If you don't fill them up with bread you have to give them a larger entree so they still have leftovers to take home. Bread also makes you thirsty so they try to fill you up on salad and bread.

Just order the soup/salad/breadsticks imo. All those things are good.

They change entree size given the amount of bread and salad you eat concurrent to them cooking the entree?

The only place this makes sense is an all you can eat buffet or like a Brazilian steakhouse - where the meat is more expensive than the other stuff. However I really don't think they're sitting back there making diabolical plans to get you to fill up on bread.

Good one. I absolutely hate that expression.

I think the diabolical plan is that all their food is inexpensive carb, sugar and salt loaded garbage but as long as it's warm or "free" and can be slathered in butter or dressing people will eat it until they reach the food coma that passes for satisfaction. Give em a free birthday cupcake with a single candle and a forced clap-along line of bussers and severs singing a non recognizable birthday song to avoid a lawsuit and you can print money.

Completely agree - hence why it pisses me off

The funny thing is even at Fogo de Chao - I'll get to where I can't possibly eat any more meat. My body just rejects it. But I can still eat those little cheesy bread balls for some reason.

In reference to buffets, I never understood why Souplantation went and introduced a large family size salad bowl as an option for piling your food. I'm guessing 2/3 of the food people load in that bowl ends up thrown in the trash.

Because of this, those bowls piss me off.

If I managed a buffet, people are getting coffee cup saucers for plates.

Pisses me off when people always have to back into a parking space in a store parking lot. Always holds up traffic trying to get by. It is more difficult and takes more time to back into a space, than to just back out when leaving. You have to be much more precise - backing out is easy. It doesn't save you any time net, in fact costs time.

I don't get the rationale at all... is it just getting the harder part out of the way first? Or do they think they will run into someone when backing out?

They probably think they're being clever and have "leave anxiety", so they can just dart out later.
They're not being clever.

Trucks are easier to back in than go forward in.

Confirmed. I drive a truck - backing in is one pivot, forward is at least two pivots.

You are much less likely to encounter sudden pedestrians or cross traffic going backward into a spot than backing out of it which is where the anxiety comes from.

Any restaurant that still does this, even though the real song has been ruled to be public domain.

Suzzer,


I don't know if I'd call it diabolical, but they absolutely have the big salad bars and bread specifically for the purpose of having people eat less meat.

JT,

Whether or not the soda button counts as free water is a hotly contested topic!

Really? What are the submitted pro and con points so far?

I have avoided this question for a while, but I now have crossed the threshold and intend to find out. I am a regular at a few places where I am chummy with the managers so I'll start to sample answers. May be dirty data because I am so likable (irl obv) they would probably give me free FLAVORED soda if I drank that ****.

Psshhhh you should hear her spit!

Young people

How do you get to the point where you're chummy with multiple fast food managers?

The seemingly overwhelming popularity of Rice Krispies treats. I have like a 90th percentile level sweet tooth, but I can't stand them.

It annoys me that every new restaurant on earth, including all these poke places, has the Chipotle "pick your protein, etc." model. At the new poke place by my work, which is very good - they do show some pre-defined bowls. First time there I asked them to make one of them. I'm like Tony Bourdain - I want to try your best dish before I start getting creative.

None of the employees knew how to make it. They just stared at me blankly: "which of this 4x4 grid of stuff do you want, before you move on to the next 4x4 grid of stuff, then 8 sauces, then an assortment of crispy things, then more decisions". There's like 60 ingredients, how the hell do I know what works together? I want you to tell me what works.

Same goes for Big Wok. I don't have time to invest in learning the perfect combination of ingredients. I've been to Big Wok 3 times and 2 of the times regretted some of the choices in my concoction. I imagine the cooks are laughing at my gringo ass as they take my bowl and throw it on the wok.

We have a humous/pita place near work. Same setup. I was perfectly fine with the old humous/pita place model where they had a menu of stuff to choose from. This one is easier than poke because it has less ingredients. But you have to engineer your pita well. Can't add too much stuff or it becomes a gigantic messy disaster. Also they offer 3 kinds of hummous/tatziki/red-pepper-hummous/whatever. You feel like you have to pick 3 different ones when one would be just fine. I started asking for just one kind of humous and they get all confused.

Well, it was an overstament. A friend of a friend runs a local Mexican place, and I know an owner of a Pizza Hut but I am not chummy with either, just have access. The chummy one runs a local burrito franchise shop that my family and I go to several times a month and she loves her regulars. Gives my kids freebees etc. next time I go there I will ask if soda water is a charge or not, but she probably is an outlier anyway. I guess I will just always ask at the register from now on. Not rocket science. I'll either pay for it or drink plain water depending on the price.

Free bees! Get your bees here!