Except a cougar would always be expected to pick up the tab, just as a sugar daddy would 
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I think the venue can modify one’s expectations. At the very cool & old school Forked River Diner in NJ “Hon” or joking “young man” is perfectly fine. (and appreciated by me) At a white tablecloth spot not so much.
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Then, there’s the kids with older fathers who where misidentified as grandfathers. I got that all the time. Dad went grey at 28. At 45, he was being called grandpa by our friends or school staff who didn’t know. In the rare occasion we were in restaurants, I think the servers could tell that our family consisted of older parents with a bunch of kids and not the grandparents taking the grandies out for a meal.
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My brother was 45 when his daughter was born, and often misidentified as her grandfather (as in, “Oh, grandfathers are also welcome at Father-Daughter Day”). My father was 42 when my brother was born, and hence 87 (!) when his granddaughter was born, so often thought to be her great-grandfather.
What can I say? My family was not the impetuous sort. 
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Rumor has it that my father is listed as forty years old on all of us sibling’s birth certificates, and there is a seven year difference between the oldest and youngest!
“All of us sibling’s”…is that right?
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Makes my dad–44 when I was born–a mere child 
I don’t recall anyone mistaking him for my grandfather though. At least not to his face.
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Same here. My dad was 46 when I was born yet no one mistakened him for my grandfather. Either he looked young for his age or I look old for mine 
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My dad was 46 when I was born, and he was almost always taken for my grandfather (both of whom I never met). I don’t think it bothered him all that much.
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My son was adopted at age 7 from foster care when we parents were 51. It’s really interesting that no stranger except another student in a special ed classroom (age around 11) asked me if I was his grandmother or his mother. My husband starting going gray at 22. I started around 45 and rapidly advanced.
Most strangers sensed a parent /child relationship, at least in how they addressed us, despite husband and I being obviously to most people generic northern European and son being obviously to most people Hispanic. The local pub owner (three doors from our house) said to me after at least 10 years, “I always though you were his ‘real’ mother.”
The perceptions are quite revealing!
The fact is that both adoptive parents were born the same year as his maternal grandmother.
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My mother was 45, and my dad 47, when I was born in 1957. I always say we skipped a generation.
I think that gap helped me–and them–in many ways, especially food- and cooking-wise. Dad, even in his 80s, was not someone any server would chance calling “young man”.
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AYCE salad bars are non existent in my neck of the woods. We used to go to Sizzler for this feature but they didn’t survive the pandemic.
I think the round table pizza near us may still have a salad bar but the one in our neighborhood was small and not very clean.
When we visit my home town, we hit Fogo de Chao for weekday lunchtime salad bar access which is a bargain for around $20.
There’s no shortage of healthy vegetarian restaurants, but AYCE salad is no longer common here.
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“I’m at the end of 12 years as a critic who ate in and reviewed restaurants constantly. Of those years, I probably spent two solid months just waiting for the check. I ought to be in favor of anything that speeds up the end of the meal, but Blackbird’s new checkless exit gives me the creeps. It is just the latest in a series of changes that have gradually and steadily stripped the human touch and the human voice out of restaurants. Each of these changes was small, but together they’ve made going out to eat much less personal. Meals are different now, and our sense of who we are is different, too.”
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One thing in that article that especially struck me was that at one of the restaurants they ask you to tell them in advance what percentage tip you want to give. Now, as a former server I always like to tip well, but until I get served, how do I know just HOW well I want to tip?
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A few of us went to lunch the other day and the restsurant has now added ‘suggested tip’ to the check. The suggested amounts start at 22% and end at 30%. Really? The prices are higher naturally and the service is the same old average service as it always has been.
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Good thing it’s just a suggestion
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I think the possessive apostrophe goes after the last “s” in siblings. But English is bizarre so who TF knows.
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That makes sense! I wasn’t sure if I needed to factor in the birth certificates.
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I was just corrected today on my misuse of insure when I should have used ensure.
Embarrassing, but a little humiliation will ensure I don’t perpetuate the error.
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Lol. Ok. I would just like to point out, again, that shrinkrap asked
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Only American cheese?! Hard to believe that state is just across the river. I bring cheeses to my WI friends living in IA all the time. Locals taste Muenster or Juusto and act like they’re an import. I always keep cheese in the cooler on road trips. We came across a road crew working in AZ, and dropped some good cheese off right about as lunchtime was near. They were so nice and asked us where we’re from. I said “one guess.” He got it right.
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