Hooters (*sigh*).

• Ok, so by now I would assume that most intelligent people are aware that some restaurant franchises exist on the rather questionable principle of serving bar food with scantily-clad women and alcohol. A business model straight out of the strip-club establishment playbook! It would seem to work too, with over 435 locales, in 46 states & 20 countries. I for one, have only ventured into said establishment "Hooters," just once prior to Sunday afternoon. It was back in HS when we were down at state for the swimming championships. It was a fellow swimmers mom's idea, what better place to take impressionable high school youths who are forced to wear tiny tiny swimsuits all the time (she obviously knew we could restrain our exuberance)?

• When people asked me about it, I would always retort: "they had good fries!" Not that yummy fries can completely absolve one of the moral ambiguity of dining at such a place.
  

• Fast forward to our lazy Sunday afternoon, and post-toothpaste acquisition we found ourselves hungry.
• The scene: Mom, Dad and Kiddo driving aimlessly around Grape Road thinking about where to eat. I mention an interest in something Mexican. We drive by the Chipotle store, where we've never eaten, and find it to be packed. As anyone with a 2-yr old knows, why walk into a situation packed with delays between "UNCH" and a full toddler belly? We drove on. My wife commented on a new taco place opening near Don Pablo's (why didn't we think to go there? $$?). So we drove into the lot of "DelTacos," and sure enough they're still hiring. So I ask the wife, as we are in the shared parking lot with Hooters, "well, think we could just go there?"

• Now, look. I am not a Hooters guy, I don't keep calendars of scantily-clad womenfolk anywhere around the places I inhabit. Secondly, I don't really get drunk and go out on the town. I'm too cheap! That said, I also wouldn't go to a strip club either, why buy into something when you've got the same essentials at home, with romantic love/lust thrown in as icing on the cake?
  

• So now that I've proven that I'm not some sexist schlump, I can attest to going there solely because we were in the lot, everyone was hungry, and we wanted to swim in an hour and a half.

• We walked in, and immediately I got a tad uncomfortable. I had forgotten apparently just how little they wear, AT WORK. I don't like to be forced to check out ladies with my wife and kiddo in tow (that's just not cool!), and when the women are wearing ridiculously low-cut tops and short short orange hot pants, its hard to look at the ceiling without walking into things. That and, I don't want to be a creepy, ogle-you-as-you-walk-me-to-my-table kind of guy. So first off, I follow the waitress over to our table, and look back to see that the kiddo and wife are stuck at a coin-operated chiclets-dispenser. After waiting the appropriate time, I continued on to the table.
• Little did I know that said kiddo was also taken aback by the short short orange hot pants, and when a waitress turned to enter an order into the computer, he apparently shot out a hand to give her tookus a little pat-down. The wife saw it with wide-eyes, and stopped the attempted sexual assault before completion. She even thinks that no one else even saw it. He likes all things orange; I guess it can't be helped.
  

• So we're sitting down now, and wife proceeds to tell me what he just did, and now my eyes are wide, and as she talks of the near offense, our server "Lauren" arrives. Now I don't know if every server does it, but she wrote her name down on a little napkin, with XOXO under her name. I guess most men/clients can't find the restraint to take their eyes off the boobage to read the nametag that's just barely hanging onto their clothes.

Other oddities:

• Wife and I comment that there are actually quite a few other families eating there with small children, so we're not the only ones that apparently considered eating there. After I joke that Hooters probably gives their waitresses a tanning allowance, the wife points out that no in fact, their legs are sporting super-tight, silky, super brown tights. Wow, never noticed that!

• Even more interesting, was that my wife couldn't figure out how they got it all to fit in the short short orange hot pants, there's really not a lot of room to cram much of anything in them, let alone a tookus. She claims to not see a panty line, whereas I feel there must be underwear, for health code compliance's sake. Thongs, maybe?
  
• Lauren actually talks to us about international adoption once we break the subject using the term "birth-mom," she seems nice, and comments that she wants to have a kid of her own, then adopt, but not now she's too young (20). My wife smugly feels it was all trolling for tips...who knows? She also dislikes that the waitress sitting on a stool next to her leaning over the table, leaving me to talk while looking at my plate. I'm an eye contact guy, but I don't want to cross a line of too much looking-down activity.
  
• All of the waitresses have long combed hair (no curly), all worn down. No mixed colors either. All black, brown, or of course bleach blond.
  
• Ché is loving having all the tvs around, and seems really enthralled by the bowling on ESPN 32. We'll have to take him to the alley one of these days.
  
• My wife witnesses four drunk guys harassing a different waitress; as she leans over to deliver a drink to the far end of the table, a guy touches her neck with the flick of a finger. Now see, that's totally uncalled for. I don't have a problem with someone working at Hooters, just because they feel they can get better tips (read: asset-based), but as a dad, if that were my daughter getting harassed I'd be seriously pissed. Just because you're in a "meat market," or using the lame old "wearing a uniform" excuse, doesn't mean the women deserve to be harassed in that way. I feel bad too, because they probably just let it go, so as to keep the tipjar filling. Ick.

• I ended up leaving almost 20% on the bill. Not out of thanks for Lauren's assets, but for her ok service. I would have left more, but she didn't refill our drinks often, and totally forgot our request for a knife, and my extra order of fries (it all comes back to this for me). Its not like she was that busy, I think she was waiting on a whole 3 tables in a fairly empty restaurant. I now always take my buddy Konrad's tactic: start a running tip clock (@35% or so), and with every mistake the tip %-age goes down.

• Oh yeah. The food. It was ok, Ché ate most of a hotdog, I ate his fries, and ate my steak quesadilla appetizer as a meal. Liz had 10 wings (which she usually doesn't like - and reminded me of), as it was the most carb-less thing on the menu. Lemonade, diet coke and milk rounded out the bill. Again, its bar food. The fries were good though! :)