The Fly In The Soup

Don't even risk meaningful conversation unless you are prepared to share your innermost feelings or political incorrectness with total strangers. The course is served, the wine and water poured, the waiter withdraws and you assume you have been left alone. Ha! Just when you are in the midst of entrusting a confidence, proposing a merger or sneaking a sweetener packet into your pocket, Armando materializes over your shoulder, desperate to know if you have everything you need.

At first I thought it might have something to do with age. You now: "Keep your eye on those senior citizens. You never know when they might knock over a candle, choke on a chicken bone or faint face-first into the rigatoni." Suddenly surrounded by solicitous help doing everything but offering to cut the meat, one can get suspicious. But after careful investigation, I find it is happening to just about everyone old enough to leave a tip.

It has to be market research. The modern selling tool we employ to sell shampoo and elect presidents. Find out what consumers or voters want and promise to give it to them. I imagine that groups of people selected for their dining-out frequency were herded into research rooms where they revealed to the observers behind one-way mirrors what they liked and disliked about eating out. And "neglect" was high on the dislike list. You know, waiters who vanish during the meal and cannot be found when most needed. Having some experience in advertising research, I suspect this was interpreted by sages with Ph.D.s to mean that people wanted constant attention-when all they really wanted was to have their water glasses kept full and to get the check in time to make the movie.

I'm not advocating a return to the days of apathy. Then it was a challenge to flag down the back of a waiter's head in quest of more butter. Or remember which one was our waiter--his or her presence had been so fleeting. All I ask is a little common sense. Serve the courses, make sure everyone is satisfied and retreat-but be available when needed. It would be a great help if restaurant reviewers and guidebooks kept an eye out for this growing phenomenon along with the Portabello mushrooms and polenta, and included in their ratings the dangers of being hovered to death.

As someone who drives with the seasons to Florida and back, I tell you this rampage of overconcern knows no boundaries. We could once count on the dining room of a motel chain off 1-95 in Georgia to treat us with normal politeness. Not on our last trip. Indifferent to the fact that my wife and I could barely stagger to the salad bar after a day of driving, the hostess, the waitress and even the cashier insisted on getting our reaction to the hush puppies. It is laudable that they are proud of their cooking, but wouldn't one question do the trick?

Fast-food restaurants may be the last bastions of laissez faire. What a joy to sit at a table watching the busboys go in sullen silence about their messy business. Totally ignoring us. Forcing us to answer no questions. Keep it that way, Burger King. Resist any temptation to ask how we are doing, Wendy's. And, McDonald's, don't even think of fawning over us with a kindergarten-teacher smile and a chirp at our clean plate, "Well, you didn't like that very much, did you?"