I was sitting at the bar in a local restaurant last night having dinner and a couple of drinks while watching college basketball. A woman came in with her young son and were seated at a table close to where I was perched at the bar. Apparently, her dining experience was not as good as mine because she complained about seemingly every facet of her meal and her son's meal from the moment they sat down. She immediately alienated her server somehow which I didn't quite catch. Then when her server wasn't around, she would grab the attention of other servers passing by to make requests and complaints. She asked for an extra ranch dressing for an appetizer, and then complained when it didn't arrive quickly. (Why don't restaurants just give you an extra dressing or sauce when you order something? It saves us all the trouble of asking for another one and the server having to go get one.) Then when their main courses came, she complained that both her and her son's food were cold, and she sent them back. I didn't stare at the table, but I did look over once or twice, and I noticed that the woman had a perpetual scowl on her face from the beginning of their meal to the end. Shortly after their meals were returned from the kitchen where they were apparently heated up, I sneaked a peek and saw her putting her nose up to the opened end of a bottle of A1 steak sauce to smell it and then making a face of contempt. It wasn't long before she flagged down her server and asked for takeout containers so that they could take most of their food home. Before they left, however, the manager came over to the table, and the woman told her about all of the things that had been wrong with their dining experience. Meanwhile, from what I could tell, the server who waited on them was polite and professional, despite being on the receiving end of a lot of complaining. And I thought to myself that it would probably be impossible to please this woman. For whatever reason, no matter what restaurant she and her son would have gone to or what they would have ordered, she would have complained about it. She was a scowler. And scowlers are never fun. Why would someone like that even go out to dinner if she's not going to be satisfied? It would not be a very pleasant experience, and I think that going out to dinner should be a pleasant experience. And I realize that this sort of thing happens all of the time in restaurants all over the place. I just wonder why.