Saturday, April 13, 2013

Getting By With A Little Help From Mr. Jefferson

I think the universe is trying to tell me something. At first I thought it was mere coincidence but then I started keeping track.  This phenomenon may date back further but I can only accurately prove its existence based on the last 2 times I’ve gone out.  Now that I’m paying attention, we will see how long the streak can actually last.  So what the heck am I talking about?  The universe is determined to put as much distance between me and women as possible.  I suppose I should elaborate lest you think this is another blog about being jaded in love.  You know, the kind that precedes me getting a cat and listening to Augustana’s “Boston” on a regular loop. 

 
On contraire, this particular development has evolved into a game I’ve grown fond of playing.  There is a law of truth that seemingly never fails whenever I go out to a bar or restaurant.  In a room full of attractive female waitresses, I will invariably draw the solitary waiter at the establishment.  Trust me; he’s the ONLY one there.  I make it a point to scan the room for every other server working the floor (the aforementioned game).  I should also note that if the employment staff is largely split between male and female, it seems like I still get a guy more often than not.  However, given the probability of being served by a dude in that case, it’s perhaps a little unlucky but nothing out of the ordinary.
But always getting a guy when he’s the only one?  Now that’s downright uncanny. It’s like the place collectively feels my presence approaching and makes sure to reserve a table specifically in the guy’s sector.  Or maybe the hostess sees me at the door, makes a split-second assessment of my quality, shoots her fellow female servers an “I got your back” glance, and proceeds to pawn me off to that single guy server.  The moral of this story for my guy friends is that you might want to think twice before throwing an invite my way, if that sort of thing matters to you at all.  Just this very instant, as I finished that preceding sentence, I had a business idea:  I should start bottling my own pheromones and selling them to the gay male community.  I’ve even got the intro to my sappy infomercial:  Tired of women hitting on you?  Wish they’d just keep their distance?  Have we got the product for you…” 
Sorry for the diversion; back to the matter at hand.  I have nothing against guy servers.  Many of them are competent workers who I tip fairly based on their service.  It’s just that when you go to certain places, an attractive server is part of the expected experience.  However, I will say that when a woman is serving me food and/or drinks, her looks have nothing to do with the tip she is going to receive.  The way I see it, there’s more than enough guys willing to plop down a few extra bucks as a tip simply because their server won the genetic lottery, or at least cashed in it.  I figure those guys got me covered, right?  I really don’t know why I should care so much about who is waiting on me.  It’s not like I’m going to flirt with the girl or try to ask her out or anything.  I don’t need to be another in a long line of suitors. I know better than that.  Or do I?  That brings me to the main point of this blog.
I looked in the mirror recently and I didn’t like what I saw, figuratively speaking (OK, maybe literally too, but that’s not important here).  I have a lot of regrets about things I’ve never done.  These things were not done because my gut and my “rules” convinced me of reasons not to do them.  My life is nowhere close to what I imagined it would be 10 years ago.  Seriously.  I feel lost.  It wasn’t supposed to be this way, I tell you!  I’ve let my instincts guide me thus far in life and I came to the same epiphany that George Costanza once did:  my instincts are shit.  Every inclination I’ve ever had on anything important has been wrong.  Therein lays the beauty of this realization though.  The powers that be have afforded me the opportunity to make the right choice every time.  I merely need to do the opposite of whatever feels right.  “Feels” is a critical word in this newfound approach.  When a choice is obvious and I know what it should be, I’m not going to cast aside all logic and reasoning.  That would be downright foolish.  I’ve made a lot of good choices in life when I have the facts at my disposal and don’t have to rely on my instincts.  Doing the opposite is only going to come into play when an actual decision – a best guess, if you will – needs to be made.  
So I’ve taken some baby steps to unveil this new approach and it’s had mixed results.  Channeling my inner George, I decided to engage our server at Buffalo Wild Wings a few weeks back.  I wanted to get some field test results.  With my friends at the table also listening in, the conversation went something like this:
Me:  Hypothetically speaking, what would you think of a guy who introduced himself as a 29 year-old nerd who still lives at home?  Would he have any chance with you?
BWW Gal:  (Completely willing to play along because she’s probably assuming I was talking about one of my cohorts and trying to prove a point) I’d say no thank you.  I could understand living at home if you were still in school or fresh out of college still looking for a job.  But 29?  That’s not very appealing.
