The Gripe Report: Iced Tea Cap Colors, NFL Officials’ Ball-Placing Pace, Leaving Things At Restaurants,

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Hear that?

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Sounds to me like we’ve got a fresh batch of gripes a-comin’ in a brand new edition of The Gripe Report.

I hope you’ve had a great week. I have. I went to the doctor, and the cholesterol numbers were no bueno for a handsome 29-year-old fella like myself, so it has been all about the Mediterranean diet for me this week and for many more weeks to come.

I got a paper from the doctor that told me a bunch of nutritional info that I already knew — things like vegetables=good; eating an entire sleeve of Oreos before you go to bed=bad — but I decided to give this whole diet a shot. I don’t think I’ll be able to out-eat a family history of high triglycerides, but let’s give it the ol’ college try.

Have a gripe? Send it in?: mattreigleoutkick@gmail.com

So, I was looking at things to buy for this diet, and then the field friend and I hit the grocery store to load up on salmon, vegetables, and whole grains.

Drinking sugar is a big no-no on this diet, and that’s alright because I’m a big-time seltzer guy anyway. You know how the human body is 60% water? Well, mine is probably about 50% water and 10% Polar seltzer. 

But I wanted options and I decided to grab some iced tea. 

Now, I’m an unsweetened iced tea guy, so I grabbed a half gallon of unsweetened black iced tea. Then I thought to check how much a gallon was, and it turned out that the gallon was the better deal. So, I put back the half gallon of tea that had the same color — or what I thought was the same color cap — and went home.

Then a few hours later I cut myself a nice hunk of lemon and poured a big frosty glass of iced tea. I excitedly put it to my lips and took a big, refreshing swig.

It was sweet tea.

Fortunately, it was diet sweet tea, otherwise I’m not sure I would have survived the ordeal. 

I assumed that I had carelessly grabbed the wrong gallon by mistake so I went back and got another one, checking to make sure that it was, in fact, unsweetened.

When I got home, I compared the two gallons and I found myself both appalled and disturbed…

Are you kidding me? 

Those are two different ends of the tea spectrum. Sure, it’s “Diet” but it’s still been sweetened whereas I want my tea as unsweetened as humanly possible.

Shouldn’t these be as different as possible? Shouldn’t one be blue and maybe the other is orange?

All I know is that they shouldn’t be so close that you need Sherwin-Williams color swatches to tell them apart.

Let’s take this out of tea terms. Imagine identical bottles with nearly identical colors: one has lemonade in it, and the other has donkey urine.

No one would stand for that. They’d be like, “We need warnings and labels and different colors and different shaped jugs.” 

Not sweet tea and unsweetened tea though. For some reason, I have to bust out a jeweler’s loupe to make sure I grab the right one.

Unacceptable… Jeez, I need a glass of iced tea to calm down. Let’s see what you fine folks are griping about this week…

NFL Officials’ Ball-Placing Pace

I love a good football gripe and Mark has one for us that has never occurred to me, and now it’s been bugging me ever since I read his message:

Why is it in the NFL and in the last 2 minutes of the game the Officials all of a sudden start running the ball up to be placed for play?  Watch them sometime.  The rest of the game they just kind of stroll up and spot up the ball as the clock ticks off.  But come the last 2 minutes all of a sudden they are Usain Bolt trying to get the ball placed.  If they did that the whole game it would be fine, but why help the team that is behind in the last 2 minutes?? 

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I demand answers to this question.

Obviously, there’s a sense of urgency within two minutes, but why is it okay for the referee to be taking his sweet time for the rest of the game, when teams start running their two-minute drill, he starts running around like the Tasmanian Devil.

Why can’t he do that the entire game? It’s not his fault the team trailing is in this position where they have to manage the clocks and get plays off as quickly as possible.

There should be a constant time delta that the official needs to meet the entire game long. Maybe he needs to place the ball within 18 to 23 seconds of a play ending. That never changes. He can’t place it before that and he can’t drag ass. 

He should just maintain a slight jog all game long. No sprinting, no walking. Just a nice brisk pace from whistle to whistle.

People Who Leave Things At Restaurants

David is checking in with a gripe about people who leave things at restaurants, and he has one hell of an anecdote to illustrate his point:

Here’s my gripe: When you leave a restaurant make sure you take all your personal belongings. I was eating at a local Waffle House restaurant in the morning. When the wait staff cleans up the table they normally dispose of the napkins and whatever food is left on the plates. When I started eating my breakfast a customer came back and told the ladies behind the counter that he forgot his dentures. He had a laid-back and pleasant attitude. His dentures were in a discarded napkin in a trash can behind the counter. One of the waitresses looked down and had an “uh oh” expression on her face because she saw what he needed. To make things worse, the waitress reached in the trash can and grabbed the discarded napkin and she was not wearing gloves when she did that. This is why I always order food to go. People need to make sure they take their belongings when they leave restaurants. 

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I can understand people leaving their keys or a purse at the table. I know I’ve forgotten sunglasses before.

But David is right, Double-check your surroundings to make sure you’ve got everything you came in with.

Now, let’s address the elephant in the room… how the f–k do you forget dentures?!

Forgive my ignorance, but I don’t even understand the point of popping dentures out to eat. Is it a cleanliness thing? That’s the only thing I can think of because I don’t know about you, but the number one use for my teeth is chowing down on food.

But even if you have to pop those pearly whites out, how do you not realize you‘re forgetting your teeth? Whenever I leave the house, I do that two-pocket-touch move where I check for my phone, keys, and wallet. If I wore dentures I would also check for those.

I’d forgive this if it was this Waffle House patron’s first day on the job with dentures, but I find that hard to believe if he was well-versed enough in denture etiquette (denturequette?) to wrap his chompers so the other diners don’t have to stare at them.

If you frequent a Waffle House enough you’ll see some things. So you don’t need to add some dude’s faux-chiclets to that list.

Also, I’d like to nominate that Waffle House worker for some kind of civilian honor the way they dig through the trash like that. I’m not sure what Waffle House is paying these days, but whatever it is, it’s not enough to do that.

It reminds me of when I worked at a department store and the loss-prevention dude told me, “Whatever you do, don’t chase after a shoplifter.”

I remember thinking, “Dude, I make nine bucks an hour; no problem.”

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Well, that’s another edition of The Gripe Report in the books; and what an edition it was!

Want in on the next one? Of course, you do! 

Send your gripes to me: mattreigleoutkick@gmail.com