It’s Just Another Day at the Zoo

I’ve always wondered who has the very worst view of humanity. Is it the cop, the caseworker or the divorce lawyer? Certain jobs allow a glimpse of the nobility of the human animal; others are like being keepers at the human zoo.

The lowest moments seem to come when it is feeding time. Pity then the waitress (or waiter), who must maintain the illusion of cheerful service while busting her bunions for a 15% gratuity from some tyrant on the cheap. She has to deal with creatures grown restless. People like me, my mother and a certain czarina with an appetite for egg roll.

The other night at a Chinese restaurant and human behavior laboratory, I observed the czarina in action. The waitress offered her the front table. No, too near the door. The rear table? Near a smoker. The table on the left? She couldn’t see the door. The table on the right? Well, OK, if there’s nothing better.

Before the night was over, the whole staff would be rushing food and water and chopsticks and forks and tea and hotter tea and dishes to this woman’s table. They would shut the door at her request, then open it a crack. They would climb up on a ladder to turn off the ceiling fan, then climb up again to turn it on after she warmed up.

I shudder to think that I would ever appear such a beast to a waitress. I like to think of myself as a person who never forgets the golden rule: Do unto others as they’d better do unto you.

We move now to another night, another restaurant.

We arrived at the lovely little bistro and were shown a table by the door. The problem with door tables is finishing your meal beneath the starving standees. So, I wasn’t being difficult when I said, “We’d like that nice table in the back.”

The charming proprietor explained, “The people requested that table when they made the reservation.”

OK, I am me. I never make trouble. But just for a laugh, just to amuse the charming proprietor, I said, “Let’s surprise them.”

I could tell he was thinking: Leona Helmsley, party of four. So we sat down at the table near the door. No problem. We could handle it when the line of latecomers glared desperately at our decaf cafe au laits and burnt hazelnut tortes with white chocolate sauce.

After recommending a wine, the waitress poured a taste for me -- concluding I had the power-hungry palate in our group. Now, the first bottle of wine is always hardest to respond to properly. You are too sober to say anything clever like, “I admire its impudence” or “A complex structure with just a trace of fruity undertones.”

So you usually stick with something simple like “Fine” or “Excellent” or “Down the hatch.”

I lifted the glass, made a gratuitous sniffing gesture and then drank. I’m sorry, but I started choking. We are talking warm nail polish remover.

I announced: “That’s the worst wine I’ve ever tasted.”

The whole restaurant seemed to freeze. Forkfuls of fettuccine hung in midair. Busboys held pitchers aloft as waterfalls flowed into bottomless glasses. Our host radiated a deep red glow, as if he needed someone to Heimlich me out of his life.

I had always wondered if I’d have the nerve to reject a bad wine. In doing so, I had become the Customer from the Black Lagoon.

I expected that the prep chef would add a few poison oak leaves to my salad of fresh greens and the sous chef would spike my goat cheese with jackass. One more complaint, and the next time I returned to my favorite restaurant I would be shown the table at the bottom of the cliff.

But no need to worry. The meal was pure heaven. We cooed like contented cows over each course.

At the end of the evening, the proprietor was laughing. “I was wondering if we would ever please this woman,” he said. “But that wine was flat, and I’ve removed it.

“You have a good palate,” he said as if he might even have meant it.

I counter-massaged his ego. “The fettuccine was like the hair of seraphim,” I said. “Your minestrone was the kind my mother could only dream of making.”

I told the host a tale about my mother, the original customer with an attitude. Her crowning moment occurred when she walked into a restaurant and immediately demanded a glass of ice water.

The obedient waitress rushed it to her. She took one sip and spit it out.

“Too cold!” she complained.

The host laughed heartily, appreciating his good fortune. He knows that even in the zoo, some lions are pussycats.