On Saturday night, I went to Olive Garden with “the girls”. There were many moments of blog-worthiness but one stood out to me in particular: the flair of our perky waitress.
Our waitress was Kelly. On her right side, she bore her name tag. On the left, she had a button about the size of my palm. At the bottom it read FUN-O-METER. At the top, there was a curved scale with three colour blocks – on the left was MIN, centre was MID and on the right was MAX. There was an arrow in the middle so that one could indicate the exact level of fun.
This brought up some issues for me. For instance, who determines the status of the FUN-O-METER?
- Is it self-determined? For instance, does Kelly indicate by her arrow how much fun she thinks you’re having because she’s your waitress? Does she just get to arbitrarily say “I think I’m so perky and fun that you must be having the MAX AMOUNT OF FUN right now”?
- Or is it self-indicative? Kelly herself is having THE MAX AMOUNT OF FUN POSSIBLE by waiting tables on a Saturday night at Olive Garden with four women that don’t drink booze? If this is the case, I need to have a chat with her about the overstatement of her flair. Surely there are things more fun than this. Like pushing Q-Tips too far into your ears.
- Is it determined by your patrons? Do I get to say “Hey, Kelly. I’m actually not having the MAX AMOUNT OF FUN possible. Would you please move your arrow on down to mid-fun? If you perky-it-up a bit, I may be induced to have more fun. But I’ll let you know when that occurs. Let’s step it up. And bring more free bread.”
- Or is it determined by one’s boss? As in, her manager doesn’t think her tables look like they’re having enough fun so, as punishment, he moves her arrow down to min fun until we laugh a bit more? Then as a reward for our laughter, she gets to slowly be moved up to MAX FUN. This is likely some infernal idea from those vapid books with titles like “How to Make Employees at the Olive Garden Feel Rewarded Without Actually Paying Them a Living Wage”.
I also didn’t know if this was the new “thing” for Olive Garden? I haven’t been in a while (I have a lively horror of Olive Garden due to a traumatic experience years ago) so I was surprised by it. It’s possible that Kelly just likes her piece of flair and wanted to wear it herself, without any corporate edict. In which case, I would know she is not someone that I could share a laugh with because she has not, in fact, seen Office Space and is therefore unable to understand the snide tones of “Where are your pieces of flair?” and is missing the irony of this entire question.
