Stewey Stewerson

One night at The Restaurant a couple weeks ago, I noticed an extremely tall and attractive young man sitting at the bar. He was glued to his Blackberry, and I thought, "Sweeet! an out-of-town business-type guy, dining alone? Purr-fect prey."

About ten minutes later, a girl came to meet him and they had dinner. I thought no more of it (I don't bat my eyes at boys who are on dates) and went about the evening's busy service. The next night, though, this guy came in with a different girl, and sat two bar stools down from where he'd sat the night before. Two dates, two nights, one restaurant? C'mon!

Two nights later, in with a different girl! When I came in for dinner the night after that, I had a hard time keeping a straight face when the only available bar stool was next to this fella and yet a different girl, but I had a great time telling my date about how many times I'd seen him that week.

MySpace, Match.com, Hot or Not? Where was he meeting these girls, and why was he bringing them into the same restaurant, night after night? Was he clueless or just a playa?

A couple of days later, I had to wait on him. The hostess was cruel enough to tell me the MySpace dater's name, and we had a hilarious time making fun of him, and speculating the personality-type his poor date (she was an eager one, she seemed to like him. Oh, how we wanted to warn the girl of Stew's history!).

I realized after one particularly loud explosion of laughter that we might be within earshot of his table, and told the hostess we had to keep it down after that. She pointed out that anyone who'd bring in eight different girls to the same restaurant in two weeks deserved to hear the staff of the restaurant making fun of him, and that our restaurant also has a menu item of the same name as the MySpace dater. This shouldn't really have assuaged my unprofessional, smack-talking related guilt, but it did.

And ol' Stew had the nerve to:
1) ask me what The Restaurant was known for on the menu--as if he hadn't already eaten everything on it!
2) step into the waiter station (which is tiny), very close to me, and whisper huskily: "Is this where the restroom is?"--as if he hadn't been to the restroom sixteen times here in the past two weeks.

He must live in the neighborhood, but c'mon Stewey Stewerson, find a new restaurant! The staff of ours cannot keep our faces straight any more!