OK, so I’m not against change. I get it when I (rarely) pay with cash, I see it when I go back to Carson City, Nevada where I go once every several years to nearly wet myself when looking at housing prices and new development in the community. But last night our family went to Fudrucker’s for dinner because Jessica was hankering for a burger and I wasn’t hankering to fire up the grill. I should have stayed home.

When we walked in we were met by a stack of beer boxes, buckets with empy beer bottles (so as to prevent stealing), and a totally scaled down menu. When you are a hamburger based restaurant that sells hamburgers and few other things scaling down your menu is like turning yourself into an overpriced McDonalds. In fact, I think that the service at McDonalds might have been better. They had a table with kids menus on it as you wound yourself through the queue… with a bucket next to it that was empty. It was supposed to have crayons but they had no crayons in the facility. They did, however, add lots more expensive video games for people to play. I just can’t get past the $0.50 per game price. And that’s what they were starting to charge when I was a teenager. Now you have to pay $1.00 or more! Call me a cheap, old fashioned kind of guy but to play a video game that involves shooting people in front of my three year old for $1.00 you’d have to pay me $1,000.00.

And they switched to Pepsi products [which I don’t prefer]. So basically everything that I loved about the restaurant is gone and I’m going to take my business somewhere else that might change, but they might do it gradually or they might maintain a slightly more family friendly atmosphere with choices on their menu. Oh, and I asked the under-aged employee working the register if they had Fat Tire beer. His response was to say, “Fat Tire beer?” slowly and loudly as if I was an old fart who was hard of hearing. “Yes, Fat Tire beer, it’s made in Boulder, CO.”

“I’ve never heard of it before.”

Sorry young’n’, but they’re advertised in neon signs at liquor stores all around the place, most other local restaurants carry them and even Texas (who still thinks they own Colorado) has it. Don’t insult my intelligence when I’m ordering – it is not good customer service.

That is all, our regularly scheduled griping will return later.