“Don’t criticize the service — if you do, you’re UNAMERICAN!”

Posted on August 25, 2002 in Travels - So Cal

We went up to visit my mother and had dinner at the Mediterranean Restaurant on Highland Avenue in San Bernardino, right across the street from the Bobbitt Mortuary where an old classmate of mine works as one of the family. The Mediterranean has been around for a long time. It has a split personality — a coffee shop in the front and one of those darkly lit places in the back that I suppose are to remind you of the intimacy of the dungeons where the Spanish Inquisition conducted its researches.

Getting seated was no problem. They took us right in. But then it was hurry up and wait for twenty five minutes while the waiter walked back and forth with plates for other customers. I finally pulled his busboy over and told him that the guy had three minutes to take my order and then we walked. He showed, said “just let me serve these tickets”. I put on my best “no compromises” expression. “If you want our business, you take our order now.” Suddenly he was without a ticket. I decided to be merciful and let him run to the back to get it.

The comedy of errors continued, though I think I had him running scared. He appeared to be an under-sized Hell’s Angel, cleaned up for work. I wonder if he was one of those people who hadn’t had enough on the ball to get out of San Bernardino or was one of those bits of human detritus that settled here after rolling through the Cajon Pass from points back East.. My mother grumbled as she watched the booth across the way fill three times as we waited for our food. Our waiter looked to be the manager or, at least, a regular who all the dessicated old fogies who frequented the place seemed to know. He murmured something about not having worked the front in a long time to some flabby codger who called him by name and shook his hand. My mother picked up the check and gave the waif who worked the cash register a piece of her mind.

As she waited for her complaint to be relayed to the manager, Lynn and I loitered in the lobby. Here I noted several patriotic bows and two enormous pictures of George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, both painted by some jingoist artist named “Ryan”. “You know,” I said to Lynn as I looked at the decidedly bad pictures — Bush’s nose looked distinctly artificial, like that of the fellow with the tin nose in Cat Ballou — “I miss communism. When we had it, business people worked very hard to give better service. Now they don’t care.”

When my mother came out, I pointed to the portraits. “No wonder!” she cried. “Between that and the worst service I have ever had in my life, I’m never coming back here!”