Wimpy napkins
I’m writing today about a practice that must be stopped. Every day, all across this great nation of ours, restaurants and delis are handing out wimpy napkins. I’m talking about the worthless, single-ply ones that typically look like this:
Or even worse, these tiny things, which the manufacturer claims are “ideal for fast food and lunch rooms”:
Those are ideal for nothing. Perhaps they are acceptable for an elementary school lunch room because their hands are half the size of an adult’s, but it still doesn’t make them ideal.
You’re sitting there enjoying a good sandwich, and your hands are getting messy as good sandwiches will do, so you reach for a napkin. Well if you’re foolish enough to only pick up one napkin, you’re in for quite a disappointment. You watch it disintegrate into shreds before your very eyes from one measly wipe of your hands. So you end up using a huge stack of napkins, and still end up with little shredded up napkins, and you feel like a slob sitting there with a pile of soiled napkins next to you.
And good luck to you if you have to get the napkins out of one of those dispensers that someone’s just packed so tight you’ve got to wrestle with it, getting your sloppy hands all over it.
I suppose these restaurants are just trying to save money but I think it shows absolute disdain for your customers. If you’re trying to save money, I got some ideas for you. These will all be as effective as your so-called “napkins”:
When I get take-out and I open that bag and see those pathetic napkins, I throw them out and grab a real napkin or paper towel.
Unfortunately there are some decent dining establishments that commit this terrible error. For example, the Park & Oxford Deli. They make great sandwiches, but the napkins suck.
Another offender is Cobbs Hill Pizza & Pasta. I like their food, but who’s idea was it to combine some of the greasiest, messiest pizza in the city with the wimpiest napkins?
I can’t be the only one that feels this way. Come on people, who’s with me? We’ve got the element of surprise. We’ll rush in to these establishments as an angry mob, demanding better napkins! They’ll never have seen anything like it.
February 16th, 2006 at 5:08 am
The newspaper I used to work for printed on something terribly similar to that last ‘wimpy napkin alternative’ of yours . . . works about as good for printing as for a napkin.