Have you ever been to a restaurant by yourself, but you would like someone to talk to?
You could sit at the bar for lunch and talk to a server, but they have limited time, and you as the customer and they as staff have different roles that keep you separated. Perhaps you exchange pleasantries, or maybe they get to know you a little, but it all stays in a box.
You could talk to other people sitting at the bar. After all, they are in the same situation as you. You both like this restaurant, so you already have something in common. But you feel like you can’t talk to them, or if you actually try to talk to them, they rebuff you, with a look that says “Why are you talking to me?” Maybe it is just the restaurants I go to, or maybe it is just my personality and my anxieties getting in the way. Whatever it is, I haven’t found any restaurant setting that resembles the bar in the TV show Cheers.
And, however I am talking to people, a lot of the time I would really like people just to tell me what they would like to talk about, and then we could talk about that. Do people expect me to be a mind reader? Maybe it is my software programming background. Or my affinity for Brechtian drama theory (a play should explain what happens first, so you can then observe how the action happens). So why couldn’t there be a menu of conversation topics, just like a regular menu lists dishes?
Separately, over the course of being a school food researcher, I started collecting vintage menus. It turns out that from 1890 to 1910, more or less, people would print high quality menu blanks. These menu blanks would then be used by restaurants, and probably for some private dinners as well, to hand-write the dishes being offered on that day. Remember that printing was much more expensive then than it is today. Some of these menu blanks were printed by food companies advertising their products (alcohol, chocolate, …), some were specific to a restaurant, and some were general purpose. Many of them were and are very beautiful. (Word of warning: if you start collecting vintage menus, you are likely to contract eBay Fever, for which there is no cure.)
I felt I needed to do something with the menus, other than store them in an archival-quality binder.
So, I have several beautiful menu blanks, and I am trying to find ways to talk to people.
I put the two together and created the prototype conversation menu attached to this post. I received overwhelmingly positive feedback on the conversation menu at the StartingBloc NY’19 Institute.
Go ahead and download the conversation menu, print it, email it, or tape it to your refrigerator (still a crucial communications technology). Or even post it near your water cooler, so people who want to have water cooler conversations can more easily find topics to talk about.
Then make your own conversation menus.
The more conversations we can start, the better the world will be. Or the conversation will improve your breakfast, which is a more modest, but equally important, goal.