the restaurant proprietor. I give hm R150, he gives me chicken and chips on a plate, and a place to eat it. Why then is the delivery of the plate of food to my table considered to be a kind of supplementary service deserving of separate payment?
For how could the restaurant proprietor fulfil his side of our contractual obligations without bringing me the plate of food which I have ordered and intend to pay for? But no, the delivery of this food is considered a service, for which a service charge – laughingly regarded as optional – is brought into our otherwise straightforward contract.
Surfeit of bonhomie
OK, but maybe I have misunderstood the reason for the tip. No, it is not for bringing my plate to the table, it is for bringing it to the table with a surfeit of bonhomie, or at least a smile. And I must be grateful for this courtesy?
I expect courtesy in all my dealings with members of the human race. Courtesy is, as it were, my minimum expectation terms that govern all my transactions. My dentist, for instance, is a capital fellow and the model of courtesy, to say nothing of competence, but I don’t tip him when he is finished the business he has delving into my facial cavity. But, in the interests of consistency, why not?
I believe there was, some years ago, a movement started by a group of libertarians against tipping in restaurants. They reported that once you had overcome the hurdle of not tipping the first time, it subsequently became an easy habit to continue with.
I regret I don’t have the courage summarily to abandon the tipping protocol; instead I am approaching the matter by an unseemly form of stealth. I degrade the tip downwards from the 10 percent level, and so far I have not encountered any obvious signs of resistance or contempt.
Supererogatory enquiry
Then there’s another thing. From now on I am going to instruct my waitron not to interrupt me in the middle of my meal with a wholly supererogatory enquiry regarding the standard and quality of my food. It is always when my mouth is full or I have reached a critical point in an important dissertation that my entire momentum is disturbed by the inane question, always asked in an irritatingly jolly manner: “Hello! Is everything alright here?”
The enquiry is not just invasive, it is also irrational, for if there is something wrong with your meal the only appropriate time to raise the matter or make a complaint is after your first or second bite. You can’t get halfway through your chicken and chips before complaining that the chicken is tough.
Then there is the scandalous matter of the hamburger – quintessentially a finger food – but now served on a plate with a knife and fork. South Africans appear to love this; I deprecate it. First a reminiscence.
In the mid-70s I was working in a machine shop in the Cape suburb of Diep River, in those days an area more shabby than chic, but likeable withal. When you are young and working in a machine shop in the Cape winter, severe hunger attacks your system three or sometimes even four times a day. This was our cue – we machine shop lads – to repair to Caversham, a Greek convenience café just down the road, and order take-away hamburgers.
As far as I know, no such hamburgers are available in the world today. The hamburger itself was good enough, including some well-fried onions and tomato in smoky oil that could no doubt have been cleaner, and probably a small slice of gherkin.
Most treasured
But it was the presentation of the thing that makes it memorable. The burger was slipped snugly into a kind of envelope of that most treasured of human inventions, crisp, crinkly grease-proof paper, the kind of paper that our lunchtime school sandwiches were wrapped in by our mothers. Just enough of the burger protruded from the top of the envelope to ensure an unhindered first bite. Then, as you proceeded to eat, you could gently slide the hamburger further out of the grease proof wrapper.
All the while the wrapper maintained the integrity of the burger and made sure that no greasy bits came loose and dropped onto your lap. You could eat your entire hamburger down to the last morsel without getting grease on your fingers and only a moderate level of fastidiousness ensured clean lips and mouth. You could even eat it whilst driving safely back to your place of work. The Greek man who dispensed these gifts to hunger never ruined the transaction by asking you how you were that day, nor did he curse you with the empty wish that you would “have a good day”.
Caversham has of course long since disappeared, but I always think of its hamburgers when I see the most absurd towers purporting to be hamburgers quivering on the plates of diners in restaurants.
The purveyors of these monstrosities appear to think that the higher the tower and the more protean the filling between two halves of what is erroneously called a “bun” (it is not a bun, it is a roll) the better. It is of course impossible to eat with fingers, and indeed it is impossible to open one’s mouth wide enough to assay a bite. The burger – so artificially constructed – has to be dismantled onto your plate before it can be eaten, at which point it becomes nothing more than a potpourri of foodstuffs accompanied by bread.
Accursed culinary abomination
But if that’s what you like and want, go ahead, order your accursed culinary abomination, and enjoy it.
But let me point out that the archetypal hamburger aficionado, Clint Eastwood, in his guise as Dirty Harry, would never have been seen in the LA diners he frequented eating a hamburger with a knife and fork. It was always with his fingers.
And I may be wrong, but I am sure his burger was always wrapped in a grease-proof wrapper.
[Image: Jonathan Borba on Unsplash]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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