Two Stories - Waiting and The Turks

Two stories this entry. Lucky you!

Foreigner, Clay and the Bad Waiting Experience
So yesterday Clay and I printed off a $25 dollar coupon for this restaurant at http://www.restaurant.com/ - we'll call it "Enemies" - and went there to eat. It seemed like a nice, friendly environment. Several families were eating together. Basketball games were on the TVs at the bar. No one was being shot in the head. Pianos weren't being molested. You know, good stuff.
Things started to go downhill when we sat down and looked at the menus that were handed to us by a caucasian girl who looked like she'd just been scolded for eating too many cookies before dinner. The menu informed us that we had a grand total of 4 entrees to choose from. It didn't take us long to decide what we wanted. And then the waiting began:

Minute 0: Orders for salads and entrees placed. Pathetically flat carbonated beverages received.
Minute 10: Clay and I decide to play pool. I foolishly hope our food doesn't arrive while we're playing. I wouldn't want the steaming hot gastronomic delight to go cold in our absence.
Minute 20: I pocket the 8-ball to complete a stunning come-from-behind victory (as is my style) and we return to our seats at the bar to find no salad, no entree and even flatter beverages.
Minute 30: The Houston-Dallas game is dead as a contest. I glare at the waitress every time she walks by and complain loudly to Clay about the service. No eye contact is made. No salads. No entrees. No refills.
Minute 35: I encourage Clay to get up and leave with me. Clay gets cold feet. The waitress walks right by us with a cellphone to her ear. I glare. She ignores. She goes into some sort of supply closet with the phone still to her ear.
Minute 40: Waitress exits closet. I glare with extra intensity. This finally gets her attention. We get some story about how our food is coming (No kidding? Food at a restaurant?). Clay promises to leave if our food hasn't arrived in 2 minutes.
Minute 42: Clay looks away when I point out that two minutes have passed.
Minute 45: Waitress disappears. Could this be the magic moment?
Minute 47: Waitress reappears. Still no salads, no entrees and no refills.
Minute 50: I tell Clay we're leaving. Clay says he'll follow me out after a minute or so to dispel the suspicion a hurried pair exit is likely to raise.
Minute 51: Out. I'm such a rebel!
Minute 52: Clay out. He's such a rebel!
Minute 70: We pull into the parking lot of the Golden Dragon Chinese Buffet and enjoy a decent meal, friendly service and full stomachs.

All I can say is Thank God for Immigrants. If it weren't for the Chinese, we'd have been driving around to restaurants similar in nature to Enemies all night long.

On the other hand, this reminds of me of another story which we'll call:

Foreigner, Clay and the Rude Turkish Tailor
So the zipper on my suit pants was completely out of order. It just plain stopped zipping. I'd tug on the pin and the gaping hole in the front of my pants would refuse to seal no matter what I did. Now back home in the Third World (I'm foreign, remember) when something like this happens, you walk 10 minutes to the nearest tailor, pay him the equivalent of 50 cents and have a brand spanking new zipper put in that as good as if not better than the original.
But not in the most advanced nation on earth, oh no. Here, you won't find a tailor who'll do it for less than what you paid for the damn pants. In the first place, you won't find a tailor. Maybe I didn't look hard enough... anyway, you won't find a tailor EASILY. I ended up one Thursday afternoon with Clay driving through downtown Hicksville, Mid-Western USA in search of tailors. The one seamstress we hoped to find was out. The second one had shut down and moved away. Our last hope was this huge shop in pretty much the heart of the dead downtown (where buildings went as high as 5 storeys and Clay told me they actually knocked down a mall to put in a street... so things were picking up that year).
Anyway, this shop was the deadest of the dead. Three old Eastern European type people sitting in a back room talking in Turkish sewing what looked like 30 year old curtains. You know the feeling you get when you walk into an attic that's been shut for years and years? Yeah, well that's the feeling you get when you walk into Mr. Turkish Tailors (not the store's real name).
So this old fellow looked up in shock (Customers?? But we don't get THOSE anymore!) and asked what the matter was. I told him my story. He looked at the pants for a while, tried some fancy chalk stuff and then announced dramatically: "New Zipper!"
Amazing! We would never have guessed!
But get this. He wanted FOURTEEN dollars for his work. I was a bit taken aback. That seemed a bit steep... that was about half of what I'd paid for the whole pair of pants (or what my parents had paid). But whatever. As long as they were repaired, right? So I asked if I could pick them up later that afternoon since I needed them on Saturday (2 days later). To which he pointed to Saturday on the calendar and nodded his head. I was quite happy, till I realized that he was pointing at the Saturday AFTER next (9 days later). Now I needed to wear those pants in less than 48 hours so I tried to turn on the charm, praise his skills, explain how the zipper would be child's play to him etc etc.
"Very busy" were the two words I got out of him. I looked around the coffin of the place feeling a little disoriented. Very busy? What?
I tried once more to talk him into a shorter waiting period. For my efforts, I received my pants in my hands and the words "Then take it!"
Take it I did. And Clay and I left. Stupid immigrants. Deport them all!!

And the moral of these stories is:

There's two sides to every story... or
There's two stories to every side.

Take your pick.