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I Could Be the Girlfriend

Remember how my friends seem to always think that waitresses are hitting on me and I think that it's all a fairly normal part of the dining experience? Apparently, the last time I wrote about it was not the last time when it would come up. Better yet, there's a new twist to the whole story worthy of quite a few laughs.

To begin with, let's add in another couple of anecdotes to the story. I met up with a friend for drinks after work, and she happened to get there first. That meant that when I got there, the waitress had to take my drink order separately. I ordered a beer, and all was well in the world. A few minutes later, the same waitress came back and asked us if we wanted to order any appetizers. According to my friend, the waitress didn't look at her, and pretty much focused on me the whole time. I didn't really notice this, but my companion insisted that this was the case. The restaurant effect was back in play again, it seemed.

Mind you, this was the same friend I had had dinner with several weeks back, and we had had the opposite experience. She told me that before I got there (in my defense, I was only about 5 minutes late both times, and I called ahead to warn her), the waiter had been by several times to ask if she needed anything to drink, or if she wanted to start with some food. I hadn't seen any of this, but I did notice that when he came by, he usually looked in her direction to ask questions. Normally I wouldn't have thought much of this, but I couldn't resist poking fun at the time. I kept telling her she should ask the waiter for things for me, since it was bound to come to our table faster that way. Trust me, the whole thing resulted in a healthy amount of laughter.

Anyhow, by this point, this friend and I had both been on the receiving end of the supposed special treatment from wait staff. And that's when my friend threw in the icing on the cake: "what the hell? I'm offended. I mean, I could be your girlfriend! Why don't they at least ask?" I spontaneously burst out laughing the first time I heard this, and the person saying this wasn't far behind. She was getting annoyed over the potential existence of a non-relationship, all while acknowledging this (side note: apparently this topic came up in Seinfeld, but I didn't watch enough of it to find the clip, and Google wasn't helpful). This resulted in an even healthier bout of laughter.

Me being me, I got curious about how a waiter or waitress was supposed to validate the existence of the relationship. My friend had a ready answer here, too. In fact, she had a whole expected scenario that played out in her head:

Waitress: "Oh, so would you and your girlfriend like anything else?"
Friend: "Oh, no no. He's not my boyfriend." *laugh*
Waitress: "Oops, my mistake. Be right back with your drinks" *smiles coquettishly at me*

Unless this happened, though, the waiters and waitresses were flying blind. What's more, to blindly flirt with either of us was to make an assumption that hinted that one wasn't good enough for the other. In her case, she chose to jokingly take offense at the perceived slight. I just kept right on laughing when she explained the rationale. I knew that she didn't take the whole thing seriously, but the explanation and the scenario were all too good to keep quiet about. What's more, a new inside joke was instantly born ("I could be the boyfriend!").

Anyhow, the whole thing has only added to the legend of the restaurant flirt (or the Dessert, if you remember the story from the post I linked at the very beginning). I've said it before, but I'm going to have to keep eating out to keep the story going. It's far too funny to call it quits.

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