Travel by automobile puts us in contact with franchise restaurants. The food and the ways it is prepared sometimes approach the flavor and nutritional value of a family or privately-owned restaurant. But the presentation is almost invariably awful, sometimes approaching frightful.

When, exactly, did waiters and waitresses learn how to say, "Can I take this out of your way?" Once upon a day, when men were real men, and women were real women, and fuzzy little green creatures from Alpha Centauri were REAL fuzzy little green creatures from Alpha Centauri, a diner placed his fork upside-down onto his her her plate, whether or not food still covered its surface, and the unspoken message was received and correctly interpreted by the wait staff that it was time to take the plate away. And what the bloody hell do wait staff mean when they give you the back-handed insult, "Did you save room for desert?" The answer in my mind is, "Hell, no. I'm a pig and I scarfed that swill so fast I could in no way stuff anything else into my pie hole." I would think that a simple, "would you like to see our desert menu" would do.

It all came to a head today while in a just-off-the-highway Applebee's near Fairmont, West Virginia. The waitress would zoom by the table vocalizing, "Is everything OK?" She was moving so fast that the Doppler effect made her speech almost intelligible. There was certainly no chance to give a reply. This was far beyond the usual "trick" of asking while the diners' mouths were full. So I gave something a try. My reply was, "It tastes like shit" loud enough for ten tables to hear but not loud enough for her as she had already shifted into Warp 3 velocity. I know that answering rudeness with rudeness is not right, but I none-the-less gave in to the impulse.

Final thought. When, exactly, did waiters and waitresses become "servers". I've noticed. In Great Britain, matrons are still matrons and stewards are still stewards. Heaven help them that they not become infected with our political correctness nor our inept ways of serving food.