You're whining about the crockery, now?

We'll find a more appropriate plate for you next time.

Customers! If you are out for a nice dinner, and the following happens to you, and you are so subsequently distressed that you need to complain… you might want to practice that mindful breathing exercise your therapist taught you and have a good, hard think about how bad your problem really is. Is this really the worst thing that happened to you today (in which case I kind of hate you)? Did it destroy your entire dining experience (or are you just a miserable twit who actively searches for stupid things to gripe about because that is the only way to fill the empty insecure black void that is your heart)? Was it as bad as a roach pizza?

Here is a complaint that is not only useless, irrelevant, and foolish, it is also a First World Problem. And lordy knows how the Fool Critic feels about those*.

The size/shape of the actual plate your dinner is served on

As she was clearing the empty plates of a frumpy old couple, waitress A. was told, “Everything was great! Except the size of this plate was just a little too small for the steak. I couldn’t quite get the cutlery to sit on the plate when I wasn’t eating.”

Thinking this comment was a joke, as any ass with basic motor coordination could get a fork and knife to rest comfortably on a main sized plate, A. grinned and nodded conspiringly. “Yes, our generous beef portions do tend to dominate the plate!”

The customer stared back, unsmiling. “Well, you tell the chef that a customer says the plate is too small for this dish.”

On hearing this feedback, the chef responded by plating up two complimentary bite-sized petit fours for them, on a platter the size of a car tyre.

(That's his way of saying fuck off.)

*That is, Whine Lovers whinging about First World Problems are so stupid that if you multiplied their IQ by 50 the answer would be 2.

Perspective

I defy you to spot the difference, hospo kids, between these two tales of horror.

"The army came early in the morning, we were all asleep. They took all my three sons who were at home and did not let me follow them outside; every time I tried to go out they pushed me back. When I was able to go outside, after a couple of hours, I found my boys burning in the street. They had been piled on top of each other and had motorbikes piled on top of them and set on fire. I could not approach their bodies until evening because there was so much shooting."

 

“They come at me in the night sometimes, those sudden, frightening flashes of horror meals once placed in front of me in all seriousness. The Toorak restaurant that served a "scaloppini Marsala" that looked more like something scooped from a cow paddock and garnished with a sprig of parsley. The beachside joint in South Australia that believed the combination of (half-frozen) prawns, cream and coffee beans was a good idea. Or the once-hatted country restaurant that dished up a pile of stinking, rancid scallops in a room that would be a shoo-in for the most forlorn, draughty and depressing dining room in the world award (dead, just slightly stinking, fire included). But the one that really brings on the silent scream was a meal in suburban Melbourne, the highlight of which was a soggy risotto with (really) smoked salmon, coriander, semi-dried tomatoes and banana. The horror, the horror.”

 

I sure couldn’t!

If you have sufficiently recovered from the trauma of finding a banana in your risotto (oh noes!) read more about the situation in Syria, with ways you can help here.