Tight Fist Tip #15: Surviving Restaurants

He Won't Be Smiling When He Sees The Bill

As any good Tight Fister knows, it is imperative to avoid restaurants at all costs; especially those high class establishments with crazy bells and whistles like 'table service'. But unfortunately, we all sometimes find ourselves in an unavoidable restaurant situation. For instance, say you are out of food and your local grocery store has been firebombed by Martians, or you have been kidnapped by mentally unstable Zagat-huggers. Or maybe you're just vainly (stupidly) trying to impress some spendy member of the opposite sex.

But fear not, The Tight Fist is here to help you through this difficult situation with my step-by-step restaurant survival guide.

1. Ordering drinks. The first thing that fancy waiter-having restaurants will do is ask you what you want to drink. There is only one answer: TAP WATER. This sounds easy, but waiters love to be sneaky and bring bottled water if you don't specifically insist on tap. If you were hoping to get drunk but arrive at the restaurant sober, you've already screwed up, so don't even bother ordering booze. (See Tip #3 for more details.) And if you are ever at a restaurant where they won't give you tap water, MAKE A SCENE AND WALK OUT! That crap is unacceptable.

2. Appetizers. Right, as if the food wasn't expensive enough, you want to add an extra seven bucks to the bill on some tiny plate that won't even dent your appetite. What, are you made of money? Instead, just eat...

3. Bread. This is the one savior of Tight Fisters everywhere. Make sure you go to restaurants that serve decent bread, and fill up! And don't be embarrassed to ask for an extra basket, even if some snooty waiter gives you a dirty look. As a side note, if you live in one of those terrible countries (Austria, for instance), where they have the gall to put bread on your table then FREAKING CHARGE YOU FOR EVERY PIECE YOU EAT, this is completely out of line. I would recommend a revolution.

You would think that in a fancy restaurant at these prices you could keep the snails off the food! There are so many snails there you can't even see the food!

4. The main course. As this is the only thing you will spend money on, you need to think carefully. Since you now know how to cook, it would of course be absolutely moronic to order anything you could cook at home. Instead, you may as well use the opportunity to order something that would be impossible (or at least extremely difficult) to make a home. For instance, the dumbest thing to order in a restaurant is a steak, as it is easy as hell to cook at home. (Step 1: Put in Hot Pan. Step 2: Flip. Step 3: Eat.) If the Tight Fisters ever took over the world, we would immediately bankrupt all steak houses. Instead, order things that need to be cooked in crazy contraptions (tandoori oven, deep fryer, etc), are freaking frustrating to make (pie), or require crazy ingredients (kangaroo burger?)

Another thing to consider is that some food items have economies of scale, ie the food is difficult to make, but can be made in really big batches. Since it may not make sense for you to do this at home, it is justifiable to order it at a restaurant. For instance, things like lasagna or gumbo are good bets in this category.

5. Dessert. What, you want to be fat AND poor?

6. Paying the Bill. Date a Tight Fister and go Dutch!

Now that wasn't so bad after all, eh?

Tight Fist Tip #14: Don't Buy New Furniture

Cheap Young Antique!
(Young Human Not Included)

There's a lot of overpriced crap out there, but the furniture prices are really in a league of their own. For instance, a couch is basically a few beams of wood, some springs, and a few cushions, yet can sell for thousands of dollars. I mean, what the hell? But even I am not hard-core enough to advise ditching furniture altogether and start sitting on the floor, so what is one to do?

Well let's start with a simple rule: DO NOT EVER BUY NEW FURNITURE. You see, the most annoying thing about furniture is that it is hard as hell to move around, and this is what creates an opening for Tight Fisters. Since moving furniture is difficult and people are incomprehensibly lazy, there is always tons of awesome, cheap furniture around as long as you can go pick it up! Just check out Craigslist, Gumtree, or whatever, and you can stock up. Only people who hate their money buy new furniture.

IKEA makes me feel so manly

But what about amazing big-box furniture stores like IKEA? Aren't they perfect for the budget-conscious? I mean, the prices are supposed to be like, totally amazing! Well here's some advice: JUST BECAUSE YOU PUT IT TOGETHER YOURSELF DOES NOT MEAN IT WAS CHEAP! Instead, you just got ripped off AND lost a day of your life trying to fit round pegs into square holes. I mean, IKEA wouldn't look like a good deal if other places weren't off-the-charts expensive. Being happy with saving money at IKEA is like being thrilled that you scored with the skinniest girl at fat camp.

Finally, let's address the complaint: But won't old, used furniture be crappy and just fall apart? I'd say that all you need is an attitude adjustment, which can be produced with some Madison Avenue wizardy. Next time you are at a garage sale, remember that all pieces of furniture there are simply 'Young Antiques'. As much as snooty morons like paying big bucks for new furniture, they simply love paying insane prices for really, really, old furniture. So really, by buying Young Antiques you're totally outclassing those IKEA losers.

Take that, snooty Swedes.

Tight Fist Tip #13: Beware Needless French Translation

Bar House?

Normally, if you are in the US or some other English-speaking country, you expect most text you encounter to be in English, even if it is talking about some foreign item. For instance, if you go shopping for furniture at Swedish IKEA (which by the way, The Tightfist does not approve), you expect to find signs for beds, shelves, and tables, not sängar, bokhyllor, and tabeller. And if I go to a Greek restaurant for some chicken, I expect to find 'Chicken' on the menu, not freaking κοτόπουλο. I know that this doesn't hold in some immigrant neighborhoods for valid reasons, but that's beside the point.

However, walk around any fancy neighborhood and you are likely to be bombarded with strange, completely unnecessary French translations of all kinds of things. We all know how much the French are obsessed with their own language to the point where they feel other tongues are equivalent to monkeys screeching, but that is not what is going on here. It's not like swarms of wealthy Parisians have invaded all the wealthy enclaves of America to set up their 'bistros' and 'boulangeries'.

No, instead sneaky business owners have discovered some subconscious element of the Anglophone brain that associates hearing French with a rampant desire to throw all of their money away. But come on people, JUST BECAUSE SOMETHING IS TRANSLATED INTO FRENCH DOES NOT MEAN YOU SHOULD PAY MORE FOR IT. In fact, when you see random French words completely unnecessarily thrust onto a store name or menu iteam, you should be extremely suspicious.

Maître D' Takin' Yo Money

Now, I don't speak a lick of French so I'm not in a great position to give examples. But fortunately, my fellow Tight Fister Jake Cooper (who posts as 'Jake' on this blog) has offered to help with some friendly translation. Here we go:

1. In English, "a la carte" means "I hope you already ate, 'cause this ain't coming with any sides or anything." So there's really no reason to bother with a translation, but I will, just because it's so mind-boggling. "A" means "on." And "la carte" means "the menu." Dead serious.

2. Hors d'oeuvres means appetizer, but you have to pay extra for the spell-check.

3. Maitre D isn't even sensical. It means "master of." Master of WHAT?

4. When you see "aubergine" and think it's some exotic French counterpart to the eggplant, you're half right. It is French. It means "eggplant."

5. Soup du jour? Why is this in a conspicuously different language than the rest of the menu, did it get lost? And why is it $6.95 for a cup of friggin' soup? No shit it's soup of the day!

Thanks Coop.