Just this morning, I was reading Michael Gerber’s description of the small business ideal in his book The E-Myth Revisited, where he tells of the heavenly customer service experience he gets each and every time he visits his favorite resort.

I can’t help but believe that the owners of the Mexican restaurant my wife and boys and I visited tonight also read that description, then decided they would do the exact opposite.  Well, not entirely — we were seated immediately, and a waiter took our drinks order fairly quickly.  Then, fifteen minutes later, when our drinks finally showed up, we asked for the menus we’d never been given.  Fifteen minutes after that the waiter took our food order.

An hour later the lovely Miss ViVi asked another waiter if the cooks had even started cooking our food yet.  She never saw that waiter again.  (We hope he’s okay.)  Ten minutes after that we left, since it was the boys’ bedtime and they hadn’t eaten yet.  We didn’t pay for the drinks.  So sorry.

It wouldn’t be civil of me to name the restaurant, but I will say it’s the new Mexican restaurant in a town whose name rhymes with “Chaska, Minnesota.”  (Rhymes really, really closely.)

PS — just a note to all you restaurateurs out there:  if you don’t actually have chocolate milk, just say so!  Don’t try to concoct it yourselves using what appeared to be the same goop I saw running in an earthen ditch in a chemical plant I visited twenty years ago outside Paducah, Kentucky.

PPS — we never did get silverware and napkins.  Perhaps we should have taken that as a clue…