Restaurants and questionnaires

Since when did restaurants start handing out questionnaires?

I’d just finished the last bite of my fish and chips at a lovely café in Kirribilli when lo and behold, there appeared a list of pointed questions about the past hour.

How was the service? The food? The ambience? The music? The dimple on the waiter’s right cheek?

Crikey.

I mean, I understand businesses wanting feedback.

But what’s next?

A survey on whether there’s enough crema on top of your latte in the morning?

A thesis on whether the gravitational pull of an amusement park ride lived up to your expectations?

A minute-by-minute breakdown of your emotional journey during a Hollywood weepy?

“So what, exactly, were you feeling 24 minutes and 30 seconds into the film when Meryl Streep gazed longingly into Alec Baldwin’s eyes?”

“Err, not sure. Think I dropped a piece of popcorn and was fishing around for it at the back of the seat.”

Then there’s the uncomfortable intimacy of shared tables in funky restaurants.

I love my husband but I harbour no desire to become conjoined twins, which we resembled at a 40^th birthday dinner in a crowded Brisbane restaurant last week.

“Pass the butter please darling – I need to lube up my elbow so I can remove it from your ribcage!”

Aside from the contortionist act, it was a full and fun day with my nephew’s 5^th birthday party hours earlier.

One was a loud affair full of squeaky toys, rumbling on the floor and screaming.

The other was a kids’ birthday party (boom-tish).

How things have changed.

These days, you can’t bring a cake to a restaurant without being charged cakeage: a couple of bucks per person for the blood, sweat and tears expended cutting the damn thing.

Birthday pics from my childhood (in the early Cro-Magnon period) show the smiling faces of five or six kids around a formica table and a cake lovingly made by mum.

My nephew’s party featured 50 guests, a panoply of pinyatas, a green Ben 10 cake and a magician with a white rabbit.

For Grace’s 3^rd birthday last year, we hired a fairy who turned out to be so gorgeous the guys wanted to get her back for the next adult party.

And Taj’s Buzz Lightyear the previous year was another handsome out-of-work actor.

“Hey, it’s the pool guy!” one of my friends yelled out, rather tactlessly.

What I’m getting at is this: modern expectations are sky-high.

We want every event, every moment, every experience to be the biggest and the best, an all-singing all-dancing extravaganza.

The questionnaires?

They’re merely a symptom of business trying to cater to our every whim.

So please, if you have the time, email a response to this column.

Was it what you expected?

Did it give you a wry smile?

If so, during which sentence(s)?

At which point did you consider the writer to be a little unhinged?

I look forward to your response.