Are you being served?

I don’t remember much about being an infant. Although I can safely surmise that I thought I was the bomb. I would cry and surely a spoonful of Cerelac was on its way to my mouth to shut me up. I smiled and surely as giddy adults normally do they laughed back at me like I was the incarnation of Andy Kaufman. Every little thing I did was considered a Kodak moment, at least to my folks. Then something happened. Suddenly the world stopped being my oyster. Suddenly I realized I was not the center of the universe but a mere speck, statistic, another mouth to feed.

My a-ha moment came when I was five. After four years of feeling incredibly cute and irresis-tible,my doctor suddenly told me that I had to wear leg braces. How dare this Ph.d’d grandpa tell me that I was bow legged! Of course none of my protests were heard and I was cast in the ugliest of contraptions known to man, which has probably shown itself on some Eastern European Fashion Week sometime during the minimalist.

You know that scene in Forrest Gump where he’s made fun of by his peers? That was me. I used to be the coolest kid in pre-school, I was allowed to wear my moms lipstick to class (James Cooper in Magenta) while everyone gawked at my neon lit smile. I went from being class slut to class smut. The lowest moment of course was when I couldn’t figure out how to hop out of my braces when I REALLY needed to go and ended up wetting myself. I was sent home hopping on a plastic garment bag so as not to soil my cruel environment.

That afternoon I learned everything there was to know about humility.

Two decades later aside from being acquainted with humility, I also met its other cousin guilt.

I was raised to be nice. Don’t say anything if you have nothing nice to say. Don’t be difficult. Don’t demand. Answer only when asked. But I wondered, didn’t these belong somewhere else like in Afghanistan?

Pshaw, these two friends of mine have made me wonderfully neurotic and controlled given my impetuous nature.

We’re always faced with some sort of conundrum. Whether it’s the choice of telling a loser date that you’ll ring him or just tell him he smells and goodbye. In my case, my conundrum has always been this restaurant that I fancied a lot in Greenhills.

The food is always fab, like I totally dream about it, spend my afternoons and evenings there on my carb cheat days. It’s my brothel. Oh but here is the rub – the service sucks.

Whether it was a battalion of waiters hovering over my table listening to me and my friend discuss her gyne problems, getting my tea as tepid as day-old bathwater, having our food arrive a Harry Potter movie later or in moments of sheer creativity bringing me a dish that I did not order or being asked every 10 minutes if I’d like to order anything else, I feel the blood pressure going up and its not because of the butter.

Here’s my Jerry Seinfeld moment. I know I’m about to lose it in this pop stand. It really absolutely drives me crazy. But I just can’t. First of all, I understand that schlepping the whole day for minimum wage dealing with diva chefs and equally recalcitrant patrons is no walk in the park. I mean it’s just not worth the altercation if it’s a misplaced order or heat-challenged tea. You can say its hard to be nice when you’re hungry. The most gracious people I know grrr when the butterflies start pounding in their stomachs. You can murder time and wait for it to be done right maybe the third time. So despite the ulcer bastards popping in my highly acidic stomach, I entertain myself with salt on finger canapés and shut up. Guilt and humility pat me on the back.

Any restaurateur will tell you that service is what they really sell aside from the food. As people who pay pretty good moolah for this, we deserve that right to complain. Yet no matter how much I tell myself this I still lose sleep over it. I really believe that if there is something that bugs me about living here in Manila it’s that we have a plague of horrible customer service. I’ve wigged out in a resort in Cebu because they placed me in a room next to some construction site and then another time I entered the room with the bed all messy from some tryst and smelling like post coital smoke. Which is basically a valid wig out. I’ve wigged out when a bar had no table and I was drunk and thought I was Shannen Doherty laid a fat and ugly easter egg. That is a bad wig out, and it remains the most embarrassing moment of my life. And believe me I’m not easily embarrassed.

I’ve wigged out with customer service reps who put me on hold forcing me to listen to elevator music from hell. I’ve wigged out with over efficient salesladies who force me to spend my paltry dough on things I don’t need. I especially feel like wigging out on those people who stick fragrance strips to my nostrils and real estate agents at the mall who grab my wrists while I’m hurrying off. I feel like wigging out on snooty boutique girls who tell me what I just picked won’t look good on me just because. I feel like wigging out on bookstore people who won’t even check if your book is there or not, I even caught one bookseller texting away while she pretended to look for my book in the computer.

We’re taught to be humble and be thankful for whatever. But what if whatever comes to you in a different dish or a different size? Time and time again I feel like Hamlet forever trapped in emotional conflict. One part of me wants to be the wistful humble pie eater that I was raised to be. Another part of the militant consumer in the closet. There are ways of saying it. Most times being polite is a way to get by. However sometimes polite doesn’t work…promise I’ve seen it happen.

So what’s one to do? First, no making mountains out of molehills. Choose your battles. Bite that tongue and jam that fist in your jeans pocket the next time someone jabs a fragrance sample on your nose or asks you if you really know your size. In restaurants, if the virtues of being a good and grateful person is not something you dig, always remember that they can be very creative with your nosh. My teacher who once worked for a pizza parlor once told me that when he’d get pissed at some customers he would squeeze the water from the kitchen mop and put the toppings on and bake it. Yum. Who’s the bitch now?

Besides, I have to admit, aside from the guilt and humilty comes selfishness. I wouldn’t be able to have a cow and go back to my carb Moulin Rouge without feeling like a dick. Too much of a trade off.