A couple of Saturday nights ago at a little past midnight, my friends and I found ourselves at Fort Lou's. Suffice to say, it was not the smoothest dining experience of my life.
When the waitress (I shall call her Doris from here on out) approached our table, she looked mildly peeved. I took it upon myself to order first since I had a very simple request to make -- "A strawberry frappe, please." Doris leaned back a little, rolled her eyes, and said, "I don't have the time to make any frappes tonight." I had to consider for a moment to how to handle this crisis -- my friends claim that I appeared to be employing every defense mechanism I have in my possession to prevent myself from making some sarcastic retort.
I conquered the sarcastic impulse and asked Doris, "Um, what do you have that is of a frappe nature?" She replied, "Floats." I inquired, "What sort of floats?" and she elaborated, "Root beer." I shrugged and relented, "Ok, I'll have a root beer float instead."
Now it was Kendall's turn to order. She was actually ordering a meal -- scrambled eggs and a blueberry muffin. But, alas, as Kendall closed her menu, Doris shook her head in the negative: "I don't have any blueberry muffins." Now it was Kendall's turn to be perturbed. "Um, what sort of muffins do you have?" Doris looked over at the display case of baked goods and answered, "Morning glory." As I watched Kendall's face, I could tell that, like myself, she had never before heard of a morning glory muffin. Yet seeing as she had no choice, Kendall went for the glory.
Finally, it was Jay's turn to order his tortilla-wrapped scrambled eggs and two bagels, with extra cream cheese. When Jay asked for the extra cream cheese, Doris gave him the look of death. If she had been carrying a revolver in her apron, I am convinced Jay would no longer be with us. Fortunately for all parties involved, Doris could only glare at the request.
My friends and I just have a natural aptitude for finding the waitresses in bad moods. Or, of course, there is the argument that we put the waitresses in their foul moods. But if this is the case, I could not begin to explain this phenomenon. Although I am sure there are those who will disagree with this next statement, we are not horrible people. I'd go so far to say we are good people. We certainly don't go out of our way to offend the waitresses of the Upper Valley.
When I left Fort Lou's that night, I reasoned that maybe Doris had just had the worst day of her life, but still, I wrote her off as a nasty waitress that I'd rather never see again. She probably wrote me off as a sarcastic college student who prefers frappes over floats.
Soon after this dining experience, a few of my friends returned to Fort Lou's and were again served by Doris. Only this time she was as nice and sweet as could be and did not at all resemble the frappe-refusing waitress that I had experienced. Our first impression of Doris had been wrong.
That is one of the things I am beginning to accept about first impressions -- in my case, they are usually wrong. If I think about all my closest friends, I do not think I got a glowing first impression of any of them. I thought one was too normal, the other too quiet and that a third was just plain aloof. Fortunately, I managed to have second, third and fourth encounters with these people and discover the qualities about them that I love.
I wish there were a way that I could eliminate first impressions, but I think that in this case, I would have better luck ending world hunger. The only weapon I have against first impressions is my ability to reason.
For example, I eat lunch with my friend's friend, and the entire time, she looks around vacantly and maybe contributes two sentences to the conversation. I might conclude that she is unfriendly. But when I am on my guard against first impressions, I quickly reason, "Oh, she probably has to write a paper tonight, and she has no idea what she's going to talk about, so she's just really worried." Then, when we meet again, I'll give her a second chance and won't lose the opportunity to make a friend.
This approach sounds cheesy, but for me, it has succeeded. Otherwise, I would not be friends with a girl who tried a morning glory muffin and a guy who likes extra cream cheese with his bagels.
