I have never been a waiter, I must confess. Never had a job at a restaurant or café or anything of the sort. But still, knowing myself, I tend to have a good memory and head for numbers. If someone told me “Take this to table #9”, I would probably know what they meant within a day on the job.

Other people, I know, are not as fortunate. I know people who are simply incapable of making the mental abstraction necessary to track the assignment of numbers to tables. A map would only confuse them, because that’s just another sort of spacial abstraction that not all people are good at.

It’s nice to know that there are places that decided to solve the issue without resorting to the (frankly, defeatist) approach of writing the numbers on the tables themselves.

At the Bad Waitress café in Minneapolis, each table has a Gold- or Silver-Age superhero assigned to it. When you step up to the counter after writing your order on the special forms (bad waitresses have to patience to actually TAKE your order) you specify that you want your bagel served to Ghost Rider, and watch his flame-covered eyes watch you as you munxh contentedly.

At Melcriche’s Coffee House in Vancouver they have a small plastic savannah next to the register. Lions and tigers and gazelles, oh my. After you order you’re given one to set on your table and play with until your breakfast arrives. My cheeteh was rudely snatched from his stalking of the sugar packet and was replaced by a plate of scrambled eggs. Hardly a fair trade, I thought, but I suppose it was what I paid for, so I can live with that.