Breakfast Report: IHOP on Father's Day

My wife and I wanted to get a reasonable start back to San Antonio on Sunday morning, but with it being Father's Day, we decided to at least stay long enough for breakfast with my daughter. We got to meet one of her friends who is also attending school at Sheppard, so we invited her to join us.

No sense in spoiling the good report from Denny's, we opted to check out an IHOP just off 281. As you might imagine, there was a line starting to form, what with people all wanting to get their feed on either before or after church, or just as a special treat for the Dads of WF. After a brief wait however, we were seated and our waitress, Miss Sunshine came to take our order.

I've never been a waitress (or a waiter for that matter), but I can only imagine it must suck. You have to deal with crabby people in a hurry, people who want way more service then they really need, and above all, you are on your feet the whole time. I get it and there is a special place in my wallet for wait staff who can get through all that and still put on a smile and at least attempt to be interested in their customers. Our waitress (as I said, Miss Sunshine) was a fairly attractive skinny blonde girl who must have been thinking about how she had been abused as a child or had just lost a favorite pet. She was not happy and there was no amount of being a polite customer that was going to help change her demeanor.
Please don't misunderstand; I am not, nor have I ever been one of those people who want to engage in idle banter with the waitress or be that creepy older fat guy who wants to flirt with the younger, prettier people around him. So this wasn't an issue of me being snubbed. My daughter's friend it turns out, comes from a family that owns a restaurant and she noted right away what a sourpuss this gal was. But, I won;t let a bad personality ruin my day, especially if the rest of the service is good. And, thankfully it was.

One entertaining thing while we waited for our breakfast was a very hungry fellow who was quite engaged in his job; eating! I know it's easy to poke fun at fat people and I only do it knowing that if you ever sat next to me in a restaurant, you might just snicker yourself, but this wasn't a case of a tubby guy wanting to lick his plate clean, this guy was all sorts of hungry. Case in point: who orders dessert after breakfast? Especially after eating a Rooty Tooty Fresh and Fruity? Essentially, breakfast at IHOP is dessert.

So anyway, Miss Sunshine brought us our meals and we were all pretty happy with what we got. I'm pretty standard with pnacakes & eggs, but the girls all ordered fruity waffles and such. We were pretty pleased and a session of picture taking ensued.

When everything was said and done, we got the bill and my daughter, bless her little heart, snatched the bill and paid. And I let her! I'm a good dad. Good & cheap!

I did however decide to leave the tip for Miss Sunshine and when my daughter's friend saw that I was not going to let our waitresses' sour disposition take away from her tip, she commented that I was a "very generous man". I then told her that our waitress was just upset because her pimp called and she had to get back to the corner at the end of her shift. Yes, generous indeed.

Bottom line: Thumbs up for the WF IHOP.


Friend Ouimet and daughter Roxanne -->