A Watery Rant

         If there’s one thing that really bothers me about certain restaurants (apart from excruciatingly slow service and dishonest menus), it’s those little bottles of sparkling water that they put on the tables. Not the bottles themselves, of course, but rather the fact that they are not, despite what you may think, free. Now, it’s not that I hate paying for my drinks. It’s just that they place these bottles on the tables, as though they’re saying, “Here, have some complimentary sparkling water,” and then go ahead and charge you for it should you happen to drink any of it.  There is no sign that says “Please pay for use of water” or, even better, simply “Warning: Not Free”. No. There is a blank bottle and the assumption by the wait staff that you are aware of the water’s price.
         So, suppose that there is a man who is unaware that this sparkling water is not, in fact, complimentary. He looks for a label that tells him he must pay, and finds none. “Great,” he thinks to himself. “Free sparkling water,” and pours himself a glass, quite pleased with his decision to come to this particular restaurant, where they give out nice bottles of sparkling water at no charge. Now suppose that it turns out that he is not particularly fond of the water, because it does not fit his taste. He only needs a couple of sip to decide that he should order a different drink. “Well,” he now tells himself, “at least it was free.”
                But the water is not free, as the waitress so politely informs him. It is quite pricey as sparkling water goes. And so the man has a nasty fallout with the manager over the whole thing, because he believes strongly that water that isn’t free shouldn’t be on the tables with no label or price tag or something, and not only does he have to pay for the water anyway, he also can never go back to that particular restaurant (at least not until a new manager comes into position) which is really too bad, because apart from the expensive water, he rather likes the place.
            And the poor man is so shaken over the whole ordeal that he can think of nothing else, and his productivity at work drops significantly, losing him that big bonus that he was so looking forward to. This gets him even more upset, and he becomes so preoccupied that he misses the obvious signs that his receptionist is sending him, trying to get him to realize that she likes him a lot, which is quite a shame, since he rather likes her too, and they would have made a very nice couple. However, the woman, upon receiving no response from him, decides that she is wasting her time and moves on, both in her career and her social life, leaving the man with a lost crush and no receptionist.
            And so he continues in a downward spiral, until he at last ends up as a McDonald’s worker, where he serves up Big Macs and fries six days a week, and tries to avoid seeing people he knows, which isn’t difficult, since most of his former business associates don’t eat at fast food restaurants. They would much rather go to an upscale bistro with a bottle of overpriced sparkling water at every table. And to think that this whole woeful tale could have been avoided by the simple act of putting a label on a bottle.
          So just remember that as free as that bottle may look, it most certainly is not.