Brunch is perhaps my favorite meal of the week. It combines all the things I love — leisure, delicious meals topped with syrup and day drinking. However, there are things that can easily ruin my precious brunch experience — overcooked eggs, rude service and bad brunchers.
What I mean by bad brunchers are people who insist on being annoying, loud, unruly and messy, and they don’t seem to care how their behavior is affecting other people’s brunch time. Simply put, they lack the usual restaurant dining manners, because brunch, for some reason, tends to bring out the worst in people.
My theory behind this phenomenon is that brunch is generally a more crowded eating time and caters to a wide variety of people. Hungover 20-somethings, parents with young kids, conservative couples and older folks are all squeezed together in a smallish dining room, waiting to get their egg on. Conflict is inevitable.
Zagat, the definitive restaurant guide, is naturally well aware of this effect and thus made a hilarious video that highlights the most iconic bad brunchers. Check it out, and see if any look familiar.
I am personally a culprit of the “hangry bruncher.” When my blood sugar drops, I become like a wild, brunch-hungry animal, and let’s just say everything in my way might as well have a target on its back. While this video is totally on point and hilarious, I think they left out six prime candidates that I will now share with you.
1. The vocal complainers
Image: Giphy
These are those people who take issue with literally every little thing that happens while they wait for a table, at the table, with their server and the food they ordered. Not only that, but they try to drag whoever is sitting closest to them into their frustrations, just so they can use them as evidence later. “See? I’m not the only one who feels the draft from the air conditioner!”
2. The lone bruncher
Image: Giphy
They’re somehow sitting at a table for four and have been drinking the same cup of coffee while reading a book for the last half-hour. They are also somehow oblivious to the long line of people right in front of them, desperately waiting for food. Don’t even get me started on the people who are working on laptops. That’s what coffee shops are for!
3. The Instagrammer brunchers
Image: Giphy
Usually in their early- to mid-20s, these people spend the entire meal Instagramming their waiter, people’s shoes, dogs and their food. Brunch time is for eating and conversing, people, not documenting every moment with your phone.
4. First-date brunchers
Image: Giphy
You’re asking for it if you take someone to brunch on a first date. Why would you bring someone you’ve never met to a veritable minefield of long waits, screaming infants and crazy drunk people? If you’ve ever sat near one of these, you know the awkwardness that ensues and how it rubs off onto everything it touches.
5. The friendly older couple
Image: Giphy
They start off super sweet by complimenting your blouse or your boyfriend’s eyes. Thirty minutes later, they’ve invited themselves to sit at your table, and they’re showing you pictures of their grandchildren, all while asking, “So when do you plan on starting a family?” If I had wanted to have brunch with my grandparents, I would’ve gone out to New Jersey.
6. The fighting brunchers
Image: Giphy
They’re either taking a break from an epic fight or they get into one mid brunch. No matter how it happens, the combination of waiting a while for food with brunch cocktails creates the perfect storm for couple battles. Somehow they end up screaming at each other, and one storms out while the other is left weeping profusely over her French toast. It’s like a horrible car accident — you can’t help looking at it.
More on brunch
A brunch menu fit for a caveman
10 Brunch recipes you can easily tackle this weekend
Plan the perfect Mother’s Day brunch
Leave a Comment