Class Half Empty
It's the restaurant refill issue, the topic in my Advice Goddess column I just posted. Here's the question:

My wife and I are newlyweds. We went to breakfast, and I ordered coffee, and she said she wanted only water. The waitress kept refilling my coffee. A couple times, my wife took sips. The waitress asked if she wanted coffee, and she declined. The manager also asked politely, "Nothing to drink for the lady, just water?" Later, my wife took another sip. I told her it wasn't proper to keep drinking from my coffee, and she should've ordered her own. Now I'm the bad guy. Her comments before she refused to talk to me at all were that the rudeness was "all in (my) own mind," and, "What are they gonna do, throw us in jail?" and, "You're just criticizing me to put me down." Was I wrong?

--Doghoused

And here's an excerpt from my answer:

Why not take home the silverware and condiments, and maybe a chair or two? After all, they do say "Let me show you to your seats." And why order food at all? After the guy at the next booth gets up without finishing his breaded veal chop, just reach over and grab it. When the waitress comes around, say, "Thanks, just water for me, and a nice empty plate. Oh, and would you mind heating this up?"

Does the corner diner really need to bring in a legal team to have you sign off on the terms of your breakfast? ("Initial here: Drink refills are per person purchasing a beverage.") Life is filled with unwritten rules, "social norms," that everybody just knows and follows -- which is why, even without signs all over the diner, when nature calls, you don't see some guy striding up to the pastry case, unzipping, and doing his business down the side.

Is a little beverage grifting really such a big deal? You could argue that a $2 cup of coffee sets the restaurant back about 10 cents -- that is, if they give you the dry stuff and you brew it over a fire and drink it on a park bench from a cup you pulled out of the garbage. The restaurant owner's got a right to charge $65 a cup if he wants, and if you've got a problem with that, well, collect some cockroaches, hire a busboy, and yell "eggseasytoastbacon!" at home.

Comments on this entry are open here, where the entire column is posted.