But this morning I thought of something REALLY EXCITING to write about: Water! Ya, I know what you're thinking...maybe I should just stick to laundry room shelf posts, right? But really, I have a serious problem with water. Water cups, to be specific. Have you noticed lately that all the fast food and fast sit-down restaurants (you know, like Cafe Rio and Zupas) all give you these minuscule cups if you order water? I swear, the cups are smaller than the cups that come out of those Dixie cup dispensers! You know, just because I'm ordering water doesn't mean I should be punished with a shot glass sized drink. I'm not cheap. It's not a money thing. Trust me, I would much rather be drinking a 64oz Coke! But I'm generally on a diet, or else I've already had my daily allowance of calorie-free liquid carcinogen, so I'm trying to be more healthy. But I feel lately like restaurants are trying to make me feel like a second rate citizen for ordering water!
My two biggest pet peeves in the water cup department are:
1) the clear plastic cup with no lid. Have you gotten these? It's like a whole different category of cup; not Styrofoam, not regular plastic, not cardboard. It's like those little tiny disposable cups you get in hospital to wash your pills down with, only slightly bigger. And it doesn't have a lid. So I'm supposed to carry a cup full of icy water on a tray with other food, with one hand, while I wrangle my toddler with my other hand, across a crowded restaurant, while I try to find a table, without spilling a drop, and then try to eat my meal without my baby dumping that water on me or herself?? Why can't I just get a regular cup FORPETESSAKE?? I've asked them if I could please get my water in a bigger cup, and they say yes that'll be $2.50 please. FOR THE CUP? The empty cup? That I'm going to put regular tap water in? Is your tap water made of GOLD??
2) My other pet peeve is the mini-cup at the drive-through. Although the above scenario irritates me to no end, at least I have the option of going back up to the drink dispensers every 15 seconds to refill my 1/4 cup of water. But when I'm in the drive through and they hand me, literally, a cup that is half the size of my kids' kids meal drinks, I lose it. How am I supposed to refill that when I'm 8 feet down the road and it runs out?
Mostly the thing that bugs me is that these restaurants seem bent on trying to make me feel like a loser for ordering the most healthy drink on this earth. The one thing our bodies can't live without, and I get a big, plastic guilt trip every time I order one. Well, a tiny plastic guilt trip. Sometimes they'll give me a bigger cup if I ask for one, but sometimes they really won't and they try to tell me it's some kind of company policy: I'm sorry, ma'am, it says right here that I can't provide a water cup bigger than a thimble or I'll be fired.
Think twice, lame restaurants. You're not going to make me change my drink order all of the sudden just because you hand me 2 oz of water. ("Oh, I only get that much water?? Well then, by all means change my drink to an extra large Oreo shake!") So you might as well pony up the 2 cents it costs you for that bigger cup and fill it with that ultra expensive WATER and hand it over to me with a smile. AND A LID!
3 comments:
This is a pet peeve of mine too. How about larger water cups that cost a dime?
And being somebody who is a fan of rules and an orderly society, can I just say that I still get mad when I think of that time DH and I were at Panda Express and some douche stood at the machine an filled his dixie cup with Sprite. You're not fooling anybody, Mr. Man. I saw that! Assholes like you who won't use the honor system just ruin it for everybody. It was really all I could do to not alert management right there or maybe tackle him to the ground while we waited for the police to arrive. (Because I'm sure the 16 year old kid working that day totally would have done something to the Sprite thief.)
How I justify buying one large drink and telling both of my kids that they can have sips of my drink but not their own- well that's something different entirely.
Even more maddening is when I go to the zoo or the pool and pay upwards of $3 for a soda and they won't give me a lid or straw! Yeah, they just want to watch me take that 32 oz icey beverage and try not to dump the entire thing up my nose. It's a skill I've lost. Know why? BECAUSE IN THE YEAR 2012, WE USE STRAWS AND LIDS!!!
Tell you what: if you're worried I'm going to feed my straw and lid to a Polar Bear and have my wrappings end up on the wall of shame, you can charge me a heafty deposit for those items. I will return them to you at the end of the day. But for the love of Pete, ask any mother who has been to the zoo lately how much she enjoyed sloshing icey Diet Coke all over her baby while trying to push a stroller up and down those hills. Better yet, how fun is it to clean the regular (non diet) stuff out of the stroller's cup holder later on?
It's true! Even at sit-down restaurants I frequently get a little sense of being looked down on when I order water. No calories in water!
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