Are Restaurants Hard for You?

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Restaurants overwhelm me. Especially the noise. Loud blaring music. Especially the usual quick pop music or romantic young adult song. The jazz music played often in coffee shops are more calming to me.

Then there are the different conversations. Voices of men, women, children, families and friends.
Whispers to roaring laughter. Monotone voices to expressive voices. The visual confusion of many people moving around and making gestures. The lights giving of a blare. Different people brushing off me as I move through crowds. Various strong smells from different food.

Nah. I just rather order the food if I want some or go to less popular restaurants. I can stay in loud malls or crowded restaurants for an hour or two depending on how tired or energized I am. Maybe even three hours if I was really well rested and in a good mood. I would never go alone. Who knows what would happen if I was stuck alone with sensory overload in public?

Usually I have to take naps and rest after going somewhere like that. Too much and I’ll have a shutdown. Oh well. Homemade food it is.

One thing I do is avoid restaurants when they are busy. My usual lunchtime is about 3 pm and supper about 9 pm.

Yes, when there's a screaming baby or noisy children around or there's the smell of a food I don't like. Mind you, I try to avoid restaurants which serve food I don't like.

I don't often try new restaurants and try to avoid going when it's super busy, both of which probably help me handle it better.

Yes, food even tastes better outdoors.

bmasters

french fries in ranch dressing.

doesn't sound too weird/extreme to me.

personally, i would not choose to eat french fries in ranch dressing, if i had other options.

however, there is a lot of popular food out there that i do not eat (or almost never eat) nowadays

when i was eating a tofu burrito from the student food coop, someone that told me he was 30some years old had the nerve to squeak "ew! have you very heard of a carne asada burrito?"

but whatever

if i were to have been eating a carne asada burrito maybe he would've demanded me to give it to him.

(rolls eyes)


likewise, precious lil "people" have the nerve to ask if i am a vegetarian.

and then someone (former swim coach) correctly pointed out that the sandwich i was eating did not contain meat.

it was like wtf



just b/c someone is not a vegetarian does not follow that every meal must contain meat

at the soup kitchen they had vegetarian and regular.

and i got vegetarian.

some precious lil "people" act like if you are not a vegetarian you must be on Atkins.

Restaurants are hard for me to go to especially by myself. Fast-food restaurants are easier because you don't have to stay.

My main trouble is being nervous(especially when I have to talk to the cashier!), noise and the fact that I have a hard time reading the menus(it's confusing.) I hate when there is a baby crying or loud children!

No, not really. I like them. Though I don't like waiting for my food.

I voted "Sometimes" but I would have preferred it if the question were asking how hard they are rather than how often they are.

For me, the only thing I find somewhat difficult about them is that there's generally social interaction with the people I'm with. No issue with the atmosphere or anything like that.

The only problem I would have in a restaurant is which food is available in the menu, and "what 'food name' is this?? Because I'm bad at knowing and remembering food names". And, of course, the costs.


So my main issue there is option availability, not the environment itself.

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We only have one restaurant in the local town where my office is located that is open after 2 pm. Last week, the weekly food truck didn't show up. I went over for supper Saturday night and they had no hamburgers, no french fries (they had been out of french fries since at least Thursday), and no onion rings. I don't know what else they were out of.

I was told today that the company owning it owns 18 restaurants in the chain and that they cancelled all deliveries last week to all of their restaurants. The rumor is that all 18 closed for good Sunday night.

I also found out Sunday afternoon that my favorite hamburger place in the area closed for good at the end of September. I'm only in that town once a month and so I didn't know anything was out of the ordinary until I showed up last Sunday at 7 pm and they were closed. The only remaining hamburger place in that town worth going to is an old time drive-in and I really hate to eat in the car. The hamburger place that is across the street from the one that closed has great reviews on Yelp, but their food is terrible. There's still a good Mexican place in the town that I like. There are also a Japanese restaurant and an Italian restaurant that I really like, but they are rather expensive.

The best hamburger place in the county is still open, but I don't know for how long. It is an old time lunch counter in a drugstore another town over that closes at 2:30 in the afternoon. There is no place in that town that is open after 2:30 where I will eat.

So my choices, for the most part, are now to cook my own supper, get something at the taco truck down the street which is only open on weekdays and only when the weather is good, or to drive to another town. I'm hoping that the local cafe starts staying open after 2 pm or at least reopen in the evenings.

To the best of my knowledge, there will be no restaurants open anywhere in my county at all on Sundays after this.

I struggle with restaraunts that have too many people, are too noisy or have loud music playing. I never am able to interact with the waiter either without being socially awkward at some point.

I've never been a big fan of crowded or overly fancy restaurants. Otherwise no problem. Just now starting to notice sensory issues could be driving that, after reading other's experiences here on this site. For instance, today I went one of the two local fast food restaurants I eat at for lunch when I don't bring a lunch. Normally, the restaurant isn't crowded at all, but today it was packed. I resisted the urge to just go somewhere else. No one was in line to order, so I got through that process without any issue. Finding a seat away from others was impossible. After eating for a few minutes, I noticed I was having a very hard time concentrating on my book I was reading. I was hearing conversations from all directions, a radio station that I couldn't even decipher what music was playing, ice machines, babies, air conditioners, some electric whirring sound, etc. A few minutes later a couple of groups behind me got up to leave, so all noise was now coming from in front of me. I got absorbed in my book, and only later snapped out of it momentarily to realize that the conversations were no longer as loud, I could make out the music on the radio, no longer could hear the ac as loud, etc. Is this something that NT's don't experience?