Master Dilettante

Thanks to those who completed the Dinner Time survey!

Now, the background: I have a standing weekly Wednesday dinner with three buddies — one person picks a place and pays each week. The default meeting time is 7:30 p.m, but our empirical meeting times have ranged from ~7:00 p.m. - ~8:30 p.m., and, regardless, the weekly picker/payer chooses.

I would prefer to plan to meet for dinner around 7:00 p.m., because:

• I leave the office before then
• We almost always start late (and I am a culprit!)
• I believe it’s better to eat earlier in the evening to have more time to metabolize the food
• I prefer that my final meal of the day end several hours before bedtime (our meals run perhaps two hours on average)
• That’s when I’m hungry and want to eat.

One of my buddies — let’s call him Jessie Heed-’em-no (or “JH”*) — in contrast, tends to leaves the office later than I do, might exercise and then eat some days, stays up later and wakes in the morning later.

No problem. He can pick his starting time and I can pick mine, right? Wrong! Last Wednesday, I had the gall to suggest a 6:30 p.m. dinner time — because the restaurant, a BBQ dive, closed at 8:00 p.m. — and met with staunch resistance from JH, the same resistance he’s presented to milder extent even with 7:00 p.m. meeting times. (Similarly, I’ll readily admit I’ve whined about dinner times later than 7:30 p.m.).

Now, in general, I respond better to sincere requests than to what I’m typically presented by JH when I suggest earlier dinner times: disparaging ad hominem attacks about my age, belittlement of my current workload and assertions that I am “unreasonable.” With regard to the last, JH bombastically asserted that, if we polled others, I would be revealed as patently “unreasonable” in wanting to eat on the early side. Thus the survey.

Thirty-five people — obviously not statistically significant — responded. Without further adieu, here are the results (click on each graph for a larger image). Read the data, and you be the judge.

Question #1: Around what time do you usually start eating dinner?

Question #2: Ideally, around what time would you prefer to start eating dinner?

Question #3: What is the earliest time you believe it is “reasonable” to start eating dinner?

Question #4: What is the latest time you believe it is “reasonable” to start eating dinner?

Question #5: What do you consider to be your home country?

For this last question 5, the four “other” responses were “nigeria,” “jason’s big round belly,” “India, since I learned my dinner habits there,” and “Italy.”

With regard to methodology, of course this survey is imperfect, because it fails to consider demographics. Parents will skew the actual and preferred eating times towards the earlier side, certain geographies (Europeans, New Yorkers, etc.) will tend to skew towards the later side, age is a factor and profession no doubt will influence results. In particular, JH argues that for young professionals in the Silicon Valley or perhaps at eBay in particular, certain dinner times are inherently unreasonable.

My conclusion, with which JH undoubtedly will disagree, is that, if I am “unreasonable,” then others, too, are “unreasonable” with me. I’ve shared with JH an initial draft of this post, and he’s already telling me I’ve entirely missed the point of all of his arguments and that my position is indefensible. To be clear, my positions, including those not articulated above, are:

• Treat your friends with civility and respect
• You don’t have to be right all the time, and you don’t get your way all the time
• “Reasonable” necessarily encompasses a broad range of beliefs, all of which are acceptable.

Q.E.D.

JH, you can respond in comments, which I promise I’ll approve.

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*Any resemblance to real people could be purely coincidental.