But the only thing I dislike is that if you're a single diner and you go out to eat, you run headon into the capitalist system at its ugliest. In the U.S. waiters make a lot of their money on tips, which means the more they turn over a table the better.
That's happened to me too, and I wasn't even dining alone.
I'd gone with a work colleague to an unfamiliar (snooty) part of town to buy a farewell gift for a fellow workmate. The departee collected a particular brand of porcelain and we'd gone to a specialty outlet to choose a gift for her. But I digress. We thought we'd make an outing of it so dropped into a little place for coffee. We took one of the tables under an umbrella on the pavement and ordered two coffees from the waiter. The waiter gave us a quizzical look and suggested we try some place else, because they didn't serve just coffee alone. She wasn't rude about it, but very definite about us having to order food with our coffee if we wanted to stay.This place looked more like a cafe than a restaurant, with tables on the pavement. Coffee was on the menu. We had come from work and were dressed in business clothes so didn't look like a couple of hobos. It was a first for me. I was literally speechless. And embarrassed. We just skulked off and vowed never to return. Afterwards, you think about all the bitchy things you should said to the waiter, but at the time we were both so mortified, we just wanted to get out of there. Needless to say, we've not been back.