Making choices

I’ve been at a team meeting in Tauranga these past two days. Last night, 10 of us went out to dinner at the Harbourside Brasserie and Bar at the south end of The Strand. Dinner was incredibly delicious, but the entertainment started as we ordered dessert.

One of our team members (I’ll call him William) had been hanging out for dessert. Now, William is not exactly an adventurous sort when it comes to food. A couple of months ago, I managed to drag him into a Thai restaurant, with anecdotes worthy of another blog posting sometime in the future. As he says, “I don’t like surprises with my food” ... and he means it.

William perused the menu and settled on the ice cream sundae “with your choice of topping”. He chose strawberry topping. The waitress informed him there were only three choices of topping: chocolate, caramel and wild berry. A very confused William consulted the menu again to see if he was right, because he thought it said a topping of your choice, not a topping from someone else’s limited selection.

We pointed out that wild berry was actually better than strawberry, as it contained more berries, of which one was possibly strawberry anyway. No, argued William. It wasn’t better, and that was entirely missing the point; he wanted his choice of topping, and his choice was being compromised. After much laughter and hysterics from the rest of our group, William made his final choice: he chose not to have ice cream at all if he couldn’t have his own choice of strawberry topping. Men!