Pretention

I live in a town that is rife with Italian restaurants. For a town of less than 15,000 folks (rug-rats included), we've got over a dozen (local - not chain) Italian pizzerias and restaurants. Yikes.

So how do you differentiate yourself? You become a pretentious Italian restaurant. You put olive oil on the table for your bread instead of good ole American butter. And in so doing, piss off crotchety old curmudgeons who like their butter.

The situation is not unlike everybody being cursed with childproof medicine bottles rather than just those who want them (see 2/21/13 post on this topic) - you are forced to ask specially for what is normal.

For Italian restaurants, it is caused by pretention; for medicine, it is our delightful nanny state. Either way, curmudgeons get rankled.