Me:  But what if all of his other qualities were really awesome?
BWW Gal:  I still can’t see it happening.
Me:  So that’s pretty much a deal breaker for you?
BWW Gal:  Yeah, pretty much.  (Starting to fear that she’s going to be on the receiving end of the worst attempt at asking someone out in history)  So what’s this all about?
Justin (my friend):  Have you ever seen Seinfeld?
BWW Gal:  No.
Me:  Sorry to waste your time.  Thank you for your input.
So it didn’t go exactly as I had hoped in but I wasn’t bummed.  I truthfully had no intention of asking that particular girl out; she was cute but whoever was serving us would have been subject to my experiment.  I also have to acknowledge that I did not wholly commit myself to the bit.  There will be future opportunities to really put the theory into practice. 
Those in the service industry come across a lot of people due to the nature of their job.  A guy like me really needs something to distinguish himself.  Several years back, I was tipped off to a clever idea that can be utilized to help reach this end.  Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the $2 bill.   Yes, these are still in circulation; you just hardly ever see them.  It’s a darn shame.  I find the $2 bill to be the most underused and underappreciated form of U.S. currency still out there.  How many times have you needed to make a small purchase that costs a dollar and change?  You don’t have the change because carrying change is just annoying.  Or maybe you want to leave a couple bucks in tip but don’t have any singles.  So you think to yourself, I don’t want to break up this $5, $10, or $20 bill.  If only there was some magical bill that could cover this expenditure?  Then again, maybe this is largely a non-issue for most of you because you don’t pay in cash.  I guess I’m a fossil in that regard but that’s a story for another day.  (I’ve never had any formal writing training or classes but I think that’s called foreshadowing or something.) 
I like to keep a stash of $2 bills at home and bust them out when I feel like trying to make an impression.  It’s actually been a long time since I’ve done this or even had the urge to do it, but maybe it’s time to get back in the game and start doling out Jeffersons to servers.  They typically have one of three reactions, which tell me if they’re worth pursuing:
  1. They look confused and question the validity of my “fake” currency (too dumb).
  2. They do not acknowledge the unique gesture whatsoever (too bitchy…probably).
  3. They laugh and associate me with their grandfather because he’s the last person to give them a $2 bill (close enough, I can work with that).
Despite the suboptimal results of the BWW field test, I still believe doing the opposite has some promise as a theory because I have in fact had some success recently doing just that.  A guy at work asked if I would join a pool to pick UFC fights.  I agreed to join despite the notable handicap of having never watched an entire UFC fight and being able to count the number of fighters I know on 2 hands.  So why join?  When it comes to fantasy sports, pools, or general predictions, I’m a whore.  I’ll get in on as much action as possible (see: my fantasy golf team).  It was a free pool and I didn’t really care that much about it, so I spent very little time and no research making my picks.  I messed around with some strategies for the first couple rounds.  For example, one time I chose whichever person had the more “common sounding” name.  Not surprisingly, none of these strategies hit the mark. 
Then, at my request, the pool organizer included head shots and records of each fighter squaring off.  Armed with some additional albeit limited information, I finally started using my instincts to pick who I thought would win.  The results were comically bad.  You couldn’t even pick that many losers in a row if you tried.  I was running out of ideas and then it hit me.  Whenever a fight involved people I had never heard of, which were most of them, I let my instincts go to work.  I then promptly submitted the exact opposite for my picks.  These results were startling.  By the end of the season, I had ascended all the way to 2nd place.  A new season has started and we’re one event in.  Yours truly is sitting in 1st with a decent lead.  This approach has apparently morphed from fluke into a viable strategy.  One of the other guys in the pool has subsequently asked me for “my secret”. 
What can I say?  My instinct really is a gift, even if it comes from the Island of Misfit Toys.  (I think I could listen to any story as long as it’s narrated by Burl Ives.)  So, as long I can get my mind past the debilitating fact that my hunches are always wrong, I just might have some success in life with this new approach.  It might involve living a bit of a lie but no one else needs to know I’m a fraud.  Come to think of it, I wonder if my powers are transferrable.  Have a tough decision you need to make?  You might want to enlist my services.  Now there’s a real business idea.

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