I had just finished visiting a friend in the hospital and stopped by a burger drive-through for lunch to eat on the way back to work. I ordered the #1 combo (burger, fry, coke) for $4.29. She said "that'll be $4.83, please drive forward."

"$4.83? For a $4.29 meal? That's 54 cents tax! That can't be right," my mind raced. Tax is 8 cents on the dollar in Huntsville and for 4 dollars that would be 32 cents plus 1/3 (29) of 8 cents would be 35 cents max. I'd heard of window workers overcharging drive through customers and skimming the money for themselves. Someone did just that to me at a Hardees couple of years ago.

Jack Benny and George Burns became friends when both were young performers working their way up through the vaudeville circuit, and they remained friends until Benny died. One day, they were lunching at a Hollywood restaurant, and Benny was wrestling with the problem of whether or not to butter his bread.

"I like butter on my bread," he said. "But my diet strictly forbids butter. Maybe I should call Mary and ask her what to do."

"Jack," Burns said, "don't be ridiculous. You're a grown man. You should be able to decide, without your wife's help, whether or not to butter your own bread."

Friends and I were chatting over dinner in a restaurant. A man at the next table told his cell-phone caller to hold on. Then he stepped outside to talk.

When he returned, I said, "That was very thoughtful."

"I had no choice," he nodded and said to me. "You were making too much noise."

Bill and Doug went into a diner that looked as though it had seen better days.

As they slid in to a booth, Bill wiped some crumbs from the seat. Then he took a napkin and wiped some moisture from the table. The waitress came over and asked if they wanted some menus.

"No thanks," said Doug. "I'll just have a cup of black coffee."

"I'll have black coffee too," Bill said. "And please make sure the cup is clean."

At a diner, I was standing in line to pay my bill behind two women who handed the young waitress a credit card.

After swiping the card, she loudly called out to her manager, "Mr. Allen, what do I do if it says 'reject'?"

As the women's faces reddened and customers turned to look, Mr. Allen, also the cook, calmly walked out from the kitchen.

"Well," he answered, "the first thing you do is shout it out loud enough to embarrass the customer, who might have been thinking about leaving you a tip."

An acquaintance of mine, whose daughter was about to be married, decided to give her a diamond ring that had been in the family for several generations. The stone had never been appraised, so the father asked a gemologist friend if she would take a look at it. She agreed, but said that, instead of a fee she would accept lunch at one of Houston's finer restaurants.

A few days later, as he and the gem expert sat sipping a glass of Chablis, he showed her the ring. She took out her jeweler's loupe, examined the diamond carefully and handed it back.

"Wow," said a diner who had been watching from the next table. "These Texas women are tough!"

I walked into Dairy Queen the other day and asked for a hot fudge sundae with extra hot fudge.

The girl replied, "The hot fudge only comes in one temperature, ma'am."

An old man was eating in a truck stop when three rough-looking bikers walked in. As they passed the old man, the first biker pushed his cigarette into the old man's pie, then laughed and took a seat at the counter. The second biker picked up the old man's milk and spit into it. The third biker turned over the old man's plate before joining the others at the counter.

Without saying a word to the laughing bikers, the old man put his money down, got up, and left the diner. One of the bikers said to the waitress, "Not much of a man, was he?"

The waitress replied," Not much of a truck driver either. He just backed his big rig over three motorcycles!"

In a restaurant one day, a pirate was talking to the waiter. The waiter asked him, "Why do you have a peg leg?"

The pirate answered, "Back when I was sailing the seas, a big shark noticed me swimming one day and bit off me leg."

"Well, then how did you get the hook?" the waiter asked, pointing to the place where the pirate's left hand used to be.

The pirate responded, "Well, me crew and myself were engaged in a rough battle one day and me hand was cut off by a slimy coward's sword."

The waiter looked at the hook for a moment. "Well now I have to ask how you got the eye patch."

The pirate snarled, "I looked at a gull flying overhead in the harbor one day and it took a dump right in me eye."

The waiter was puzzled by this last explanation. "How would that make you get an eye patch?"

The pirate responded, "First day with me hook."

"May I take your order?" the waiter asked.

"Yes, how do you prepare your chickens?"

"Nothing special, sir," he replied.

"We just tell them straight out that they're going to die."

An elderly rabbi, having just retired from his duties in the congregation, finally decided to fulfill his lifelong fantasy to taste pork. 

He went to a hotel in the Catskills in the off-season, entered the empty dining hall and sat down at a table in the far corner.  The waiter arrived, and the rabbi ordered roast suckling pig.

At the diner, my breakfast arrived with only three sausages instead of the usual four. The waitress explained that the cook had dropped one and was making another. Soon the cook dashed out of the kitchen.

"Here you are," he announced. "It's the missing link!"

A man goes to a restaurant, orders some takeout, and sits down to wait for his food.

While he waits, he grabs a handful of peanuts from the bowl on the counter, and as he starts to chew, he hears a voice say, "That's a beautiful tie, is that silk? Very NICE choice!"

Wondering who made the comment, he looks around and doesn't see anyone nearby who could be speaking to him. With a shrug, he pops a few more peanuts into his mouth.

Next he hears the voice say, "Those shoes are stylin', my man. Are they Italian leather? They look GRRREAT!"

He whirls around to again but sees no one near him. He glances nervously around and then at his shoes, which he tucks self-consciously under the stool.

A little freaked out, he grabs another handful of peanuts. This time the voice continues with, "That suit looks FANTASTIC! Is it an Armani? Very nice!"

He immediately calls the waiter over and says, "Look. I keep hearing these voices telling me how great my tie, my shoes, and my suit look - what's up with that? Am I GOING CRAZY??"

"Oh," the waiter nonchalantly replies. "It's just the peanuts."

"The PEANUTS?!?" the astonished man asks, staring at the bowl beside him.

"Yes," replies the waiter, "…they're complimentary."