Secret signals on the job: Waitresses at some 19th-century restaurants ensured speedy drink service by communicating with a non-verbal code. One server took orders, then placed each customer’s cup to indicate exactly what the customer wanted. A...
Have you ever offered to foster a dog or cat, but wound up adopting instead? There’s an alliterative term for that. And when you’re on the job, do niceties like “Yes, ma’am” and “No, sir” make you sound too formal? Not if it comes naturally. And...
A native of Houston, Texas, moves a few hundred miles north to Dallas and discovers that people there say she’s wrong to call the road alongside the highway a “feeder road” rather than a “frontage road.” Actually, both terms are correct. The Texas...
What’s the difference between a turnpike and a highway? In the 1700s, privately funded roads were constructed in the Northeast to connect commercial centers, but tolls were charged in order to pay for the wood planks that covered the road; this was...
cold-in-place n.— «Several miles of lettered highways in the county that were going to be resurfaced using a new method called “cold-in-place.” were also taken off the table.» —“MoDOT brings listening post to Richmond” by Dennis Sharkey Daily...
flyover n.— «A $60 million road project, which in late 2006 replaced the notorious Sagamore rotary with a straight stretch of highway heading over the Sagamore Bridge and onto the Cape.…The figures indicate that the new roadway—often called “the...