12/24/2024 My favorite restaurant has an interesting customer service policy. It’s a modestly large restaurant about 40 yards square with banks of booths and clouds of tables. Some tables and some booths are in the front, facing the public, like European on-the-plaza restaurants, and the remainder of the tables are in the back area, behind the front row of booths and tables. When I visited the place (in 2024), I was disabled and using at least one cane. The hostess walked me all the way to the back of the restaurant to seat me. The front, public facing area was “not open”. It was odd but didn’t bother me much until it happened several more times. I asked the manager why was the front area off-limits, at least to me. “We don’t have enough servers”, was the response. What? I get there early with very few others, the restaurant is open 24 hours, and I’ve never seen it being cleaned, despite it’s obvious and satisfactory cleanliness, so…? With the front area being equidistant to the back in relation to the kitchen, why would a hostess drag a disabled customer all the way from the hostess stand to the secluded back of the place instead of the closer, brighter public-facing front? As a last personal dig at me, by the time I am done eating the hostess has begun seating people in that nice, open, bright, cheerful, public facing area.

This post sounds whiny but is an appropriate and measured response to the restaurant’s illogical seating. They had no idea the customer is always right. For 50 years I’ve dined in restaurants, dated waitresses, and learned the seating rituals of the Modern American Restaurant. Why doesn’t this restaurant begin the shift with all diners in the front area? It would be free advertising, too. Disabled patrons, especially, should not be walked to the very back of the dining area.

Present Day, August 10, 2026. I filed the beginning of this essay away two years ago, dismissing it as an unhinged, Old Man Rant (OMR). But it has crept back into my frontal lobe due to more opportunities to spawn* new OMRs. Like “un-placarded” vehicles parking in Handicapped Spots. No senior discounts at sites of commerce. Bread rising** in price by nearly 100 per cent. Insurance rates rising (again with the rising?) for a senior driver with no accidents in 50 years and 5,000 miles on the road per year. And a real oldie from last year: my 800 credit score meaning nothing to banks, lenders, and landlords.***

Uh-oh. Now I remember why I filed the original essay away: OMRs don’t matter (ODM). Okay, kids, who wants to hear an OMR?

My good friend Bill, who is 84, and I would like the rest of you to know if you ever want all the problems of this world solved, put us in charge. We’ve got plans and have compiled a list****. Just give us The Power and get out of our way.

Oh, and grant us immunity from state and Federal prosecution.

*What a perfect verb…

**The grammar police want me to use a different word,here, but bread rising is too cute to change.

***The reported and recorded facts of my financial history used to generate their own FICO numbers mean nothing in the new Ai credit approval world. One bank person actually told me “Just because you paid your bills on time for 50 years doesn’t mean you’ll do it again.” Ba dum dum.

****It may take us a moment to find it, so…be patient.