Give each other 20 dollars...

There's nothing that annoys me more at restaurants than being told "no."

I'm paying a crapload of money to eat your food, and I think it's only fair to expect that if I have a realistic request (I'm talking "fries instead of onion rings", not "bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia") that you'll freaking do it.

Not once, but twice this weekend, I got to enjoy the magic of servers denying insignificant requests.

One time, my wife's dinner came with a salad, but she wanted a bowl of soup instead. The salad and soup cost EXACTLY the same amount. But the waitress said she was "not allowed" to substitute one for the other. She even made a big show of going back to the kitchen to ask. Mind you, this was not some Applebee's... it was a nice steakhouse. So if she didn't want something, we needed to pay for it anyway, then pay something extra to actually get what she wanted. Fuck. That.

The other time came at a Fridays (not my third, fourth or fifth choice, but it was late). I wanted my burger cooked medium rare, but the restaurant refuses to cook any meat less than "medium well." So I end up with a dry, burned hockey puck.

I understand about the dangers of undercooked meat, but ya know how you can avoid that? Buy better meat. Somehow, steakhouses are able to serve stuff "rare" or even "blue rare" without a problem. If I want a burger, I should be able to get it however I want.

The worst part is that you can't make a big stink about it, lest they go Tyler Durden on you.