Several hundred years ago, when I was at Ole Miss, I walked out of restaurant without eating. A few months later, I made my then girlfriend leave a restaurant.

For reasons I don’t fully understand, I have a 20 minute rule about service in restaurants in the South. In other places it’s a 10 minute rule, but in the South things are a bit more leisurely and you have to make allowances. (I once went to a party 20 minutes or so after the scheduled start time and had to help set up the party because, by Southern time keeping, I’d arrived early.)

I’ve heard of people leaving expensive stores because they couldn’t get a clerk’s attention to get a simple question answered. When I bring this up to Southerners, they usually frown and say a general “on behalf of the South I apologize to you” apology but also add “it’s a Southern thing” and then wonder out loud why I’m so impatient.

The first time I left a place I was looking for lunch. I went to a popular bar and restaurant and sat down at a table. There was a bartender there but he seemed busy with something and I just pulled out a book and started reading. After 10 minutes or so, I realized I hadn’t been served and looked for the bartender, who seemed to still be busy but his job did not, as near as I could tell, involve speaking to me, bringing me water, asking me if I wanted a drink or tracking down a waitress to do all of the above. After 20 minutes of waiting, including 10 minutes of pouting, I got up and left.

As I started to leave, the bartender finally said “can I get you a drink?” and I just said “too late” and left.

Later, my then girlfriend and I decided to go to a famous and fairly expensive restaurant on the square in Oxford, Mississippi (home of Ole Miss). I followed her as she bypassed the reservation stand and commandeered a table. We then waited and waited and waited whilst the wait-staff walked past us and ignored us.

After 20 minutes, I invoked the 20 minute rule and suggested we go to the other side of the square to a different restaurant. She said we’d only been there 20 minutes and needed to wait another seven days before they noticed and served us. (Something like that.) My response was a caring and touching and understanding “why the fuck would we do that?” (Note: I probably didn’t use those exact words, but they convey exactly what I was feeling.)

We went across the square and had a good meal but I suspect it was that moment that doomed the relationship. (More on that in another post.)

I never did eat at that expensive restaurant.