Tiz The Season To Be Bitching…

PLASTICVILLE-USA

TIZ THE SEASON TO BE BITCHING…

Villagers as a group are some of the most unthankful and ungrateful people in the world. They have attained a retirement dream that the vast majority of people on the planet today could not reach no matter how many hours, days and years that they worked. Villagers live in luxury and drive expensive cars. They are well off enough to be able to WASTE tens of thousands of dollars on silly tricked out golf carts. They are well off enough to be able to eat the majority of their meals in restaurants. Several years ago the general manager of Villages radio station WVLG told me that the median household income in TV was $99,800! That’s double-plus the median income for the state of Florida. And remember for Villagers, this money isn’t from paychecks. It’s from pensions, investments and Social Security. In short..”they’ve got it made” as the old saying goes. Yet despite all of their wealth and good fortune NOBODY sings the bitching blues any better than the inhabitants of America’s “Friendliest” Hometown.

A couple of recent threads from TV favorite spotlight on Villager idiocy and arrogance..Bitch..er..um..Talk Of The Villages brings this to light. The first item to catch my notice was a thread about the fast-food wonder known as Steak and Shake. In my humble opinion there is no better hamburger joint anywhere than Steak and Shake. I got introduced to this burger emporium decades ago when I was working for a country music radio station in Danville, Illinois. Steak and Shake isn’t in the northeast and I had never heard of them. It was love at first bite! One of the very few pluses I can find about living in the swamp known as Florida is that Steak and Shake operates here. I go when I can, but not as often as I’d like, which is good, because if I went as often as I’d like to I would weigh 600 pounds.

Originally Steak and Shake used to be essentially a drive-in/car-hop service restaurant. Their buildings usually did offer an “eat in” option, but eat-in meant a row of about 6 diner stools. All the other business was conducted at the customer’s driver-side car window. Today at Steak and Shake the car-hop service is long gone. Service is provided at a drive-thru window or inside where the 6 diner stools are still there, but so are sit-down tables and chairs for about 100 people.

The Steak and Shake in TV is located on the western end of Route 466 near TV Walmart store. One of the reasons I don’t go to Steak and Shake as much as I’d like to is that the place is ALWAYS PACKED! Unless you go during very off hours you are going to wait for a table. Traditional lunchtime or dinnertime? No way! The lines are out the door. Don’t be in a rush.

But Villagers are ALWAYS in a rush! Why? Who knows? You have a retirement community of 200,000-plus people and all of them are in a rush all the time. Nowhere is this as prevalent as in a Villages sit-down restaurant. Villagers get their panties all in a big wad if the server doesn’t magically appear the moment after the hostess seats them and takes their drink order and preferably their entire meal order, and then..DAMMIT..the food and drinks had better be there within 2 nanoseconds or else!!

“Or else” usually means openly berating the server and almost always means a demand to see the manager and with it the demand that the struggling server be fired for her incompetence and of course the standard grievance for a comped meal for their “inconvenience”. And they ALWAYS then stiff the server. BS! It’s a scam and the restaurant managers should grow a spine, stand up for their staffs and say so to these spoiled brat Villagers.

The whine of the day on Bitch Of The Villages was the standard Villager whine about the “service” at Steak and Shake. Oh the food was fine but our waitress was SO slow. If you have a tenth of a functioning brain and could watch what’s going on at the time, you will see the servers racing around like ants on a hot griddle. They are carrying trays full of food that I would drop the first time I tried to do it. And for that matter..every other time I tried to do it. They are working their butts off. But it is never, ever, never enough for the Villagers. They are IMPORTANT and they just don’t have time. So snap to it you lowly bitch and get my food over here!! And if you’re REALLY good I’ll leave you a buck’s tip for a $30 food order.

The ancient actor/entertainer Jerry Lewis would have made a top notch Villager. It is well documented how the wait staff in the various Las Vegas hotel restaurants would scatter whenever Jerry Lewis would enter. He was a nasty abusive little turd to servers. Loud, vulgar and unkind. He would openly throw fits if this item or that item didn’t meet his approval. One such story has him bringing a server..an old woman..to tears over something that didn’t please him about the oatmeal she served him. He then continued to complain loudly to those who were dining with him about how this woman should have “known” just how he wanted his oatmeal. As I said..old Jerry would make a top notch Villager. Villagers just plain suck.

The other major complaint of the day was over the fact that one of the nightly performers at the Brownwood Town Square had placed a hat on the stage for tips. Now I had not ever heard of that happening before at any of the squares. It was something truly new.

For the uninitiated..TV supplies FREE..yes..FREE..musical entertainment 7 days a week, 365 days a year at the 3 different town squares of Spanish Springs, Lake Sumter and Brownwood. Each evening between 5 and 9pm you can go and listen to free music. There are some VERY good bands and DJs and there are some who..well..aren’t so great. But..I have always found that the word FREE tends to increase the quality of the offering!

When I go into a sit down restaurant I expect to give a tip and unless I have been totally ignored by the server, I tip well. I wouldn’t want to do the jobs these people do. They work HARD! I also tip the lady who cuts my hair and the bell-hop who brings my bags to my hotel room. But I do have a bit of a problem with going to a place like Subway and when I go to pay for my sandwich there’s a tip bucket out. Or..if I buy an ice cream cone and find a tip jar ready to accept my offering. That doesn’t sit well with me. But of course it is up to me when I encounter a tip jar to decide whether I am going to pass or play.

The performers working at the Village town squares are paid in one fashion or another by TV management. In the case of Lake Sumter and Brownwood the Morse Machine has somehow managed to get Sumter County to pay the tab with real live TAX DOLLARS under its county “Tourism” fund. Whatta racket!! But no matter where the bucks come from the performers are paid for their night’s work. How well? I don’t know. It’s probably not AF of M union scale, but I’m guessing they are not paid peanuts either.

The tip issue is an oddball. I’ve been in places where it is customary to drop some money in the hat if you ask the band or the piano player to play your favorite song. But nobody’s got a gun to your head. And I guess there’s the rub. Once again you’ve got a bunch of Villagers who come to the squares each night in their tricked out golf carts or their Caddy or Lexus or Bentley and pay to drink themselves stupid yet are ready to go into anaphylactic shock that some guitar player has placed his cowboy hat upside down on the stage to accept tips. Nobody’s got a gun to their heads. They can choose to pass or play. But the entire web thread was nothing but a whine about how they are FORCED to tip the band. What? And the standard “we’re not going to put up with this” kinda crap! Whine. Bitch. Whine. Bitch. Whine.

The bitching and whining is a standard part of TV vaunted “Lifestyle”. To be unthankful and ungrateful and to be a self important spoiled brat is practically a requirement for homeownership in TV. It’s disgusting, and it’s disgusting at any time of the year. But we have just entered into a season that’s designed for us to consider all that we have been blessed with and all we have to be thankful for. And that we can be VERY thankful that we have a savior..Jesus Christ..who was born and lived and died so that all men might live and live in harmony and be saved. But in TV there’s no time for that because you see..we are Villagers and our server was 2 seconds too slow in getting us our coffee. THAT is what is important and the server MUST be punished. Tiz the season. What a shame. But shame is something that the Villagers know absolutely NOTHING about.

My Christmas wish for you..my readers..is that even if you live in TV..you will NEVER become a “Villager”.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!