On Munches
Huh - that was insightful - my drink, post closing drink and post-post drink with a "munch venue" waitress
I dropped into a known munch venue for a drink and struck up a conversation with the waitress and decided to help with clean up, pick up chairs, mop the floor and sure enough I got invited to the standard post bar hours drink.
I listened to the days annoyances and flustrations with customers and couldn't help but notice how much they had listened to, noticed and observed.
2 of the waitresses couldn't help but notice I "looked familiar" and asked why and when I said I'd been by the place on occasion they said "Oh...you're with that group of - well - we can't always tell - are they swingers?"
I had to laugh - I said "No, not swingers, well, yes, I think some of them are, but no - that's not what the group is about, to each there own - I don't judge, the group is about community."
They said "No, no, we don't care about that. It's just we always try to guess and compare group tips and how we're treated." OK, I admit, they didn't say it that precisely, instead....
They started with "Remember that pool group they tried to get to come by who was here for about 3 months"
Then there was "that bowling Thursday group who always showed up already half drunk"
Then there was the "church people coming by after service in those stuck up outfits with there kids" ... and then ....
There was "us" - the "...are they swingers..." group?
As I listened I had a half sense of pride and a half sense of shame and embarrassment.
On the one hand "we" were more polite and mannered than most but also much more demanding. "we" were a bit above average tippers who occasionally need our own place (apparently someone was touching a girl under her skirt while the bar tender was asking what they wanted - in view of some kids).
The real take away for me was "we" are noticed and "we" represent our community and perhaps "we" need to keep that in mind when we attend and host munches as "we" are the representatives of our little community in a vanilla world via munches.
Oh, and "we" really should be better tippers - as I assume we all can calculate 20% in our heads...