Wrathmonk wrote:
Neither can I successfully order a breakfast in Denny's without at least one question from the waitress.
Ah, the joys of practical RTI training at the hands of those sweet little ladies who work in American breakfast establishments!
Top tips:
- Get your words in first! "Yes, it's a lovely day and we're ready to order!"
- "American breakfast please, 2 eggs over easy, bacon, hash browns and rye toast with regular butter. Non-decaff. coffee, OJ and seperate cheques please.
Think you've cracked it? Wrong - there'll always be something you've overlooked:
"Is that regular OJ, or large?"
Bug.ger!
Another gotcha is if you ask for sausage rather than bacon - "Would that be links or patties?"...
But the waitresses were always such a delight!
We once went into a steak-and-potatoes restaurant on our way back from a visit to Indianapolis, which has a well-known car race once a year; sadly there are 364 other days...as we'd discovered. One chap asked for some more butter for his baked potato.
"Would that be regular butter?", the little lovely asked.
"OK - I give in. What are the alternatives - low alcohol, unleaded, caffeine-free, lead-free or what?", I asked her.
"Regular or melted butter?", she giggled.
And another gem of information was added to our corporate knowledge of American restaurant interrogations. Which, to be fair, were always so friendly and fuss-free!
My first experience of such interrogations was in the late '70s during Vulcan trips to Offutt. At JB's, the waitress would query "French'talianthousan'islan'bluecheese" as one word when you said that you'd like a salad with your steak. "Nothing, thanks", tended to confuse her.
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On a more serious note, after a couple of F-15s couldn't tell the difference between a pair of Blackhawks and a pair of Hinds, with predictably and sadly tragic results, it was decided that aircraft recognition should feature during morning briefs at Incirlik.
For some unknown reason, the Cousins decided to hold these wretched briefs about 5 hours before 'compress' missions. Which, predictably, went down rather poorly with the RAF crews. One day - or rather bŁoody early morning, we'd endured a pointless 'same as before' brief which stopped just short of 'Padre, some words for our brave boys'. Up jumped some REMF keen to run his recce slides....the first of which was an F-15C.
"Hind, Hind - waste the motherfarqhar - oorah!" called some irritated Brit.
The briefing then ended. The RAF DetCo told us not to take the pi$$ out of the Spams - "No problems, Boss, they do it well enough themselves!" came the reply.