And I'm posting this because I can't quite wrap my head around there being two adults (LW and whoever writes Miss Manners these days) who have apparently never sat in a restaurant while the waitstaff serenaded a patron with some song that was definitely not "Happy Birthday," because that would get the Intellectual Property cops on them. LW! No one "did this" to you! If a friend or loved one had told the restaurant, knowing that you didn't want this kind of attention (although people knowing it's your birthday is one of two things I can't understand you getting bunched about), I would sympathize, but you told them! What did you think the "reward" would be? A subscription to The Wall Street Journal?

The second thing, btw, was sharing a dessert with their wife. Is there a reason wife couldn't have just gotten her own dessert? I'm assuming the dessert from the restaurant was free. Was there some emotional significance to sharing cheesecake that I'm missing?