Beach(es) Beat

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Whatever happened to the baker's dozen? That is an old term that dates back to the days when if you were a valued customer at the local bakery on occasion you would get 13 or maybe even 14 cookies although you were only charged for the 12 that you had ordered.

Eventually other businesses such as the butcher and the candlestick maker got in on the act but that pleasant old custom has by and large disappeared.

Nowadays, companies try to attract customers by making all manner of extravagant promises - "Don't pay for six months" is just one of the come-ons but the fact remains that these days when you order a dozen cookies or their equivalent that is exactly what you get and not only that but other little touches we once took for granted are also disappearing.

I was thinking about this the other day when I and The Wife went for lunch at a local eatery and were promptly seated at a comfy little booth. I folded up my sturdy winter coat and placed it on the seat beside me and that is when my problems started.

The space taken up by my coat forced me to sit with one foot slightly out in the aisle and this caused the wait staff to unfailingly trip over my foot just when my spoonful of soup was about an inch from my mouth.

You might well ask me why I didn't hang up my coat and my response to that is: Aha!

Because there was no coat hooks in the restaurant. They have gone the way of the baker's dozen and that is just one example.

Recently, I bought a gift for The Wife at one of those uppity Bloor Street stores and asked to have it gift-wrapped. The clerk's response was to slip a bow around the box the present came in and hand it to me, but that's the way things go nowadays. There are no salted peanuts at bars; no free toothpicks; a little bowl of after-dinner mints no longer magically appear at the end of a meal and hairstylists are too tired to whisk you off when they are finished reshaping your head.

I admit that being offered a toothpick at the end of the meal offend the more sensitive in our midst but I do miss those other embellishments. I've seen a lot of change in my day and I'm against most of them.