Mike Moser "I Say" Published Jan. 6, 2006

Mail charge spawns one-man protest

I don't blame Bart Hoard for being angry. If I had the time I would join him on the picket line.
Bart Hoard is conducting a one-man protest against a Johnson City fast food restaurant over an issue that strikes a chord with me and I am sure I am not the only one hung up over this issue.

Hoard is picketing the local Waffle House. He hasn't stopped eating there ... or trying to eat there ... he is just angry with a policy of the regional management of the national chain. And apparently the national office backs up the local management in the dispute.

It all started over Hoard's desire for a little milk in his coffee.

His waitress responded that he would have to pay for a full glass of milk to get a drop or two for his coffee. Hoard responded by walking to a nearby convenience store, purchasing a carton of milk, and returning to give Waffle House franchise executive Andy Mount a hard time.

"Got milk? I do," Hoard said to Mount.

The franchise manager has had a vendetta out for Hoard since, Hoard says.

I can sympathize. My wife, Susan, loves cream, real cream, with her coffee and tea. It's an English thing. She seldom, if ever, finds real cream in a restaurant of any kind. She seldom is given a creamer product. About 50 percent of the time she has to ask for cream for her coffee. She has to beg to get a second container of a dairy product.

I relate because I am one of those strange persons who believes that my iced tea glass should be filled because it is empty, not because I had to ask for more tea. Some waitresses are good at filling a tea glass. Some don't know what a tea glass is.

I once asked for a buttered biscuit for breakfast from a fast food place and what I got was a little tab of butter, hard as a brick, and a cooled off biscuit. Now how does one apply half-frozen butter to a cold biscuit and end up with a buttered biscuit?

While we are on restaurant gripes, what is this stuff of charging extra for sour cream or butter for a baked potato? They expect me to eat the tuber dry? As much as they charge for a baked potato, compared to the cost of one, I think it is a bit much to charge for butter and sour cream.

When the waitress asks, "Would you like butter or sour cream?" when she takes my order, I think I will respond, "How much will it cost me?"

And then whip out my own container of butter.

What's next? Charging me for the parsley used on my baked potato, or the greens that garnish my plate to give it color?

Meanwhile, Hoard, who has been a loyal Waffle House customer for two decades, drove his pickup truck to the Johnson City Waffle House and instead of being served by a waitress, was met by police. Thus started his one-man picket line.

Hoard, who has continued to patronize the restaurant chain, says he will continue to picket. "I'm a poor man. I don't have a bone, nothing," Hoard told a reporter. Nothing but time.

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Mike Moser is the editor of the Crossville Chronicle. His column is published periodically on Fridays.