Had a weird but funny experience yesterday. We went out for a family meal at a local Pizza Hut to celebrate my imminent slide into middle age. A very solicitous waiter showed up to the table, gave us the menus, set the condiments straight, brought clean cutlery, got a kid's chair and brought drinks. All of these were accompanied by me or SWMBO acknowledging his efforts with a 'Ta' or a 'Cheers' or a 'Thanks'. After he took the food order, he turned and lent towards me.
"Could I politely ask to to do something for me?" he said.
"Sure...?" I said, swapping quizzical glances with SWMBO, leaning away from him and wondering WTF he was going to say.
"Would you please stop saying 'Thank you' so much? You're embarrassing me."
"?" I thought.
The result of this exchange was that we spent the rest of the meal sniggering whilst trying not to say 'thank you' to this guy, which is a lot harder than you might think, as most of us are parentally programmed to do so when folks do stuff for us. Instead, I managed to use a 'Great' with a smile most of the time, 'Uh-huh' accompanied by an eyebrow raise and upward nod on a few occasions and even the odd 'Fine' was thrown in for variety. In case you're wondering, I didn't tip - because it is, after all, just another way of saying 'thank you'.