A little bit ago, I did a long rant about elevators, and how people are fucking stupid about them. You probably thought that was all I had to say on the subject.  Hell, that’s all I thought I had to say on the subject, to be honest. But today, I have something more to add.  This time though, I am throwing down the gauntlet.

Let me give you a little background about myself. I’m a big guy. Not, like, massively huge or anything, but pretty big.  I’m 6’2″ and I weigh… well, never fucking mind what I weigh, but just speaking statistically, I feel safe wagering that it’s more than you. I’m broad shouldered and take up a good bit of space.

Now, it wasn’t until fairly recently that I actually realized that my size can be intimidating. My self image never included “intimidating” in pretty much any capacity, so the idea that people smaller than myself (which is a fair bit of the population) might find my mere presence imposing was an alien concept.

That’s not to say I don’t realize how big I am. Trust me, nobody knows that better than I do. I generally spend a good deal of my time in public trying to take up less space because I realize what a space hog I am. I do my best to give everybody around me as much personal space as I can whenever we’re forced to be in close proximity, such as on a plane, sitting at a ten handed poker table, or, say in an elevator.

As of now, though, I’m declaring a moratorium on the whole “not using my size to my advantage or acting like I’m entitled to a certain space” thing in one specific area. If I am on the elevator, and the door opens, I will walk the fuck off the elevator as if I have the right of way.  Because god dammit, I do. If you attempt to squeeze past me so you can shave a valuable half second off your elevator boarding time, do not expect me to yield. I will not turn my shoulders to avoid hitting you, and if we do collide, I will not stop and apologize for what I would normally assume is my own clumsiness or obliviousness.  I will knock you the fuck over and walk away like you deserved it. Because frankly, you did.

I won’t run over children, because they don’t know any better.  I won’t walk directly into people who are standing a bit too close to the doors but aren’t actively trying to board at the same time that I am getting off. I won’t intentionally run into people who aren’t paying attention. And although in my head this would be hilarious, I promise I won’t charge off the elevator as soon as the door opens and start clothes-lining the hell out of everybody in sight.

But if you’re that asshole who just can’t wait to get on the elevator and who starts to board before it’s clear, you can expect to eat my shoulder. Trust me, those are not double doors. We can’t easily walk past each other. One of us is going to have to yield in order for this to work, and from now on, I can promise you that person will not be me.

This post is about restaurants. Or, more specifically, how terrible restaurant websites are.

This isn’t rocket science.  We all pretty much had basic HTML figured out by 1998 or so, and building basic static websites hasn’t changed a ton since then. You don’t need to be fancy, I don’t want Flash intros or ridiculous, useless landing pages. There’s really only four things I need from a restaurant website. Here they are:

Hours of operation

The other night, I wanted to go to this wing place I’d heard about. It was about 6 PM and I wasn’t particularly hungry yet, but I anticipated I’d be hungry in a few hours. So naturally I went to their website to see how late they’d be open. I looked and looked and looked and could not find their hours listed anywhere on their site. I challenged a few friends to find out how late this place was open, and one of them eventually tracked the info down–on Google+. Seriously! The info wasn’t even on their Facebook page–I know, because I actually looked. The only place on the internet that could tell me how late this place stayed open was Google+. At least it’s good for something, I guess.

It’s appalling how many restaurant websites fail at this most basic level. If I don’t know when you’re open, I can’t very well eat at your restaurant. It’s simple,  essentially unchanging information that would literally take you about four seconds to code in HTML and stick it somewhere on your front page. There’s absolutely no excuse not to have this info front and center on your damn website!

Menu

You’d think this would be obvious. And to be fair, most restaurant websites do include a menu somewhere.  But it’s usually just a PDF scan of their actual physical menu. Please, restaurateurs, STOP doing this! PDF files are huge and annoying and absolutely ill-suited for this purpose. Hire a friggin’ high school kid to do an actual HTML version of your menu! This shouldn’t be too hard and you can probably get one to do it for free if you promise to give him/her a reference. If you’re worried about all that hassle of having to get someone to change the website every time you add or remove an item from your menu… don’t be. It will take way less time than printing out new physical menus. There’s absolutely no excuse for not having an up-to-date, fully HTML menu on your website.  None.

Location

If I’m going to come eat at your restaurant, I have to know where it is. A simple address is all you need. If you like, include a map too. Google maps makes this stupid easy, so again, hire a high school kid to figure this out for you. You don’t need directions like this: “Take exit 225 and turn left, then right on Chambers and we’re a half mile ahead on your right!”  Seriously, nobody gives directions that way anymore. Just give me the address.

Online ordering

This really only applies to restaurants that offer delivery. I don’t care about ordering online if I’m going to your restaurant to sit down and eat. But if you’re bringing the food to me, you will have about a 10,000% better chance of getting my business if you have online ordering. And seriously, it’s 2013. You should have this by now. I’m sure there’s people out there offering turnkey solutions for this, so go buy one and hook it into your website.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking. Some of you are thinking “I don’t understand technology and don’t want to hire that high school kid you keep talking about to do any of this crap.  I’ll just put my phone number on the website, and people can just call if they need to know when we’re open or what food we have!”

Fuck you. Seriously, fuck you hard. And fuck your stupid goddamn phone number, too. Yes, I’m sure there are people who only go to your website to find your phone number so they can call you. I know people like that, so I know they exist. I’m not like that. And believe it or not, I’m not that unusual. When I see a business website that has no useful information except for a prominently displayed phone number and an exhortation to “call us for information!” I get super, super irritated. You might as well not have a website if all you’re going to put on it is your phone number.

If the choice is between calling you to find out when you’re open or just not going to your restaurant, I will choose to not go your restaurant. Every. Time. I will not call you for any reason. The internet exists so I don’t have to call businesses anymore! If I can’t figure out when you’re open, I won’t call to find out, you’ll just lose my business.  If I can’t figure out what you sell or what your prices are, I won’t call to find out, you’ll just lose my business. If I can’t figure out where you are… well, you get the picture, right? And delivery places? I decided a few years ago that I’m done with calling you, too. So if you don’t have online ordering, well, you don’t get my business either.

There you go. Four things you can do to make your restaurant website not suck. Get to it!

Ok, so I admit that was just an attention grabbing headline. There’s probably a million things people will or have found to dislike about this movie, from the language to the violence to the racial issues and its treatment of slavery. But personally I liked the movie, so I’m not going to focus on any of that.

No, for me, the worst part of Django Unchained is in the very beginning. A subtitle on the very first scene reads “1858. Two years before the Civil War.” I almost choked on my popcorn. The FUCK? To be fair, my first reaction was “People need to be told when the Civil War was?” 

Then I busted out the old fingers, and counted them myself. The Civil War started in April of 1861. Near as I can tell (and I’m admittedly really bad at simple arithmetic) that’s three years after 1858. I suppose if you want to get technical, if the movie opens in December of 1858 (It’s unclear what time of year it is, although the main characters end up “working through the winter” together in a later montage, so let’s be generous and say it’s definitely late 1858 by the time the movie opens) then that’s two years and four months before the Civil War would start.

But come on, colloquial usage never works like that. If the subtitle had said “1858. Two years before 1861.” People would have laughed. But since apparently nobody knows when the goddamn Civil War was, it doesn’t matter.

I don’t know, maybe Tarantino was making some kind of sly statement. Or maybe the movie takes place in an alternate universe wherein the Civil War starts a year early (that would explain the other historical inaccuracies, anyway!) But in this universe, the goddamn Civil War was fought between 1861 and 1865. Three years after 1858.