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Health & Fitness

Just Because You're In a Fast Food Restaurant Doesn't Excuse Bad Manners!

People don't have to seem any manners these days. Case in point, the disgusting thing I recently saw a man doing at a restaurant.

So the other day the family and I decided to load into the minivan and head to a fast-food establishment.  Incidentally, this restaurant was not in Middletown. I'm sure Middletonians have wonderful manners.

Anyway, we try not to do fast food too often because A) for real, it's crazy bad for us and B) did I mention that it's crazy bad for us?

Nevertheless, it was a weekend and that is traditionally a time when we abandon routine.  Honestly, it was a miracle we were out of our pajams altogether.  My husband and I were feeling particularly lazy and the natives were getting restless (and hungry) so we opted for the quick fix and ran for the border.

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We had just found ourselves a nice place to sit and I was carefully laying out paper napkins so as to reduce the amount of germs we ingested.  Who am I kidding.  My children had just opened the restaurant door and touched the counters and the railings and well, honestly, they may have well just licked the walls of a dumpster.

So there I was, contemplating the sheer amount of filth going into their systems when I noticed a couple sitting at the table next to us.  They seemed like a nice enough pair.  That is until I noticed that the man was — get this — CUTTING HIS FINGERNAILS AT THE TABLE!

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Take a moment to let that soak in. Cutting. His. FINGERNAILS!

He was sitting just a few feet from me, clipping away, fingernails flying through the air and threatening to jab me in the eye like wayward shrapnel.

Seriously? This is what we've come to these days?  A person can't go out to eat without seeing someone cutting their body parts next to them?

 I know we weren't in a five star restaurant but still! What next? Should I expect that someone might be flossing or popping their pimples or any plethora of un-sanitary acts that someone should only do in the privacy of their own bathroom.

For goodness sake people, at least wait until you're in the parking lot of the restaurant before you pick at your foot corns.

I thought I was going to hurl.   I had to go to the bathroom and gather my composure and simultaneously pray that they had left by the time I got back.  They had but even still, I had lost my appetite and we ran from the border like we were being chased by immigration patrol carrying loaded weapons.

Suddenly, the idea of a few thousand microbial bacteria seemed like a pleasure cruise!

Where has the civility gone? Why have the manners disappeared? I wish I knew.  I also wish I had the courage to walk right up to that guy and be all, "are you kidding me?" while shoving a finger down my throat and gagging. 

Or even better, I should have done the same thing we did to that kid back in Kindergarten who wouldn't stop eating his boogers.  We all stood up and pointed at him and laughed.  Because anyone who is doing something that disgusting deserves at the very least, a little public humiliation.

But did I? No.  Because even though he had disgusted me, ruined my dinner, threatened to cut me with his flying nails and overall offended my sense of reason, I had the decency to conduct myself with some sense of civility and choose instead to publicly blog flog him.

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